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[Eligibility | Interpretations | Significant Dates | Fees | Programming Environment | Qualification | Recognition ]

The 2008 South Pacific Regional Contest Rules.

The Contest Director is solely responsible for interpreting the rules and for ruling on any unforeseen situations.

These rules supersede those of previous years.

ACM Rules For Regional Contests

The ACM rules for the conduct of a regional contest apply in full to the South Pacific Regional Contest. These rules are to be found on the ACM Web Site. The local rules that follow are refered to under Localization in the ACM rules, that is local interpretations of terms and further specifications where appropriate.

IMPORTANT REMINDER

A team will only be accepted as registered once it has 3 qualifying members. All 3 members must report to the contest. In addition, the person responsible for the team must supply invoicing information to the Contest Manager.

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LOCAL RULES

Contestant Eligibility Rules

1. Interpretations

Students who have competed in two Finals Contests may compete in the regional contest; however the team containing such a person will NOT be eligible for any prizes, nor may they advance to the World Finals.

Institutions may send more than one team to the contest, but organisers reserve the right to limit the entries from any one institution.

Solutions to problems submitted are called runs. Each run is judged as accepted or rejected and the team is notified of the results as soon as possible. In the South Pacific Regional Contest, rejected runs will be marked as follows:

  • Compilation Error (this includes linking errors)
  • Run-time Error
  • Time limit exceeded (2 minutes allowed)
  • Wrong Answer
  • Output Format Error (white space error)
  • Other -Contact Staff (used only in exceptional circumstances)

Programs that compile, run, and produce output within the time limit are judged as follows:

  1. Trailing spaces and tabs, and trailing blank lines are trimmed.
  2. This output is compared with a similarly trimmed model answer.
  3. If the output and model answer are identical, then the solution is accepted.
  4. If not identical, all lines are stripped of their white space, all empty lines are removed and all text is converted to upper case.
  5. This new output is compared with a similarly treated model answer.
  6. If the new output and model answer are now identical, then the rejection message is Output Format Error.
  7. If not identical, the rejection message is Wrong Answer.

Only the first error encountered in a submission will be notified. Unspecified Error is used where the judges believe there is a problem. In such circumstances the head judge will be contacted to clarify the situation. This may take some time so teams are advised to continue with another problem.

The number of problems solved (accepted submissions) will determine a team's ranking. For the top 10 places, or to determine a site winner, teams with equal solutions will be ranked by:

  1. Lowest total elasped time for solved problems
  2. Lowest penalty time for rejected submissions

Updating the scoreboard may be suspended at the appropriate time to keep the final results secret. Notification of accepted and rejected runs will continue until the end of the contest.

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2. Significant Dates

Deadline for teams to be registered : Wednesday before the contest.

Coaches should aim to have teams initially registered as soon as possible, preferably by 8th September so that organisers will know the numbers to expect at each site. Initial registration does not require names of team members. No new reservations may be made after 12th September.

To compete in the regionals a team must be fully registered in the ACM registration database by 12th September. "Fully registered" means the team must have 3 members who each meet the eligibility requirements, and the regional administrators must know who is responsible for paying the team's fees. Reserves may also be registered. The South Pacific Region will accept last minute substitutions, but these MUST be entered in the ACM database before the contest is completed. Remember, for the winning team those who compete in the Regional Contest will advance to the World Finals.

3. Contest Fee

The entry fee is $180 per team, exclusive of GST where this applies. This entry fee may be paid by the Institution sending the team. Transport and accommodation costs are also the responsibility of the team or their Institution.

Where a team is paying its own fees, these must be received before the team is able to compete. Where an institution is paying the fees for their teams, they will be invoiced for the number of teams entered.

Fees for 2008:

  • First 3 teams at the standard rate of $180 per team.
  • Next 2 teams free.
  • 6 to 10 teams, pay for 6 teams.
  • 11+ teams $1,500.

Special Offer! For first time entrants (Universities, TAFEs and Polytechnics that have not participated before).

  • New TAFEs and Polytechnics may enter 2 teams free of charge
  • New Universities pay for 1 team, 4 others are free.
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High School (HS) Teams

Available at some sites.

There will be 2 additional questions provided just for high school teams. Each problem will count as 1 problem solved. In addition, HS teams may solve any of the other problems. A site may offer any languages it likes to accommodate HS teams however the judges will not have solved the problems in any but the official language and so we are unable to give a guarantee for judging accuracy.

The top HS team (and their coach) at a site will receive a prize.

HS teams will not be eligible for any other prizes as ACM prizes are restricted to tertiary teams.

The entry fee is $50 per HS team. The coach will be invoiced after the contest.

4. Equipment

In the South Pacific Regional Contest, contestants are allowed to bring with them any printed material. Machine readable material of any kind, and communication devices (such as cell phones) must not be brought into the contest room.

5. Programming Environment

Each team will have one PC with the contest software for their site. Details of the hardware and software to be used will be found on the Site Web page.

Instructions on using the machines will be given early prior to the contest commencing.

The following languages will be available at all sites:

Java (JDK v 1.5 or greater), C/C++ (at least one of GCC v4.0 or greater,
Borland C/C++ v5.5 or greater, Microsoft Visual C/C++ 6 or greater, or
Visual Age C/C++)

In addition, sites MAY offer Pascal (possibly through Delphi).
Teams should check the local site if they wish to use any of these languages.

We recommend that JDK 1.5.x, or GCC v4.0 be used for contest preparation.

No other languages will be offered.

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5. Qualification for World Finals

The number of places in the World Finals available to the region depends on the number of entries to the regional contest.

We normally have 2 places allocated to teams from the South Pacific region, and these are awarded to the top Australian team and the top New Zealand team in the regional contest. If further Finals places are available, these are awarded to the next highest teams.

ACM regulations state that only 1 team from any institution may advance to the Finals, and that the contestants who qualify from the regionals are those who must compete in the finals.

6. Recognition

Recognition will be given on the web site to the top team in the region in which no member has taken any third years papers. These will be referred to as the "Top 2nd Year Team".

Recognition will also be given to the top team in which no member has taken any second years papers. These will be referred to as the "Top 1st Year Team".

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