NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY 2007 INVITATIONAL PROGRAMMING COMPETITION September 29, 2007 10:00 am - 10:30 am (Registration) 10:30 am - 1:00 pm (Competition) Contest Registrar: New Mexico State University's local student chapter of the ACM Judges: NMSU Faculty and Graduate Students ======================================================================= COMPETITION RULES ======================================================================= MISSION AND ORGANIZATION: The New Mexico State University's (NMSU) Collegiate Programming Competition is an activity of the NMSU student chapter of the ACM that provides college students with an opportunity to demonstrate and sharpen their problem solving and computing skills. This year we will be inviting University of Texas at El Paso and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. TEAM COMPOSITION: 1. Each team should consist of two or three "contestants". 2. Each contestant must be a student enrolled in a degree program at NMSU, or an invited institution. 3. A team is not eligible to compete in the competition until they have registered for the competition, been accepted, and received the Competition Rules. 4. Contestant eligibility is determined DURING the academic term in which the competition will take place. Any questions of eligibility should be posed to the Contest Director or the Contest Coordinator. 5. Eligibility will be determined in the same way as for the ACM regional competition. Check the following url for the eligibility decision tree: http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Regionals/EligibilityDecisionTree2007.pdf This information can also be found on the NMSU ACM website: http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~acm ACCOUNTS: 1. Teams will be given new accounts with identical environments. Teams should change their passwords as soon as they get on. CONDUCT OF THE COMPETITION: 1. At least five problems will be posed. Problems will avoid dependence on the use of a particular computer system, detailed knowledge of a particular application area, or detailed knowledge of a particular language. All problem solutions must be submitted in Java, C, or C++. Be careful using Java or C++. Not all features of these languages are gauranteed to be supported. e.g. C++ STL 2. Problems will be posed in English. During the competition, all communications with contest officials must be in English. 3. Contestants may bring any hard-copy resource materials such as books, manuals, and program listings. Contestants may not bring their own computers, computer terminals or calculators. 4. Solutions to problems submitted for judging are called runs. Each run is judged as accepted or rejected, and the team is notified of the results. Rejected runs will be marked with one of the following: *run-time error *time-limit exceeded *wrong answer *presentation error Rejection comments are not guaranteed to be complete nor sufficient to identify the actual error. Normally, only the first observed error will be noted. 5. Notification of accepted runs will be suspended at the appropriate time to keep the final results secret. A general announcement to that effect will be made during the competition. Notification of rejected runs will continue until the end of the contest. 6. A contestant may submit a claim of ambiguity or error in a problem statement by submitting a clarificatin request. If the Judges agree that an ambiguity or error exists, a clarification will be issued to all contestants. 7. Contestants are not to converse with anyone except members oftheir team and personnel designated by the Contest Director. Systems support staff may advise contestants on system-related problems such as explaining system error messages. 8. While the competition is scheduled for two and a half hours, the Contest Director has the authority to lengthen the competition in the event of unforeseen difficulties. Should the competition duration be altered, every attempt will be made to notify contestants in a timely and uniform manner. 9. A team may be disqualified by the Contest Director for any activity that jeopardizes the Competition Rules such as dislodging extension cords, unauthorized modification of competition materials or distractive behavior. SCORING THE CONTEST: 1. The Contest Judges are solely responsible for determining the correctness of the submitted runs. In consultation with the Contest Judges, the Contest Director is responsible for determining the winners of the Competition. They are empowered to adjust for or adjucate unforseen events and conditions, and their decisions are final. 2. Teams are ranked according to the most problems solved. Teams who solve the same number of problems are ranked by least total time. The total time is the sum of the time consumed for each problem solved. The time consumed for a solved problem is the time elapsed from the beginning of the competition to the submittal of the accepted run plus 20 minutes for each rejected run. There is no time consumed for a problem that is not solved. CONTEST ENVIRONMENT: 1. The available languages are C, C++ and Java. The environment will be the Unix X-windowing system running under Linux. Compilers will be gcc, g++ and javac. Contestants should submit solutions in the manner specified during registration. If you are using C++, your program should simply take input from standard input and send its output to standard output. If you are using java, the file name and your "main" class name should be prob. For example, for problem 2 by team 3, the file name and class name should be prob23. The judges will run your program by entering: java prob23 with the input file of their choice. 2. Each team will have a single computer or Xterm and have access to a printer. All team members have equivalent or comparable computing equipment. COMPETITION LOCATION AND ATTENDANCE: 1. The NMSU 2007 Invitational Programming Competition will be held on Saturday, September 29, 2007. The competition will take place on the NMSU campus in Science Hall, room 118, from 10:00pm - 2:00pm. Maps to NMSU and available parking will be sent to invited institutions. 2. NMSU will provide pizza and drinks to all invited contestants and their sponsors. Pizza and drinks will be served following the competition. Please contact the NMSU ACM for questions - acm@cs.nmsu.edu ====================================================================== ======================================================================