Fall 2021

• What is a programming contest?
  • A team of 2-3 people.
  • A set of 5-10 problems
  • One computer
  • PAPER only resources
    • Books
    • Notes
    • ETC
    • BUT NO ELECTRONIC Resources
  • 3 to 5 hours.
• What is the point?
  • Win the contest
  • Solve as many problems as quickly as possible.
• How can you win?
  • Each time you solve a problem you get a point.
  • The team with the most points wins.
• But this leads to ties, so the first tie breaker is
  • Each minute you use to solve a problem you get a penalty point.
  • If you submit an incorrect solution, you will be charged 20 penalty points
    • BUT only if you eventually solve that problem.
• Take a look at The 2019 ECNA Programming Contest Results.
• Environment?
  • Usually linux for the big competitions
  • Windows for the smaller ones.
  • Usually C++ and Java, but python is slowly being added.
• Incorrect Submissions: Some form of
  • Doesn't compile
  • Doesn't run (crash)
  • Incorrect output (formatting error)
  • Wrong Answer (logic error)
  • Too Much Time (algorithm error)
• I use kattis for practice.
• If you want to participate in practice/contest
  • Get a kattis account.
  • Or refresh your kattis account.
  • Send me an email of your kattis name.
• Contests
  • ICPC ECNA - ? no details yet.
  • CCSC Eastern 10/22 - 10/23
• Let's take a look at a problem
  • All about that base on Kattis.
• Read the problem
  • Notice the detailed description of
    • The problem
    • The input
    • The output
• By the way
  • All input will be from standard in
  • All output will be to standard out.
  • No prompting or files.
• Diff is used to judge the submission, so output must be exact.
• Look at the stats for the program.
• How would you solve this program
  • Do you know what to do?
  • Do you see any special cases?
  • Let's work on a design.
• Let's solve it.