Regional Contest Regulations

Important changes are in red.

Introduction

• International Collegiate Programming Contest (Contest) is conducted by Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) and sponsored by IBM. Northeastern Europe Regional Contest is conducted by Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Federal Agency of Education, Education Committee of the Government of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg Youth Creativity Palace, St. Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics and Altai State Technical University.
• Regional Contest is simultaneously conduncting at:
  • Saint Petersburg — St. Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics and St. Petersburg Youth Creativity Palace;
  • Barnaul — Altai State Technical University;
  • Tashkent — Tashkent University of Information Technologies;
  • Georgia.

Mission

• The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) provides college students with opportunities to interact with students from other universities and to sharpen and demonstrate their problem-solving, programming, and teamwork skills. The contest provides a platform for ACM, industry, and academia to encourage and focus public attention on the next generation of computing professionals as they pursue excellence.

Introduction

• The contest is a multi-tiered competition among teams of students representing institutions of higher education. Teams first compete in Subregional Contests. The winning teams from each subregional contest qualify to advance to the Regional Contest (Northeastern European Regional Contest, November). The winning teams from each regional contest qualify to advance to the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals.

Localization

• The official language of the Contest is English. All written contest materials will be in English.
• The secondary language of the Regional Contest is Russian. All announcements will be made in both Russian and English.
• The Director and the Organizing Committee of the Subregional Contests may use as additional languages the languages of the Subregional Contest participants. In this case, all announcements must be made on Russian and each additional language.

Conduct of a Regional Contest

• Board of directors of the Regional Contest:
  • establishes Organizational Committee of the Regional Contest;
  • prepares recommendations to the Organizational Committee concerning Jury and Technical Committee;
  • appoints directors of Subregional Contests of the Regional Contest;
  • solves questions concerning organization of new Subregional Contests.
• Organizational Committee of the Regional Contest:
  • settles dates of the final round of the Regional Contest;
  • settles possible dates of the Subregional Contests of the Regional Contest;
  • approves Jury and Technical Committee put forward by the Director of the Regional Contest;
  • creates and approves the expense estimate of the Regional Contest;
  • approves Technical Regulations of the Regional Contest  put forward by Jury and Technical Committee;
  • determines the place of residence for competitors, delegation heads, Jury members and Technical Committee members;
  • determines the venue of the Regional Contest  and issues the corresponding order;
  • supplies of the venue of the Regional Contest  with computers according to the these Regulations, Technical Regulations, safety measures and hygiene and sanitary standards;
  • carries out registration of participants;
  • organizes and carries out the award ceremony for the Regional Contest  participants;
  • analyzes and generalizes the Regional Contest  results.
• The Regional Contest Jury consists of the Head of the Jury Chairman, the Heads of the Subregional Contests' Jury and other Jury members.
• The Regional Contest Jury:
  • proposes problems for the rounds of the Regional Contest;
  • the Head of Jury forms the Executive Committee of the Jury.
• Executive Committee of the Jury:
  • prepares the Technical Regulations together with the Technical Committee;
  • evaluates the proposed problems and forms the set of the problems for the Regional Contest;
  • develops and approves the problem statements for the Regional Contest;
  • develops the tests for submission evaluation for the final round of the Regional Contest, including automated problem checkers;
  • conducts evaluation of competitors' submissions on the Regional Contest;
  • prepares the standings of the Regional Contest;
  • makes the final decision on the disqualification of the participants, who violate the Rules or the Regulations of the Regional Contest;
  • determines the Regional Contest  winner and awardees;
  • forms the supplementary set of problems and tests for the Subregional Contests.
• The Technical Committee of the Regional Contest consists of the Head of the Technical Committee, the Heads of the Subregional Contests' Technical Committee and other Technical Committee members.
• The Technical Committee of the Regional Contest:
  • prepares the Technical Regulations together with the Executive Committee of the Jury;
  • carries out configuration of computers according to the Technical Regulations;
  • ensures uninterrupted operation of computers during the Regional Contest;
  • ensures the conduct of the Regional Contest in the correspondence to these Regulations and the Regional Contest Rules.

