Is the local contest an individual or team event?

Students participating in the local contest will compete as INDIVIDUALS. The top scorers will be grouped together to form the best possible teams. There will be two teams of three students each.

I want to participate, but what if I can't make October 3rd?

You really want to win this contest and qualify yourself for the regional contest teams, but you've got a previous engagement on Saturday. Don't worry, you may not be completely out of luck! If there is enough demand, we will run an early version of the contest on Friday evening, just for those contestants in your situation. Please register for the contest anyway, and put as a note that you prefer to compete on Friday evening instead.

Can I bring notes/books to the contest?

Yes. You can bring textbooks, notes, printouts of code, and any other written material you want. However, you may NOT bring any magnetic, optical, or flash media. In other words, you will have to MANUALLY TYPE into the computer any code that you use in your solutions (i.e. code that has been entered and/or compiled before the contest begins may NOT be used). You MAY NOT use any electronic devices (ie. calculators, laptops), since you will have a fairly sophisticated "calculator" sitting in front of you. You also MAY NOT browse the web and download code. At the Regional contest, all you'll have is a PC plus any printouts/books/notes that you carry with yourself.

What programming languages and platforms will be supported?

You may submit solutions to the contest problems in C, C++, or Java. The solution to any one problem must be fully contained within a single source file. The contest judge will be compiling and testing your solutions on a Linux system using gcc/g++ version 4.1 (or later) and Java version 1.5 (or later), so be sure your code compiles and runs on that environment!!!

At last year's regional contest and world finals, the programming environment consisted of Fedora Core 4 with all standard editors and compilers as well as some optional IDEs (i.e. Eclipse). It would be great if we could replicate these conditions here at Stanford for the local contest, but we will have to make do with what we have.

Contest problems are designed so that input data is read as text from standard in (console), and text output is written to standard out. Solutions are to be submitted as source code to the judge via a web interface, so that the platform you are working on ultimately does not matter. The Gates B02 contains mainly PC systems, so contestants not familiar with programming on Windows may wish to "ssh" onto one of Stanfords UNIX computing environments (myth, bramble, hedge, etc.) to compose and compile their code there. Students with CS accounts are encouraged to work from the nearby PUP cluster. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with these machines BEFORE the contest so that you are comfortable with editing and compiling code on the contest machines. If you're using a Windows machine, but wish to edit and test your code in a UNIX environment, consider using the VNC utility for running remote XWindows sessions.

How many problems will there be?

We haven't decided yet. The problems and solutions this year are still being developed. There will most likely be 6 to 8 problems.

What about scoring?

Scoring for this contest is based on the number of correctly solved problems submitted during the 4 hour time period. There will be no credit for partial solutions. Details of the judging procedure are as follows: