Things to do to prepare for a contest - some suggestions!
- Study algorithms - this is more important
than programming skills.
- Find a good coach, someone who will organise training sessions.
- Talk to students who have competed before.
- Look at previous
problems. Do several practice contests -- utilize online
judging sites.
- Make sure you are familiar with the information for participating teams, and with how to use PC^2
Resources
This is a collection of resources found on the Internet when
searching for information used for preparing teams, for alternative
contests and for any research. If you have a worthwhile resource
please contact the webmaster.
Top Coder
Thousands of programmers log onto the TopCoder Web site
and race to solve three programming problems. The payoff for
two hours of concentration: sharper skills, a chance to raise
one's profile in the job market and, oh yes -- cash.
[Top of page]
ACM Crossroads Site
Quote:
"
After analyzing previous contest programming problems, we noticed
that the same kind of problems occurred over and over again.
They can be classified into five main categories:
- Search problems. These involve checking a large number
of situations in order to find the best way or the number
of ways
in which something can be done. The difficulty is often
the imposed execution time limit, so you should pay attention
to the complexity of your algorithm.
- Graph problems.
The problems have a special structure so they can be represented
as a graph-theoretical problem
for
which standard algorithms are available.
- Geometrical
problems. These involve geometrical shapes, lines, and
angles.
- Trivial problems. The choice of appropriate algorithm
is clear, but these usually take quite a long time
to program carefully.
- Non-standard problems.
For the first three categories, standard algorithms are well
documented in the literature, and you should program these
algorithms beforehand and take the listings with you to
the contest. In this way, you can avoid making the same
(small)
mistakes repeatedly and you can concentrate on the difficult
aspects of the problem." Read the full
article.
NOTE In the 2005 contest we are aiming to make the harder problems more like those found in the World Finals. Although the problem sets for the Reguional Contests of the past couple of years have not included
problems of a geometric nature, this year's problem set might. [Top of page]
DMOZ
Page with lots of links to programming contests and problems.
Team Work Suggestions
Site <broken link> gives
suggestions for working as a team.
[Top of page]
An experimental Class Preparing Students for Programming
Contests
Paper by Jenq-Foung (J.F.) Yao, Ph.D.
Conclusion from the paper:
"The results of the class were remarkable. Students had
become enthusiastic about programming contests. One of
the problems we had previously was that students were not
interested in any programming contest at all. This special
class really stimulated our students' interest in programming
contests."
Read the full
paper.
[Top of page]
Links suggested by contestants:
USA Computing Olympiad
Australian Informatics Training
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