Organization of the Subregional Contests

• The Subregional Contest Director is appointed by the Board of directors of the Regional Contest
• The Subregional Contest Director:
  • establishes Organizational Committee of the Subregional Contest;
  • prepares recommendations to the Organizational Committee of the Subregional Contest concerning Jury and Technical Committee of the Subregional Contest.
• Organizational Committee of the Subregional Contest:
  • settles the dates of the Subregional Contest;
  • approves Jury and Technical Committee of the Subregional Contest put forward by the Subregional Contest  Director;
  • creates and approves the expense estimate of the Subregional Contest;
  • approves Technical Regulations of the Subregional Contest put forward by Jury and Technical Committee of the Subregional Contest;
  • determines the place of residence for competitors, delegation heads, members of the Jury and the Technical Committee of the Subregional Contest;
  • determines the venue of the Subregional Contest  and issues the corresponding order;
  • supplies the venue of the Subregional Contest  with computers according to the these Regulations, Technical Regulations, safety measures and hygiene and sanitary standards;
  • carries out registration of participants;
  • organizes and carries out the award ceremony for the Subregional Contest  participants;
  • analyzes and generalizes the results of the Subregional Contest.
• The Jury of the Subregional Contest consists of the Head of the Jury and at least three other Jury members.
• The Jury of the Subregional Contest:
  • prepares the Technical Regulations of the Subregional Contest together with the Technical Committee of the Subregional Contest;
  • develops and approves the problem statements and the tests for submission evaluation for the Subregional Contests or takes the decision to use the set of the problems formed by Executive Committee of the Jury of the Regional Contest;
  • conducts evaluation of competitors' submissions on the Subregional Contest;
  • makes the final decision on the disqualification of the participants, who violate the Rules or the Regulations of the Subregional Contest;
  • prepares the Subregional Contest  standings;
  • determines the Subregional Contest  winner and awardees.
• The Head of the Jury of the Subregional Contest forms the Executive Committee of the Jury of the Subregional Contest if necessary. In other case, all duties of the Executive Committee are held by the Jury.
• The Technical Committee of the Subregional Contest consists of the Head of Technical Committee and Technical Committee members.
• The Technical Committee of the Subregional Contest:
  • prepares the Technical Regulations of the Subregional Contest together with the Jury of the Subregional Contest;
  • carries out configuration of the computers according to the Technical Regulations of the Subregional Contest;
  • ensures uninterrupted functioning of the machinery during the Subregional Contest;
  • ensures the conduct of the Subregional Contest in the correspondence to these Regulations and the Subregional Contest Rules.

Team Composition

• A representative of the sponsoring institution of higher education, typically a faculty member, must serve as or designate the team coach. The coach certifies the eligibility of contestants and serves as the official point of contact with the team prior to and during contest activities. A team may only have one coach.
• The coach must fully register teams in the ICPC Registration System 7 days before the subregional contest. A team is not eligible to compete in the regional contest until the regional contest director has accepted the team in the web registration system. Teams failing to comply with any of these requirements will be ruled ineligible to compete. Only registered reserves may be substituted for contestants. Such substitutions must be entered in the ICPC Registration System by the regional contest director before the contest begins.
• Each team consists of three contestants and may have at most one official reserve. Teams with fewer than three are ineligible. Each contestant and reserve must satisfy the following competitor eligibility requirements.
  • A student must be willing and able to compete in the World Finals.
  • A student must be enrolled in a degree program at the sponsoring institution with at least a half-time load. This rule is not to be construed as disqualifying co-op students, exchange students, or students serving internships.
  • A student may compete for only one institution during a contest year.
  • A student who has competed in two World Finals is not eligible to compete.
  • A student who has competed in five Regional Contests is not eligible to compete. Subregional contest and Regional contest for which that Subregional contest is qualifying count as one contest for this rule. (Therefore a competitor may totally compete in five seasons at most).
  • Each competitor must satisfy at least one of the following:
    • be born not earlier than January 1, 1987;
    • start his/her first post-secondary study not earlier than January 1, 2006.
• In the event of qualifying to advance to the World Finals, competitors must be prepared to provide a history of work and educational experience including a transcript to substantiate eligibility.
• In case of organizational or technical impossibility to provide participation of all teams that applied, the Subregional Contest Director of Subregional Contest has the right to institute additional requirements towards the Subregional Contest participants, provided that it is approved by the Regional Contest Director.
• Winners of Subregional Contests and other teams are admitted to participate in the Regional Contest according to Teams Selection Regulations approved by the Board of directors of the Regional Contest.

