izhang's blog

NACTF CP Competition 2021 (Registration Open)
By izhang, 3 years ago, In English

NACTF 2021 is a team cp competition with cash prizes for high school students. The competition will be held on Saturday December 4th from 12:00PM EST to 4:00PM EST. The contest will be 4 hours with 9 algorithmic problems of varying difficulty. These problems will be similar in style to those found on codeforces or USACO. The problems difficulties will range from USACO bronze to easy platinum level and our hardest problems will correspond to codeforces ratings of 2300+.

Scoring

There will be 3 easy problems with 10 test cases each, 3 medium problems with 15 test cases each, and 3 hard problems with 20 test cases each. You will get 1 point for each correct test case. Note: the sample input given in the problem statement will not be one of the test cases. If multiple teams have the same score, the ranking will be determined based on the time of the last submission. There will be no penalty for incorrect submissions, but a submission will still count for tie-breaking purposes even if it does not increase the score of the team.

Prizes

Anyone may participate in NACTF, however there are restrictions on eligibility for prizes. In order to receive prizes, all team members must be middle school or high school students.

1st place: $175

2nd place: $100

3nd place: $50

4th place: $25

5th place: $25

If you are interested in participating, check out our website: http://cp.nactf.net/

To register, fill out this google form.

There will be also be a ctf cybersecurity part, so check that out if you're interested: https://ctf.nactf.net/

Join our discord server: https://discord.gg/BkN872352z

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +32 Vote: I do not like it

Will problems be available for practice after contest? As timing is bit uncomfortable for my timezone.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +45 Vote: I do not like it

    Yes, the problems will be available publicly on codeforces after the contest.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +40 Vote: I do not like it

O: can't wait!!! I know the problems will definitely be of very high quality :))

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +64 Vote: I do not like it

If multiple teams have the same score, the ranking will be determined based on the time of the last submission. There will be no penalty for incorrect submissions, but a submission will still count for tie-breaking purposes even if it does not increase the score of the team.

What sort of insane tie breaker is this?

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
    ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +60 Vote: I do not like it

    I should elaborate. If two teams solve the same set of problems/tests. The more skilled one is going to do it faster, therefore have some time left to try other problems. Therefore they are more likely to make submissions after the last AC. And sometimes, they are not going to debug their code in time. So you are saying "team who solved 5 problems in 3:30 hours is better than the team that solved 5 in 3:00 hours but then failed to debug problem 6". You are just penaltizing skill and adding randomness to the standings IMO.

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +17 Vote: I do not like it

      We chose this tie breaking system because cf displays the time of the last submission on the standings page. It would be possible for us to manually determine the last submission that increased the team's score after the contest. However, we thought that it would be confusing for participants if the tie breaking time was different than the submission time displayed on the live standings page. It would be nice if cf could display the time of the last submission that increases the team's score on the standing page, but I don't see any setting which addresses that.

      If other people would also like the tie breaker to be based on the time of the last submission that increases the team's score, we would be open to changing it.

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        3 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +20 Vote: I do not like it

        If other people would also like the tie breaker to be based on the time of the last submission that increases the team's score, we would be open to changing it.

        Yes, the current system is really quite bad as it punishes people for attempting more difficult problems, I don't think any more explanation is needed after kostia's comment which covers it all.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +13 Vote: I do not like it

I looked in archives, and I found the 2020 competition. However, I couldn't figure out how to submit. Is there any place (maybe codeforces gym) where I could practice submit?

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +19 Vote: I do not like it

    This is the first year we are doing the cp part of the contest, so we don't have any past problems to submit. The IO will just be standard stdin/stdout.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

Please add problems with space waifus this time.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +16 Vote: I do not like it

    How is this downvoted?! Absolutely unacceptable, I expected more from this community. I fully agree, having space waifus in a contest drastically increases its quality!

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

When will prizes be distributed?

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