COMCON Programming Contests

Richard Lamb
Computer Department Chair
Cranbrook Schools
Bloomfield Hills, MI
(248) 645-3694
www.richlamb.com
rlamb@cranbrook.edu

Contests are held about five times per school year, usually about once a month. The contests are free; there is no fee of any kind. While coming to the contest site is encouraged, teams may participate over the internet: there is NO TRAVEL required.

The contest consists of four programs. As many of these as possible are to be solved by a team (up to four people) using one computer within a two hour limit. Schools can compete alone or against other schools; to compete against other schools successful program solutions must be emailed (see address below).

Programs are worth 100 points each. There is a time penalty of one point for every five minutes of elapsed time before a program is solved. A "bad run", that is a program that does not give the correct output (or that crashes or fails to run properly) is an additional ten point penalty. See the "additional scoring" notes below.

A submission is made with the team’s flash drive or disk, indicating the team name, program number, and the language used. (If a school has more than one team, the designation "A team", "B team", etc. is also included). The judges will fill in the time the program was submitted. The program submission is named PROGRAM1, PROGRAM2, etc. and has an extension indicating the language in which it is written: .CPP, .perl, .java, etc. The programs may be submitted in any order. Because COMCONs are fundamentally contests of speed, a good strategy is to submit the easiest program first.

The programs are tested by running the program, which opens the test data file on the C: drive or some other location (C:\PROGRAM1.DAT, C:\PROGRAM2.DAT, etc.). Programs must complete execution and terminate within 60 seconds. Judges will run the program using test data, determine successful runs by visual inspection of the output, and will report the results as soon as possible.

If a program does not work with the test data, a bad run will be noted, and a comment will be given to the team indicating the general nature of the problem.

A scoreboard will indicate what teams have solved which programs, and the relative standings of the meet.

The team with the highest score wins, with the exception that a team that solves more total programs than another wins, regardless of time.

The decisions of the judges are final.

Questions? Please email Rich Lamb: Rlamb@cranbrook.edu

Additional Scoring Notes

The contest runs for two hours. There are four problems in each contest. A team may have one or more students to a maximum of four. Regardless of the number of team numbers, a team may only use one computer. Programs may be submitted in any order. Because the contest is largely one of speed, it is a good strategy to submit the easiest program first.

Here is an example of scoring: If I begin a contest at 4:00 and turn in my first problem say at 4:17, that means I have used 3 five-minute time blocks (4:00 to 4:05, 4:05 to 4:10, and the next two minutes, which also counts as a five-minute block). Thus, I have three points of time against me, so I score a 97 (100 - 3) for the first problem.

Now let's say that my second correct problem comes in at 4:31. The clock has been ticking since 4:00, so I have 7 points against me, and I score a 93 (1- 7) for this second problem.

Each time I have a "bad run" (the program crashes, takes more than one minute to execute, or gives the wrong output), I receive a ten point penalty whether or not I subsequently successfully complete that problem. (Penalties hurt!)

So, for example, let's say I submitted program 3 at 4:17, then program 2 right after, but it did not work, and then I submitted program 1 at 4:31. My score would be 97 + 93 - 10 = 180. Then at 5:01 I correctly submit program 2, and make no more submissions. My final score is 97 + 93 + 89 - 10 = 269.