This document contains detailed rules for IPSC 2010, written in a human readable way.
The IPSC is an online problem solving contest for teams consisting of up to three people.
Several problems will be published at the beginning of the competition. Each problem consists of a problem description and two input data sets. To solve a problem you will have to compute correct output data for the given input data sets. Usually this means that you will write a program that solves the problem, but you may produce the output by hand or in any other way. Only the correctness of your output data will be judged.
The contest will take place from June 6, noon CEST to June 6, 5:00 pm CEST. The contest takes 5 hours.
Each team willing to participate must register in order to be allowed to participate. Registration will be open until the end of the contest. (New registrations during the contest will be processed at least once every 15 minutes.) Registration forms will be available at IPSC 2010 Online Registration web page starting May 24, 2010.
Each team should consist of at most three people with no restrictions to age or education. There are two divisions: secondary school division (all team members should be students of a secondary school or a school of the lower educational level) and open division (no restriction). All teams that register for the secondary school division will also be ranked in the open division.
We will report results in both divisions separately. We will report separate results for one-person teams only.
You need to read these rules and the Terms and Conditions. Then you need to find a team (you may also compete alone) and register for the contest. During the registration you will receive a Team Identification String (TIS). Do not lose this string, you will need it to submit your solutions. Should you lose it, please contact the organizers and provide sufficient identification. We will resend your TIS to the e-mail address specified in the registration form.
At the beginning of the contest we will publish a problem set consisting of between 6 and 20 problems.
The problem statements will be in English. During the contest, all communication between IPSC and contestants will be in English (you may use Slovak/Czech if you want to). If you are not fluent in English, you can invite someone to help you with translations.
Unless declared otherwise, we will publish two input data sets along with each problem: one easy and one difficult. Each data set has a unique identifier: X1 is the easy data set for the problem X and X2 is the corresponding difficult data set.
For each input data set your goal is to create a correct output data set and to submit it for judging using a form that will be available on the contest web page. Note that you only submit the output data, not a program.
You are allowed to make at most 10 submissions for each particular data set. Each submitted output is called a run. Each run is judged as accepted or rejected, and the team is notified of the results on a separate web page. A data set is solved if the team has submitted an accepted run for this data set.
When judging the correctness of your output data, the exact type and amount of whitespace used does not matter (any sequence of whitespace characters is considered to be equal to a single space). Still, please follow the output specification as closely as possible.
If you think that the problem statement is ambiguous or that there are bugs in the test data, you may submit a clarification request. If we agree that an ambiguity or an error exists, we will notify you. If the issue is important, a global clarification will also be published. Please watch the announcements page for such clarifications.
The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any team without specifying the reason. (A team may be disqualified for breaking the rules, cheating and any other activity that jeopardizes the IPSC contest.)
During the contest, each team may use any reasonable number of available computers for programming and computing the output data. (Using clusters of more than 10 computers is strongly discouraged :-).)
The team can use any compiler or interpreter together with its standard libraries. Besides compilers and interpreters, it is also allowed to use other necessary tools such as an editor, a debugger, an IDE, a spreadsheet, an e-mail client or a web browser.
(Based on the statistics, some of the recommended languages are C++, Python, Java or C#, but of course the choice is up to you. Feel free to use whatever tools you find necessary for each of the problems.)
Using pre-written code is OK as long as the code is authored by the team members only, or retrieved from a publicly available source such as an algorithm textbook. The team may use any printed or written material, and consult public online resources such as MathWorld and Wikipedia. It is also allowed (and advised) to bring meals and drinks to your computer room if it does not violate rules stated by your local authorities.
(Note that it is no longer forbidden to use systems for symbolic computation (e.g. Mathematica, Maple, Matlab) and special libraries (e.g. LEDA). Anyway, we don't feel that any of these tools would help you much.)
During the contest it is strictly forbidden to communicate with people other than your team about issues that concern solving the problems. Violating this rule may lead to disqualification.
Teams are ranked according to the most points received. Teams which receive the same number of points are ranked by least total time.
Points are only awarded for solving data sets. A team receives 1 point for each easy data set solved and 2 points for each difficult data set solved.
The total time is the sum of the time consumed for each solved data set. (There is no time consumed for a data set that is not solved.) The time consumed for a solved data set is computed as follows:
Suppose you succesfully submitted your solution for the data set T minutes after the competition started. Let R be the number of your previous (rejected) submissions for this data set. Then the time consumed for this data set is computed using the formula:
T + 10 * R * (difficulty of the data set)
where the difficulty is 1 for easy and 2 for hard data sets.
There may be some special tasks that are scored in a different way. A canonical example is that solving a special task doesn't alter your points, but it decreases your total time. If there will be some special tasks, their problem statements will contain an accurate description of their scoring.
Minus sixty minutes of penalty time are awarded for sending the organizers a postcard before the contest starts (see "Postcard Quest" on the front page).
In IPSC 2010, cash prizes are available for the top contestants. In order to be eligible, all team members must be at least 18 years of age, they must not be related to any of the sponsors, and they must reside in locations where winning such a prize is legal. For more detailed eligibility information see the Terms and Conditions.
The prizes awarded are:
| placement | prize |
|---|---|
| First team in the open division | USD 1200 |
| Second team in the open division | USD 600 |
| Third team in the open division | USD 300 |
| First individual in the open division | USD 900 |