Conditions for Participating

Undergraduate and graduate students in the area of Informatics and related who belong to South American institutions may participate in the contest.

These students will constitute teams of up to three elements. Two of them must necessarily be undergraduates; only one graduate student will be allowed per team, provided that he/she has not concluded the second year of his/her graduate program, and has not obtained a previous graduate degree.

Qualification of each of the members of the team must attested in a written statement, sent to the Organizing Committee by a professor of the institution. This professor must also act as (or appoint) the coach of the team. The coach will represent the team, acting as a contact between the team and the organization during the contest activities.

Each school within an university may have only one team competing. There is a limit on the number of teams which will be accepted at each site. This number depends of the site's capacity and may change from one to another. If the number of registered teams exceeds the capacity, the criteria for selecting the ones that will participate in the contest is (in order of decreasing priority):

1. Coverage: as much as possible, the Organizing Committee will select teams coming from different states and countries.

2. Date of registration: teams with earlier registration dates will have preference, as long as their registration papers are complete.

Important Dates

• 12^th October, 1998, deadline for schools to register their teams. It is not necessary to register the team members by this date.
• 29^th October, 1998, deadline for team member's registration and fee payment.
• 7^th November, 1998, deadline for sending the Qualification Statement, filled out and signed by the School Advisor (Team Advisor), who must be a professor from the same school as the team members.
• 14^th November, 1998, contest date.

In the event the capacity of a site is exceeded, the actual list of selected teams will be made available by October 15.^th

More information about participating in the contest can be found in the registration page

Programming Contest Procedures

1. Dates and Sites

The South American Regional ACM Programming Contest will take place in São Paulo, Brazil, in Antofagasta, Chile, and in Caracas, Venezuela, at the same day and hour.

The contest is scheduled to happen on November 14, 1998.

2. Timetable

Click here to see the event schedule.

3. Language

Printed material related to the Programming Contest will be distributed in English only.

4. Resource Materials

Contestants may take to the contest site printed resource materials, such as books, manuals and program listings. Magnetically stored materials, such as versions of software or data, will not be allowed.

5. Computing Environment

The programming languages of the contest include Pascal, C and C++. Additional programming languages may be used, and will be announced shortly.

Computer facilities will vary depending of each site. Each team can use a single computer.

Click here to get more information.

6. System Support

System support (Staff) will be available during the contest, as well as backup equipment, to guarantee smooth operation of the programming environment.

7. The Contest

The Programming Contest consists of a collecion of 6 to 8 problems to be solved within 5 hours.

Teams should submit a possible solution to a problem to the Judging Committee, thereby obtaining an acceptance or rejection of the solution. In case of rejection, new solutions may be submitted (see scoring below).

A contestant may submit a claim of ambiguity or error in a problem statement by filling and sending a Clarification Request to the judges. If they agree that an ambiguity or error exists, a clarification will be issued to all contestants.

8. Discipline

Contestants must not talk to anyone except members of their team and personnel designated by the Regional Contest Director.

Any system problems that may occur must be communicated to the support staff according to pre-established procedures.

Any irregular behavior of a contestant that jeopardizes the contest, according to the Contest Director's criteria, may cause the team to be disqualified.

9. Alterations on the Contest Duration

The Regional Contest Director may alter the length of the contest in the event of unforeseen difficulties. Should the contest duration be altered, all contestants will be notified in a timely and uniform manner.

10. Scoring

The first criterion for ranking the teams is the number of problems correctly solved. A solution will be considered incorrect if:

a. the program cannot be compiled correctly;

b. its running time exceeds a "reasonable" amount, or a runtime error occurs;

c. the program provides an incorrect answer;

d. the output format differs from the one specified in the statement of the problem.

If the first criterion leads to a tie, teams who have obtained their solutions in less total time will be better ranked.

The total time is the sum of the times consumed for each problem correctly solved. The time consumed for a solved problem is the time elapsed from the beginning of the contest to the submission of the accepted run plus 20 penalty minutes for every rejected run for that problem regardless of submittal time. There is no time consumed for a problem that is not solved.

The Programming Contest Judging Committee is the only responsible for deciding the correctness of the solutions presented for each problem. By consulting them, the Contest Director will determine the winners of the competition. The Contest Director and the Judging Committee have power to judge unforeseen situations, and their decisions are final.