Table Of Contents
Introduction to SPCContest OperationRules of the Contest
Table Of Contents
Introduction to SPC
Contest Operation
Rules of the Contest
Since 1976, the ACM headquarter at USA has sponsored the annual ACM Scholastic Programming Contest. In each year, each of the ACM administrative regionals holds a regional competition, and the winners of the regional competitions participates in a final competition usually held in USA to compete for the final champion. Since 1991, the ACM Hong Kong Chapter has been organizing a local contest in Hong Kong, following the ACM contests in terms of aims, format, and style. This guide is to let the contestants know more details about the contest.
Call for Participation:
A team of three students will be invited from each of the tertiary institutes in Hong Kong---the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the City University of Hong Kong, Lingnan College, Baptist Univeristy, Polytechnic University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of Hong Kong. Each institute can only register one team for the programming contest.
Contest information is mailed to the participated institutes. The information contains a preliminary contest schedule, team registration forms, and an instruction for registration. Please follow the instruction to return any required document or information.
On-site Registration and System Certification
During check-in time on the contest day, teams are assigned a System Certification time. During this time, each team is required to check the provided equipment in the Contestant Area and to report any problem. Then, the system staff verifies the equipment again to make sure all teams will start with the same initial condition.
Contest Environment
Each team will be provided one personal computers and a printer. The personal computers will be running Mircorsoft Windows 3.1. The programming language of the contest is Microsoft Visual C++ 1.52. All teams will have the same equipment. Blank floppies and printing paper are provided.
Besides many helpers, there are several key contest personnel at the site. The director is responsible for all the management of the contest. He makes final decisions on every issue during the contest. The head judge handles all clarification requests from the contestants, and has a final judgement on the correctness of the submitted solutions. All responses to the contestants must go through the head judge. Several judges help the head judge to test the submitted solutions, and submit comments on the correctness of the solutions to the head judge.
The contest site consists of three regions: the Contestant Area, the Gallery, and the Judging Area. Each team has a working area in the Contestant Area. The Judging Area is for the head judge and the judges. It is totally isolated from the Contestant Area. The Gallery is an area where spectators and team sponsors can observe the progress of the contest.
Each team will be provided with a table to place the equipment, and a table for working and discussion. Teams areas are as isolated as possible. Two stations, the Dispatch Station and the System Support Station are located in the Contestant Area. The Dispatch Station is the communication channel between contestants and the judges. The System Support Station provides technical support to make sure all equipment used by the contestants works properly.
The Contest
Half an hour before the contest starts, the teams enter the Contestant Area and are given the last minutes instructions. System Certification is also performed at this time. The head judge then passes out the contest problems in sealed envelopes. When the head judge announces that the contest starts, team members can open the envelopes and start programming. A copy of the problem set is posted in the Gallery and extra copies are handed out to team sponsors.
Contest operations are designed to maximally support the contestants in the Contestant Area and the judges in the Judging Area. The flow of information at the site is illustrated in the following diagram.
All interaction between teams and judges are handled by the Dispatch Station. Teams interact with the contest staff in three ways: submitting solutions, requesting problem clarification, and reporting system malfunctions.
The mechanism for submitting a solution is via the Run Envelope. A floppy diskette is placed in the envelope along with any other information requested by the problem statement. It is turned into the Dispatch Station where it is stamped with the elapsed time in hours and minutes since the beginning of the contest and is then carried by contest staff to the Judging Area for judging. When the submitted solution is accepted, a Solution Receipt is returned to the team. If the solution is rejected, the solution is returned in the Run Envelope with a diagnostic comment, such as run- time error, time-limit exceeded, and wrong answer.
To request problem clarification, a form called the Clarification Request is used to pass information between a team and the judges. The head judge decides how to respond and whether to return the response to all teams or just the team making the request. Generally, no response will be made unless there is an anomaly in the program statement or any supplied test data. These forms are obtained from and turned in to the Dispatch Station.
A System Fault Report is used to report and obtain help from the System Support Station. This mechanism permits tracking of system problems and guarantees that problems are solved in a timely manner on a first-come first-served basis.
Periodically, intermediate results are posted in the Contestant Area and the Gallery. However, no results are posted during the last hour of the contest to provide some suspense until the Awards Banquet.
Awards Banquet
The final result is announced at a banquet which is held immediately after the contest. Prizes are presented to the champion team. Every contestant is awarded a Certificate of Achievement for participating in the contest.
Six problems will be given and the maximum contest time is four hours. So far as possible, problems will avoid dependence on detailed knowledge of a particular application area. Clarification of the problems may be posed during the contest. Problems are written in English. All clarification requests must be expressed in English. Contestants may bring resource materials such as books, manuals, program listings, and non-programmable calculators. Contestants must not bring any machine-readable versions of software or data, computers, and computer terminals. All calculators should be registered and examined by one of the judges. The head judge is solely responsible for distinguishing calculators from computers.
Teams must not accept help or advice on the problems from anyone. The contest judges will clarify problem statements as needed, and the host site staff may advise on system-related problems, such as explaining system error messages.
Contest judges will not invite questions about the problems. A contestant may submit a written claim of ambiguity or error in a problem statement by submitting a Clarification Request. If the head judge agrees that an ambiguity or error exists, a problem clarification will be issued to all contestants.
Solutions to problems are submitted for judging in a Run Envelope. Each submission is then judged as accepted or rejected. Accepted submissions will be retained and a receipt indicating acceptance will be returned to the team. Rejected submissions will be marked:
syntax error
run-time error
time-limit exceeded
wrong answer
inaccurate answer
failed test case
too little/much output
wrong output format
check clarifications
and then will be returned to the team. Rejection reasons are not guaranteed to be complete nor sufficient to identify the actual error. Normally, only the first observed error will be noted.
Announcement for accepted submissions will be suspended during the last hour of the contest to keep the final results secret. When this is done, a general announcement to that effect will be made.
While the contest is scheduled to last for four hours, the director and the head judge have the authority to shorten or lengthen the contest in the event of unexpected difficulties. Should the contest duration be altered, every attempt will be made to notify contestants in a timely and uniform manner.
A team may be disqualified by the contest director for any activity that jeopardizes the contest, such as dislodging power extension cords or distractive talking.
The judges will be solely responsible for determining the correctness of submitted solutions. The director and the head judge are responsible for determining the winners of the contest. They are empowered to adjust for or adjudicate unforeseen events and conditions. Their decisions are final.
Teams are ranked according to the most problems solved. Among teams solving the same number of problems, teams are ranked by the least total time. The total time is the sum of the time consumed for each solved problem. The time consumed for a solved problem is the time in minutes from the beginning of the contest to the accepted submission, plus 15 minutes for each rejected submission. There is no time consumed for a problem that is not solved. Only one correct solution will be accepted for any one problem from a single team.