Speaker Information

• Brian Dean - Brian Dean received his PhD from MIT in 2005 and is currently Professor and Chair of the computer science division in the Clemson University School of Computing. He also directs the USACO, which promotes algorithmic problem-solving at the high-school level and trains the team of top high-school computing students fielded by the USA at the International Olympiad in Informatics.
• Jonathon Paulson - Jonathan has been a USACO coach since 2014. He started competitive programming in 2009 with ACM-ICPC at Carnegie Mellon; his team placed 11th in ICPC 2013. He placed 7th in Google Code Jam 2013 and 3rd in Advent of Code 2019. Here is his competitive programming YouTube channel. He works as a software engineer at Jump Trading.
• Schedule:
  • 9:00-10:00 / Brian Dean - Background on USACO and his current research at the intersection of algorithmic computer science, game theory, AI, and biomedical applications.
  • 10:00-11:00 / Jonathan Paulson - Careers in computer science and current big areas in the field.
• Link to the Zoom Webinar that hosts the speaker event: https://go.teamscode.org/webinar

General Rules

• Only teams with only middle or high school students (rising 6th - senior) are eligible for prizes, however everyone (college students, workers) is welcome to compete.
• Each team may have up to 4 people. Team members may not receive any help from anyone outside of their team.
• Teams may use multiple computers and submit answers in multiple languages.
• Pre-written code and online reference guides are allowed (Essentially internet is allowed as long as you’re not asking people how to solve our problem).
• There are three divisions: Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced. We expect each division will be interesting for participants of the following skill levels:
  • The novice division is intended for students who know programming but have not started or have just started competitive programming:
    • Taking or have taken APCS
    • USACO Bronze-Silver
    • 0 - 1300 Codeforces rating
  • The intermediate division is intended for students with some competitive programming experience:
    • USACO Silver to Gold
    • 1000 - 1800 Codeforces rating
  • The advanced division is intended for anyone who is confident in their competitive programming ability:
    • USACO Gold and above
    • 1600+ Codeforces rating
• Contest page https://contest.teamscode.org
• Join our discord server here: https://go.teamscode.org/discord for important contest announcements or if you have any questions.
• Try more problems from the last contest:
  • https://codeforces.com/gym/103241
  • You will need to make a codeforces account: https://codeforces.com/register

Problem Format

• Description: an overview of the problem.
• Input Format: specifies how the input will be formatted, including constraints on the size of parameters. (constraints may be stated in the Description).
• Output Format: specifies how the output should be formatted - if you don’t follow this format exactly, your answer will most likely be marked as incorrect.
• Sample Input: provides a sample input to help you test your code.
• Sample Output: provides the expected output to the sample input.
• Sample Explanation: provides an explanation of how the sample output was obtained from the sample input.

Submitting Solutions

• Allowed Languages: C++, C, Java, Python 2, Python 3
• Solutions will be submitted through the contest page listed above. The code for each problem should be copy-pasted into the box that appears after clicking “Submit Code”.
• For Java submissions, the class name of your main function must be Main.
• The file size containing your code must not exceed 50 KB.
• Default Constraints
  • Note that constraints may vary depending on the problem.
  • Time Limit: Your program must run in under 2,000 ms (2 seconds) for C and C++, under 4,000 ms (4 seconds) for Java, and under 8,000 ms (8 seconds) for Python. Time limits for each language may be different if specified in a problem.
  • Memory Limit: The program's memory must not exceed 256 MB
• Use Standard Input in your code. This means that test cases are directly typed into the console. Here’s an example for each of the allowed languages:
  Java: Scanner(System.in) C++: cin>> Python: input() C: scanf()
• Use Standard Output in your code. This means that the output directly prints to the console. Here’s what standard output looks like for each of the languages:
  Java: System.out.println() C++: cout<< Python: print() C: printf()

Scoring

Problem Difficulty

• There are ~10 total problems in ascending order of difficulty.

Problem Points

• All problems are each worth 100 points. Each problem has some number of tests (usually 10 or 20). Sample test is worth 0 point. If you solve X non-sample tests correctly for a problem with Y non-sample tests, you get (X/Y * 100) points.
• Note that each test may have multiple test cases where each test case must be solved correctly to get points for the test.
• Output must match exactly with expected output to receive points for the test case - there is no partial credit.

Problem Tests

• The first test is always the sample given in the problem.
• Some problems will have explicitly stated subtasks. For example, a problem with 10 tests may have tests 1-5 with N<=10 and tests 6-10 with N<=100.

Ties

• Ties will be broken by the timestamp on the last submission that increases your total score.

Prizes

• $4500+ in Amazon gift cards, raffle prizes, and Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition.
• The top 5 scoring teams from the advanced division, top 3 from the intermediate division, and top 1 from the novice division will win amazon gift cards as well as a Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition. The exact amounts each team member will win is listed here:
  Advanced
  • 1st: $100 each
  • 2nd: $75 each
  • 3rd: $50 each
  • 4th: $25 each
  • 5th: $10 each
  Intermediate
  • 1st: $40 each
  • 2nd: $20 each
  • 3rd: $10 each
  Novice
  • 1st: $20 each
  Members from the top team in the advanced division will receive custom TeamsCode t-shirts.
• Everyone in your team will earn one raffle ticket once you submit your first solution.
• Raffle prizes will be drawn in the last half hour of the contest using a random number generator - we will email those selected for shipment details immediately following the contest.
• Raffle prize list:
  • Logitech G502
  • Spotify $30 Gift Card
  • Netflix $30 Gift Card
  • Discord Nitro
  • Rotring 800