ECOO Regional Contest

[Clayton]

The biggest complaint I have is Question 3. I believe that graphical questions really shouldn't be done. It's rather limiting if students are say using C++ or something that doesn't have a standard graphics library. What then?

[A.J]

Clayton wrote:

The biggest complaint I have is Question 3. I believe that graphical questions really shouldn't be done. It's rather limiting if students are say using C++ or something that doesn't have a standard graphics library. What then?

I disagree. I believe that it tests the ability of the participant by making them implement their algorithmic skills + their knowledge on graphics. Students who are used to making games, etc... should have no problem answering them.

I'm pretty sure the people at ECOO are assuming that you have enough knowledge on the language you're using (i.e. know how to implement graphics with the language)

my algorithm for #3 was to first BFS for the red squares, set the path as walls (or inaccessible), then BFS for the blue squares.
In case you can't do red first (since it might block the blue path), I do the blue path first.

What region were you competing in Clayton?

[Clayton]

A.J. wrote:

I disagree. I believe that it tests the ability of the participant by making them implement their algorithmic skills + their knowledge on graphics. Students who are used to making games, etc... should have no problem answering them.

Wrong. This wasn't a contest that was testing you on your game making skills (or at least it shouldn't have been). It just adds a new level of complexity that does not need to be there. The point of the competition was to solve a problem, not play paint by numbers.

[HeavenAgain]

if im not mistaken..... problem number two, the first picture "rose" of the ascii art. there is a space missing at the end. It shouldve been "25. " not "24. " and that costed my team 10+ points or so ( but then again, we shouldn't have assumed each test case should end with perfect spacing and such)

another problem might be the first problem's example, that i cant confirm because i dont have the papers, but i heard the example was wrong? like its opposite or something.

[sven87]

i found every question pretty annoying... on the first question, i messed up implementing the special case and got 3/5 on the first run. i fixed it an submitted again and got 2/5 because i forgot to tell my program to ignore all non-character letters in the key. so lame.
the second question went by pretty smoothly, but it creating test data sucked.
third question used graphics.. that's enough said.
fourth question was kinda cool, i'm a little dissapointed it took me so long to find the right logic. but it was also really lame because the question never specified to round to the nearest int or to just drop the decimal, and all the test data had numbers that rounded down anyway.

I was at western, if you were there, i was the guy doing it alone

[etkuo]

Quote:

another problem might be the first problem's example, that i cant confirm because i dont have the papers, but i heard the example was wrong? like its opposite or something.

ya i got stuck there for so long before finally submitting it. and to my surprise i got perfect on it. i waslike WTF... wasted so much time on it.

and for question 2, are u expecting us to type that freaking input file....

[McKenzie]

Clayton @ Tue May 06, 2008 9:05 pm wrote:

The point of the competition was to solve a problem, not play paint by numbers.

If you look at past problems you will find graphic problems show up from time to time. The rules state that the only non-standard library you are allowed is a graphics library.

I find that students who get upset at ECOO are upset because it doesn't look exactly like CCC or USACO. For the most part they are goofy Ad-Hoc problems. If you look at old problem sets you can see what to expect from an ECOO competition. You can prefer CCC over ECOO or vice-versa but don't be upset when then ECOO problems look like ECOO problems or CCC problems look like CCC problems.

[SJ]

we were told that if we didn't know how to do graphics, we could use characters to draw out the paths.

ie
..b..r
..b.r.
..br..

or something

they were pretty cool judges

[A.J]

All the questions were pretty simple.....I just didn't finish Q4....

And this year's ECOO contest is different from the usual ECOO contest (questionwise) since there were more than one graphics question...

[McKenzie]

I don't think you can call question #2 a "graphics question" because you don't need a graphics library to solve it.

[Clayton]

McKenzie @ Thu May 08, 2008 12:42 pm wrote:

Clayton @ Tue May 06, 2008 9:05 pm wrote:

The point of the competition was to solve a problem, not play paint by numbers.

If you look at past problems you will find graphic problems show up from time to time. The rules state that the only non-standard library you are allowed is a graphics library.

I find that students who get upset at ECOO are upset because it doesn't look exactly like CCC or USACO. For the most part they are goofy Ad-Hoc problems. If you look at old problem sets you can see what to expect from an ECOO competition. You can prefer CCC over ECOO or vice-versa but don't be upset when then ECOO problems look like ECOO problems or CCC problems look like CCC problems.

To tell you the truth, I'm not much into Computer Science contests (only CCC, ECOO, and some Project Euler if I'm bored), it's more about math to me. However, I've found that adding a graphics element to questions (both in competitions or not) distract many students from actually solving the problem while they are setting up a proper looking graphic output. Sure you can argue that doing all of the graphics is part of the problem, but is it really? This also hurts students that are using something like C++ for the contest. That's a lot of extra work to do just because they'd need to output their solution graphically.

While I totally agree with you that ECOO does not need to look like CCC or USACO (in fact, I rather like the questions to be honest), I disagree with the graphics part, and I still think that it will force some students into some uncomfortable positions, whether they have looked at previous contests or not.

[Reality Check]

I fully agree^^. These contests are all about getting the logic and math right. Graphics should not be here and although it isn't hard to implement, it just adds an extra level of complexity that is not needed.

[[Gandalf]]

Don't the contest questions define what the contest is about? How can you assume they're all about "getting the logic and math right"?

[A.J]

I agree with Gandalf. All contests are different and have their own way of challenging people, so one can't assume what ALL contests
have in common.