2009 Conference April 3 & 4

 

 

Programming Contest

PACISE 2009
April 4th, 8:30 - 11:30 PM


1. Registration

The contest consists of teams of at most three members (and an alternate) from each institution. Team members and alternates must be undergraduate students enrolled at the university being represented. To be considered for acceptance to the contest, each team must submit registration form no later than March 17, 2009.

Registration is limited to 50 teams. The first three teams from the same school are accepted upon application. Additional teams will be accepted if there is room.

Download and complete the registration form (with some browsers you may need to right-click on the link to download the form file), send or email the form to Dr. Conlon.

2. The Contest: Problems, Languages and Environment

All the teams are presented with a set of problems to solve. Problems are selected from domains such as mathematics, computer science, cryptology, logic, and business. Students may program in C, C++, and Java. Visual BASIC and Javascript are not available. Please note that the languages of instruction at SRU are C++ and Java. Users of other languages must be aware that proctors may not be able to assist with problems of using those languages.

All problems will require input and output to be in text form. Programs must read data from standard input (the keyboard), and access to data files will be via I/O redirection from the command line. Programs must not open any files! You will be supplied with a set of test data for each problem. Programs will be judged with official data files in the specified format.
Each team will be assigned a workstation accessing Linux through an X-server. We will use RockTtest, a graphical contest environment, to automate common contest procedures. Standard Unix tools will be available as well. SRU students and professors will be present to assist teams with the mechanics of editing, compiling, and running programs.

Our goal is to create the fairest possible environment for our competitors. By creating our own friendly environment, RockTest, program development is simplified, yet no team finds itself using an environment familiar to other teams but not to them. We have chosen to use a Unix/Linux compute server so that all teams are using the same computer, providing the same computing power to all competitors. The combination of the RockTest environment with Unix/Linux enables us to offer a wide variety of programming languages without the need for judges to jump between different environments to judge programs written in different languages.

3. Synopsis of Official Rules

Competition rules are modeled after the rules from the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Competition.

  • Three members per team.
  • One computer workstation per team.

  • Electronic aids and media are not permitted: no disks, USB memory keys, laptop computers, palmtop computers, calculators, or cell phones. You may use the calculator program on your workstation.

  • You may bring printed documentation, such as texts, manuals, and printouts.

  • Contestants may not leave the contest area during the contest period.

  • Advisors are not permitted in the contest area during the contest period.

  • Unless a problem-statement indicates otherwise, only output will be graded.

  • There will be a 15-minute time-penalty for each submitted program which the judges rule incorrect.

  • Winner will be determined first by the number of correct solutions, and secondly by the submission time of the last correct solution, after addition of time-penalties.

  • 4. Advisors

    Advisors are invited to the show-up and practice session, but must leave the contest area upon start of the contest, approximately at 8:30 AM. Advisors are welcome to attend presentations in PACISE 2009 conference in the same building.

    5. Further Information

    For further information on the competition, contact the Dr. Conlon via email.

     

    Site By: Michelle Brown