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General Orientation
The objective of the contest is straightforward—write programs that solve as many of the problems as you can in the five hours allotted.
The official Website for the East Central North America Region of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is: acm.ashland.edu.
The East Central North America Regional Programming Contest (ECNA RPC) is run under the auspices of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC).
- ACM ICPC rules apply. They can be found on their website: icpc.baylor.edu. These rules determine who can participate in the regional, among other things.
- Winners of the regional contests advance to the Finals. Finals are usually held sometime between February and May immediately following the Regional.
- Coaches register teams (see Registration topic that follows). By registering a team, the coach is certifying that the individual team members qualify per the ACM ICPC rules. The team coach may be a faculty member or another person (for example, a graduate student who has participated in a prior contest).
Your coach shall add you to a team. After your coach adds you to a team, you shall receive an email message within 2 hours of being added, with instructions on how to add your details to your personal information page. The email message is from "noreply@icpc.baylor.edu", so please watch for it as it may sometimes go to your junk or spam folder. After you add your personal details and click "Save", your registration is complete.
All participants must register. No one may participate who has not completed the required information. Registration will close two weeks prior to the contest. No new teams will be accepted after that date. Team composition and all individual team member registration information should be completed in the ICPC system ONE WEEK PRIOR TO THE CONTEST.
At the contest, you will be provided with 1 terminal and 3 printed copies of the problem set. You will be able to print out listings (which are monitored) of the programs you develop during the contest. Other than those items, you must bring your own supplies.
Consider bringing:
- Scratch paper, note pads, or lined paper
- Pencils, pens, markers (more than one; pens run out of ink and pencils break)
- Rulers, protractors
- Kleenex (tissues come in handy when cleaning greasy hands or wiping away tears of defeat)
- Books, manuals, dictionaries (you will not have access to the Internet)
- Printed code (such as libraries or previously solved solutions)
Your team is permitted to bring human-readable resource materials (reference books, textbooks, code listings, printed, or written notes), blank paper, pencils and pens, and “lucky totems” if desired. There are no restrictions on the printed or written materials you may bring to the regional contest. (Note that the World Finals permits only a team-compiled notebook to be used for reference.)
You are not permitted to bring any electronic computing or communication devices or machine-readable material to the contest. This means no floppies/CDs/DVDs, USB devices, computers of any kind (desk, laptop, or tablet), mobile phones, PDAs, or calculators (including calculator watches -- use xcalc on the computer instead). Please leave these devices at home or locked in your car. Medical devices are naturally allowed, as are non-computing dictionary/translation devices.
We suggest you leave non-permitted items in your car or with your coach. Otherwise the Judges will collect any non-permitted items prior to the Contest, and they assume no liability for loss or damage. You may submit a question in advance if you are not sure about something you would like to bring.
You may write your programs in C, C++, or Java. Please ensure that your programs meet the requirements of the contest environment—this information is provided in the contest environment presentation and will be available at the contest.
When your team believes it has completed a program that solves the problem as specified, your team is to submit the program to the judges. The judges will compile the program and run it against confidential tests that the judges have prepared. If your program behaves as expected in every case, you will receive notice that your program has been accepted. Congratulations!
Helpful Hint: Each problem will include some test data and corresponding expected output in the specification. The test data included with the problem specification are not comprehensive—your team should test your program with both the provided test data and with other tests your team has developed. The tests the judges prepare will certainly be more thorough than the sample(s) provided. However, if your program does not provide the expected output with the provided sample data, it will certainly be rejected—every year, the judges get several submissions that fail with the sample data. This can be avoided by ensuring that your team uses the sample data as part of the test plan.
If your program is not accepted, you will receive one of the following five messages:
- Not executable: The program failed to compile or link. Did you follow the source code requirements? Did you name your source file correctly?
- Run-time error: The program aborted. Your team will be given the nature of the abort (for example, “Segmentation Fault,”) but no information about the location in the program or data that triggered the problem.
- Time Limit Exceeded: Your program did not terminate within 60 CPU seconds.
- Wrong Answer: Your program produced incorrect output for at least one of the judges’ test cases. No information about the nature of the error is provided.
- Presentation Error: Your program did not follow the output specifications. (Note that this message is no longer returned at the World Finals.)
The judges are only obligated to return the first error seen. For example, do not assume that a “Presentation Error” means that a “Wrong Answer” is not present.
Teams are ranked first by the total number of problems solved. If your team has solved more than any other at the end of the five hours, your team wins the contest!
Between teams that have solved the same number of problems, rankings are determined by the total time consumed. The time consumed is determined by adding the times for each problem. The time for each problem is determined by taking the time from the start of the contest to the submission time of the accepted solution, then adding a twenty minute penalty for each rejected submission of the problem. The lowest total time ranks highest.
Your team can be disqualified for behavior adverse to the contest. Some reasons for disqualification would be:
- Attempting to compromise the contest environment
- Using prohibited materials (machine-readable material, other computing devices, external network connections)
- Talking with people other than your teammates or contest staff
- Interfering with contest equipment, other teams, or contest staff
- Behaviour that distracts or interferes with the work of other teams
Disqualifications will be reported to ICPC Headquarters and further disciplinary action may also be taken. Disciplinary actions may include suspension of further participation in the ICPC by the student(s), team(s), or school in question for a period of time.