UAB-HSPC
Official Rules
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UAB-HSPC |
The following categories represent the rules that will be used during the administration of the contest. Please contact the organizers if clarification is desired on any rule. All of the rules will be covered in the lunch session prior to the actual competition period.
Food and drink are not allowed in the labs. There will not be an official break, but you may certainly leave the contest area to go to the restroom or to get a drink.
Each student will be assigned a computer in one of the UAB CIS labs. You may use only the assigned machine to solve the problems - you may not use your own laptop.
The Internet will be turned off in the labs. You may not search the web or use the Internet in any other way in order to obtain hints or tips.
While in the lab, all cell phones and pagers must be turned off. iPods, and MP3 players are not allowed to be used during the competition. In general, any disturbance that causes other contestants to lose their concentration will be handled by the lab proctors.
You may not use a wireless device to contact or talk to anyone during the contest period.
The UAB CIS labs are equipped with the following computers and software:
All lab machines are Dell Optiplex GX745s and 620s (2.00GB RAM, various speeds, some dual core) all running service pack 2 of Windows XP
Eclipse version 3.3.1 for Java 5.0
Microsoft .NET 2005 version 8.0.50727.762 for C++ and C#
The competition is open to all Alabama high school students (public, private, or home schools).
A high school student is defined to be any student currently enrolled in grades 9-12.
Seniors who will graduate in 2008 are welcome to participate.
There is an individual contest (first 15 places awarded). A team contest is also provided for those schools having three or more participating students (first 3 places awarded).
The contest will consist of 6 problems to be solved over a 3 hour period. The set of problems will span various levels of difficulty.
Solutions to the problems must be coded in Java, C#, or C++. No other languages are allowed.
You are allowed to bring a total of two books to the contest. These must be "traditional" books - you may not compose your own book or set of notes unless they are in a binder.
You are NOT allowed to bring any software or disks into the lab.
If you need a piece of paper, you may ask the lab proctor for blank paper.
Any question should be submitted to the judges in writing.
Each clarification question will be considered and acknowledged, but the judges reserve the right to not answer any question that may reveal the answer. The question and its answer may be provided to all contestants if it seems relevant.
Your programs must not do any file input or output. All contest input will come from stdin -- that is, the keyboard, and all output must go to stdout -- that is, to the screen.
Performance is a criteria for judging if a solution is correct. Your program must finish and deliver a correct answer within one minute in order to be considered correct. For some of the problems there may exist a solution that might work, but is so inefficient that it will take longer than a minute to finish.
You may work on the problems in any order, and submit them in any order.
There will not be any third party libraries provided for you (e.g., the Keyboard class in Java). Only standard libraries will be provided, but you may type in any support libraries on your own and submit them as part of your solution.
The judges' decisions are final.
Submission System: A video demonstration of the new submission system is available here.
After a problem is judged, one of the following responses will be returned to the contestant: Correct Incorrect Output Incorrect Output Format Incomplete Output Failed Test Case Compiler Error Run-time Error Run Time Limit Exceeded
A contestant may submit a program for judging as many times as they wish. If a program is judged to be incorrect, the contestant may resubmit later.