ACM: Programming Contests

Acknoweledgements

The club and department thank The Lily Endowment and the Indiana State Center for Community Engagement for financial support of the annual programming contest. This support has allowed ISU to send a team to the ACM ICPC regional programming contest in Cincinnati every year since 2011.

Poster

See the poster that CS students presented to the Indiana state legislator in 2015 on one of ISU's days to present to the state legislators.

Local ICPC Competition Results

Each year a local contest is held (normally in October) at ISU to determine the team to be sent to Cincinnati. The rules are the same each year (see below). The following students have represented ISU at the regional contest in Cincinati.

• 2021 -
• 2020 - no contest
• 2019 - Beixi, Tyler, John, coached by Jeff, Muhammad, Ashwin
• 2018 - Calee, Robert, Andrew
• 2017 - did not compete
• 2016 - Ali, Lavanya, Nathan
• 2015 - Aaron, Lizhi, Chuan
• 2014 - Mark, Andy, Ali
• 2013 - Brian, Chinmai, Brandon, Jerald (alternate)
• 2012 - Adam, Troy, Matt
• 2011 -

Other Contests

• Presidential Medallion Programming Challenge - can you find the first first 1 billion primes in less than 1 minute?
• CCSC Midwest

ICPC Contest Resources

• ICPC - main page for the world competition.
• ACM-ICPC East Central NA Regional - our region (problems from 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013)
• Practice contests and problems from University of Chicago
• Previous ACM world finals problems (note - these are normally pretty tough, the local and regional contest problems are not all this tough)
• Practice problems on Kattis
• ACM-ICPC Live Archive has problems from past regional and world competitions, including an online judge to judge your submissions.
• UVa Online Judge has more practice problems to try, including also an online judge.
• 5783.cpp - a correct solution that works to solve Everyone out of the Pool. This is just so you can see an example of what one of these programs looks like.
• Teamwork in Programming Contests: 3 * 1 = 4 - hints and ideas about strategy during the competition.

Annual ISU Fall Programming Contest Rules

Local ISU contest   The contest takes place in late September or early October each fall in Root Hall rooms A-015 and A-017. Students must register in order to officially compete. An email with registration information is sent to the club (including all CS majors) ahead of time. If you do not register, you can still feel free to come to work on the problems, but you won't be able to officially submit your answers. Those participating should plan to arrive at least 15 minutes early to the contest. See http://cs.baylor.edu/~hamerly/icpc/qualifier_2018/ for more information/rules.

Past contest problems   The website for information about past year's contests (with problem statements and statistics on which were solved by the most people) are at the following links. Note that there are links to the problems; it would be good practice to try some of these problems, and submit them to the kattis server to make sure you have the correct solution. You should also try out other problems at the open kattis website

• 2018 - http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~hamerly/icpc/qualifier_2018/ (open version of contest which you can still try out)
• 2017 - http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~hamerly/icpc/qualifier_2017/
• 2016 - http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~hamerly/icpc/qualifier_2016/
• 2015 - http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~hamerly/icpc/qualifier_2015/
• 2014 - http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~hamerly/icpc/qualifier_2014/
• 2013 - http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~hamerly/icpc/qualifier_2013/

Regional contest in Cincinnati   The rules for eligibility for the regional contest are roughly the following (1) born in (current year - 23) or later, or (2) first began post-secondary studies in (current year - 4) or later, or (3) has earned at most 120 semester credits of university/college credits. If you don't satisy (1) or (2) but satisfy (3) and wish to be eligible to compete in the regional contest, let the ACM club faculty advisor know.

The top performing students at the local contest who are eligible for the regional contest can compete in the regional contest; the date is normally the last Saturday in October or the first or second Saturday in November.

Local Contest Rules/Procedures

• Anyone can compete in the local ISU contest.
• Contest is 5 hours long, with the date and time announced ahead of time.
• Contest will be run on the website kattis.com. We will all gather in the unix lab during the contest to work on the problems. When the contest starts, you will be given 5-10 problems of varying difficulties. Your score is determined by how many of these are solved within the 5 hours. This will be taken care of automatically on the kattis website.
• The team coach/judge is normally a CS faculty member or recent graduate. Those who have served as coaches in the past include Steve Baker, Chinmai Basavaraj, Brandon Donham, and Jeff Kinne.
• Teams are not allowed. Each person solves all problems on their own.
• Solutions must be in C, C++, or Java. Solutons must be EXACTLY correct - give the same exact output on all possible inputs (some example input/output pairs are given in the statement for each problem).
• Any reasonable source of information can be used (e.g., looking up how to use library functions online, or checking some code you have done before). You may not explicitly search for the exact problem that is being asked to solve.
• Whichever students are sent to the regional competition, the trip will be free to the students, including staying overnight Friday night in Cincinnati.