Rules
General
Contestants
Each contestant must be a middle or high school student (grades 6-12). However, the contestant does not necessarily have to be from Florida. There may be multiple contestants from one school. We may impose a maximum number of contestants per school in order to allow more schools to participate.
Conduct of the Tournament
- Five or more problems will be posed at the beginning of the contest.
- Contestants will be given set time to solve the problems. The Contest Coordinators have the power to extend the contest under unforeseen circumstances.
- Contestants will participate at their own locations using only one computer. In addition, contestants should not solicit help from others during the competition (except from the contest staff).
- Contestants may use any materials to the contest.
- Contestants may work on the problems in any order.
- A contestant may make submissions to the judges at any time during the contest. Judged runs are made on data created by the judges to test the correctness of the program. These are done on the judges’ computer. After a judged run, the contestant will receive only a message with one of the following responses from the judges:
- Correct/Accepted
- Compile-Time Error
- Run-Time Error
- Time Limit Exceeded
- Wrong Answer
- The judges will not entertain questions about any problem. If a contestant feels that a problem is stated ambiguously and requires clarification, s/he may submit a statement of ambiguity to the judges. The statement of ambiguity will be answered if the judges agree that a clarification is required. The statement and the answer will be provided to all teams if the judges deem it necessary. The judges may refuse to answer any statement of ambiguity.
- Contestants must not access the judging system in any way that is designed to maliciously degrade the performance of the system, or to disturb the work of the judges or other contestants. Contestants are expected to obey federal and state computer laws.
- Contestants may not discuss the contest problems with anybody except the contest staff.
- The Contest Coordinators have the power to deal with any infraction of the above rules through penalty or disqualification, at their discretion.
Series Scoring
You will get more points the higher overall rank you receive. Each contest you will receive points and the highest amount of points at the end of the season wins! The point breakdown is the following:
Contest Rank |
Points |
1 |
30 |
2 |
28 |
3 |
26 |
4 |
24 |
5 |
22 |
6 |
20 |
7 |
19 |
9 |
18 |
10 |
17 |
11 |
16 |
12 |
15 |
13 |
14 |
14 |
13 |
15 |
12 |
16 |
11 |
17 |
10 |
18 |
9 |
19 |
8 |
20 |
7 |
21 |
6 |
22 |
5 |
23 |
4 |
24 |
3 |
25 |
2 |
26+ |
1 |
ACM Style Scoring
The contestant which has had the most problems judged correct at the end of the contest is declared the winner. If more than one contestant has solved the same number of problems, the winner is the one with the fewest penalty points.
- Penalty points are assessed for solved problems.
- One penalty point is assessed for each minute from the beginning of the contest until the problem was solved.
- Twenty penalty points are assessed for each judged run except one “correct” submission (note that multiple correct submissions on a problem receive a penalty).
- No penalty points are assessed for any problem which was not solved.
- The Contest Coordinators reserve the right to adjust penalty points to allow for unforeseen circumstances.
- The score will be “frozen” in the final hour (meaning that score updates will not be publicly shown) in order to preserve suspense for the end of the competition.