Rules and Guidelines
Team Composition:

  • Each team must follow these basic guidelines as far as team composition. It is up to each school to guarantee their own teams' eligibility. Any questions of eligibility should be directed to the contest coordinator. SVSU and the ACM withhold the right to refuse eligibility to any team or contestant that fails to follow these rules, or acts in an inappropriate manner.

    1. Each team will consist of no more than 3 students.

    2. Team members must be enrolled at their school at the time of the contest.

    3. Teams are free to substitute eligible members after registration if the situation requires it, as long as the contest coordinator is informed prior to the contest itself, and all such substitutes are eligible contestants.

    Conduct of the Contest:

    1. Problems will be posed in English.

    2. Program solutions submitted for judging must be expressed in one of the contest languages specified.

    3. Contestants can bring any printed source material such as books, manuals, program listings and so forth.

    4. Calculators will not be allowed in the contest area. A windows based calculator will be installed on the contest computers that students can use.

    5. SVSU and the ACM will provide hardware and software. No other computing machinery, software or storage media will be allowed in the contest area.

    6. Print outs will be available via the assistants in the contest area. Programs must be written in console mode.

    7. Students will not have access to the "official" input that will be used to judge the contest. Students will be given a printed sample of what sort of input to expect, but they should not expect this input to be complete. Students are encouraged to create their own input data as well.

    8. During the contest, no one will be allowed in the contest area other than official contest personnel and competing students. Coaches, alternates, and any one else traveling with the students will be provided with a waiting area.

    9. Advice between teams will not be allowed and will be grounds for disqualification.

    10. The assistants may distribute clarification on problems if the need arises. A forum for students to submit clarification requests will be provided.

    11. This is a programming contest, not a hacking contest. Anyone found to be attempting to break into any system, or access any programs, or information not permitted will cause their team to be instantly disqualified and asked to leave.

    12. The judging staff on the SVSU ACM Contest withholds the right to disqualify students or teams for any inappropriate behavior that takes place prior to, during, or after the contest. They also withhold the right to lengthen or shorten the contest in case of unforeseen difficulties.

    Scoring:

    1. The contest judges are solely responsible for determining the correctness of a program's output.

    2. Placement is based on the number of problems solved, and if needed on the time in which they were solved. A penalty of 15 minutes will be added to each program for an incorrect submission. This penalty will only apply if the incorrect program is correctly submitted at a later time.

    3. There is no penalty for not solving a problem, and problems may be solved in any order desired.

    4. Only one correct submission from any one team will be accepted for each given problem. Further submissions will be treated as incorrect and the above 15 minute penalty will apply.

    Judges and Lab Assistance:

    • Each lab will be assigned a certain number of lab assistants. That number will be determined by the number of teams competing in a given lab.

    • Judges are solely responsible for testing submitted programs for correctness. When a team submits a program, the following steps will occur:

      1. The contestant will code and compile the program on their own PC (instructions will be provided).

      2. The contestant will submit the program to the judges.

      3. The judges will execute the program, test the data, and review the output to determine correctness.

      4. The judges will be able to communicate with contestants and can therefore answer questions concerning compiling or submitting.

      5. Lab assistants will be available to answer any questions that students may have regarding the operation or nature of the software or hardware provided. They will not be allowed to answer questions involving specific problems or errors that teams may have. As an example, a lab assistant would be able to answer the question "How do I compile my C++ program?", but not "Why won't this program compile without errors?".

    Contest Languages:

    • Currently, Visual Basic and Visual C++ .NET 2003, GNU C++ 2.95, and Java 1.42 will be provided. A brief instruction sheet will be provided illustrating how to create, compile, and run programs in these languages. These will include instructions for starting console applications.

    • All problems posted will be solvable in the given languages, although not necessarily with equal ease.

    Liability:

    • It is up to the coaches of each team to secure permission forms and liability statements from parents of the participants. SVSU and the ACM do not accept any additional responsibility for lost or damaged property or injuries that occur during the contest outside of normal university policies.

    Changes to these Rules:

    The SVSU ACM Contest Committee withholds the rights to change these rules at any time. Contestants will be updated as the rules change, and a complete set of the official and finalized rules will be given to each team prior to the contest.