Procedure of organization and conducting of the Contest

• The duration of one round is five hours. The Executive Committee of the Jury holds right to prolong the duration of the round in case of unforeseen circumstances. Should the contest duration be altered, every attempt will be made to notify participants in a timely and uniform manner.
• On the round each team is provided with one personal computer and the set of several problems.
• At least six problems and at most twelve problems will be proposed for solution. As far as possible, problems will avoid dependence on detailed knowledge of a particular applications area or particular contest language.
• Participants' computer configuration and the set of supported programming languages are determined by the Technical Regulations.
• During the competition, participants solve the proposed problems. A solution to a problem is a program written in one of the supported programming languages. The program must not contain auxiliary modules or files. It is allowed to solve different problems using different supported programming languages.
• Submission evaluation is conducted during the competition. Using special software, the teams submit their problems for evaluation. The Executive Committee of the Jury compiles the submitted programs using command line compilers and checks the programs. Participants should include compiler directives in the submitted program file.
• Participants' programs are checked against a set of tests prepared by the Executive Committee of the Jury prior to the round. A program is accepted if it passes all tests.
• Execution time and memory for each program on each test are limited. The programs that exceed these limits are considered inefficient for the given problem. In such case, the test is considered not to be passed, thus the program is rejected. The execution time limit and the accessible memory limit are indicated in the problem statements.
• The submitted program must output the same answers on the same tests, independent of the time of the execution and the program environment. The submitted programs can be executed any number of times and the worst outcome can be counted.
• Participants may bring and use unannotated natural language dictionaries (except electronic ones), blank sheets of paper and instruments for writing only. Contestants may not bring and use any books (except dictionaries), reference manuals, electronic dictionaries, program listings, any machine-readable information (software or data on any kind of storage), computing devices (handhelds, portable PCs, notebooks, calculators), mobile phones or any other communication devices.
• During the round, participants are only allowed to communicate with members of their team, members of the Executive Committee of the Jury and the Technical Committee.
• Participants may use network printer during the contest. The printout will be delivered to the team by representatives of the Technical Committee.
• A team may be disqualified by the Jury for any activity that violates contest Regulations and Rules or jeopardizes the contest such as dislodging extension cords, unauthorized modification of contest equipment, distracting behavior.
• Executive Committee of the Jury holds exclusive right to determine correctness of programs against tests, to evaluate programs, to determine the winners and to disqualify participants. The Executive Committee of the Jury solves questions arising in case of unforeseen events and circumstances.

Appeals

• The Executive Committee of the Jury is solely responsible for determining the correctness of runs. Its decisions are final and may not be appealed.
• If irregularities or misconduct are observed during the Contest, team members or coaches should bring them to the attention of the representatives of the Technical Committee of the Contest, so that action may be taken as soon as possible.
• The official test set is published by the Jury of the Contest after the end of the Contest. This test set can be used to appeal to the Jury Executive Committee.
• The appeal based on the official test set can only be issued in case some test case is found to be incorrect with respect to the problem statement. Should this be the case, the incorrect test case will be fixed or, if no obvious fix is possible, removed, and all runs for the appealed problem will be rejudged. The new standings will be the official standings of the Contest.
• After the conclusion of the Contest and the standings has been made public, coaches may file complaints or appeals as follows:
  • within 2 business days. The coach may file a complaint by sending an email containing a text message with no enclosures to the Head of the Jury, the Contest Director and copied to the Director of the next tier of the Contest;
  • within 3 more business days. The Jury and the Contest  Director shall respond to the complaint;
  • within 1 more business day.  The coach may file an appeal with the Appeals Committee of the next tier.
• If the standings of the Contest change as the result of the appeals, the teams to be sent to the next tier of the Contest may change. Prizes are not transferred.

Scoring of a Contest

• A team that has solved more problems is placed higher.
• In case of equality in the number of solved problems, the team that has a smaller penalty time is placed higher.
• In case of equality in the number of solved problems and the penalty time, the team that has submitted its last accepted run first, is placed higher.
• The penalty time is the sum of the time consumed for each problem solved. The time consumed for a solved problem is the time elapsed from the beginning of the contest to the submittal of the accepted run plus 20 penalty minutes for every rejected run for that problem regardless of submittal time. There is no penalty time consumed for a problem that is not solved.
• Scoring of the team is based only on the time of the first accepted run for each problem.

The results of the Regional Contest

• According to the standings, the Regional Contest winner team is determined. Teams in the leading places are awarded diplomas indicating the places that they achieved.