Second BU ACM Contest
March 9th, 2006
sponsored by
March 9th, 2006
sponsored by
Message from the contest committee chair
As the 9th approached, there was a great deal of doubt surrounding the March contest. How difficult would the problems be? What were the prizes going to be? Were there any bugs lurking in the submission/testing system, waiting to ruin the contest? Would anybody show up since spring break was only 24 hours away? And who the hell was in charge of flyering and the website?
Despite these doubts, the contest went very well -- many competitors defeated more than half of the problems. Plus, there was the extra bonus of an upset in the last ten minutes of the contest when Robert Frank solved Problem 5 and jumped to first place, only to have Daniel Benamy reclaim first place minutes later. The March contest far surpassed my expectations. The registration process went very smoothly (thanks to our improved contest software) and we only started ten minutes late this time. All correct submissions were accepted and all incorrect submissions were rejected. And many people stayed after the contest for the chapter meeting.
The major "gotcha" that tripped up many competitors was the issue of whitespace. Many competitors assumed that words and numbers would only be separated by spaces, only to have their submissions crash or print out wrong answers when the input contained tabs and newlines. Incidentally, the same issue tripped up Binghamton University's ACM ICPC team two years ago at regionals. Although the occurrence of tabs and newlines in the input is in keeping with the norms of the ACM ICPC, I feel it was somewhat deceptive that the problem statements did not explicitly state that tabs and newlines could occur in between words and numbers. Thus, I will soon add a section to the contest FAQ about whitespace issues. Also, in future contests, problem statements will contain an explicit warning if the input might contain tabs or newlines.
Special thanks to Avery Zycherman and Microsoft for furnishing the prize money and the food and beverage.
-Andrew Paroski
Contest Standings
Rank |
Name |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Total Time |
Problems Solved |
| 1 |
Daniel Benamy |
11:25 |
33:33 |
51:20 |
- |
1:57:20 |
3:33:38 |
4 |
| 2 |
Robert Frank |
9:18 |
1:04:25 |
51:59 | - |
1:51:55 |
3:57:37 |
4 |
| * |
Nicholas Maliwacki |
8:32 |
32:16 |
1:13:20 |
- |
- |
1:54:08 |
3 |
| 3 |
Marc Seicol |
36:22 |
30:12 |
- |
1:16:04 |
- |
2:22:38 |
3 |
| 4 |
Timothy Reilly |
13:00 |
1:25:31 |
48:17 |
- |
- |
2:26:48 |
3 |
| 5 |
Yash Lodha |
1:22:56 |
1:16:26 |
- |
1:00:44 |
- |
3:40:06 |
3 |
| 6 |
Matt McDonald |
16:10 |
39:17 |
- |
- |
- |
55:27 |
2 |
| 7 |
Kevin Briggs |
53:34 |
1:15:47 |
- |
- |
- |
2:09:21 |
2 |
| 8 |
Manuel GarciaDuque |
1:01:05 |
1:30:30 |
- |
- |
- |
2:31:35 | 2 |
| 9 |
Ari Fuchs |
37:25 |
1:56:44 |
- |
- |
- |
2:34:09 |
2 |
Honorable Mention
| Dan Copel Hardikshah Nadir Seha Islam Jason Loew James McGraw |
* Competitors who were not eligible for prizes were not ranked
Problem Statements
Problem 1 - Problem 2 - Problem 3 - Problem 4 - Problem 5
Testcases
There is a folder of testcases for each problem. The input files are labelled "1.input", "2.input", etc. and their corresponding output files are labelled "1.output", "2.output", etc.
Problem 1 - Problem 2 - Problem 3 - Problem 4 - Problem 5
Solutions
All the solutions provided are in C++.
Problem 1 - Problem 2 - Problem 3 - Problem 4 - Problem 5
Submissions
For the purpose of anonymity, submissons have been posted by ID number rather than by name.
2730 - 3861 - 4312 - 4823 - 5387 - 5646 - 5888 - 6245 - 6350 - 7397 - 7585 - 8000 - 8777 - 9332
Summary
| Contest Number |
BU2 |
| Date |
March 9th, 2006 |
| Location | Binghamton University, Academic A, Room G04 |
| Sponsors | Microsoft |
| Number of problems |
5 |
| Number of competitors |
15 |
| Registration time |
6:25 PM |
| Contest start time |
6:40 PM |
| Contest end time |
8:40 PM |
| Supported Languages |
C/C++, Java, and C# |
| Timeout period |
30 seconds |
| Cash Prizes |
First Prize $70, Second Prize $50, Third Prize $30 |
| Other Prizes |
Video game for X-box or PC |
| Food and beverage |
Two sheet pizzas from Nirchi's,
bottled watter, cans of soda (coke, diet coke, sprite, and mellow yellow), and juice boxes (fruit punch and grape) |
| Total number of correct submissions |
28 |