ECOO 2013 Round 1 Solutions

[SamScott]

Hi Everyone,

The ECOO Computing Competition Round 1 is over. Attached are the questions, data files, solutions, and notes. Please use this thread to discuss any aspect of the competition. If you have alternate solutions or solution ideas please post or discuss here.

Sam Scott
Sheridan College

[ishidon]

I solved #4 rather simply by just trying every permutation of the coupons.
Here is my code in Python 2.6.
Solved DATA41.txt in around 16 seconds on my computer and DATA42.txt in around 0.6 seconds.
Unfortunately it was after the contest -_-

code:

from itertools import permutations from copy import deepcopy def eva(xx, y):     x = deepcopy(xx)     for i, v in enumerate(y):         if v != "BOGO":             if v == "$5":                 x[i] = max(x[i]-5, 0)             elif v == "$10":                 x[i] = max(x[i]-10, 0)             elif v == "$50":                 x[i] = max(x[i]-50, 0)                elif v == "10%":                 x[i] *= 0.9             elif v == "20%":                 x[i] *= 0.8                         elif v == "BOGO":             temp = y.index("!")             maxv = max(x[i], x[temp])             if maxv == x[i]:                 x[temp] = 0             else:                 x[i] = 0         if v != "TAX":             x[i] *= 1.13                 for i, v in enumerate(x):         x[i] = round(v, 2)     return sum(x) infile = open("DATA41.TXT") nums = [] keys = [] coupons = []  testcases = [] for i in infile:     i = i.strip()     if "." in i:         nums.append(float(i))     elif "B" in i or "%" in i or "$" in i or "T" in i:         coupons.append(i)     else:         keys.append(int(i))         if len(keys) == 3:             testcases.append([nums, coupons, keys[:-1]])             nums = []             coupons = []             keys = [keys[-1]] testcases.append([nums, coupons, keys[:-1]]) for i in range(5):     nums = testcases[i][0]     coupons = testcases[i][1]     keys = testcases[i][2]     while coupons.count("BOGO") > 2:         coupons.remove("BOGO")             if coupons.count("BOGO") == 1:         coupons.append("BOGO")     while len(coupons) < len(nums):         coupons.append("NOTHING")     lnum = 100000     for i in set(permutations(coupons, keys[0])):         if (i.count("BOGO") == 0 or i.count("BOGO") == 2):             if "BOGO" in i:                 temp = i.index("BOGO")                 ii = []                 c = 0                 for blah in i:                     if blah == "BOGO" and c == 0:                         c += 1                         ii.append("BOGO")                                             elif blah == "BOGO" and c != 0:                         ii.append("!")                     else:                         ii.append(blah)                 num = eva(nums, ii)             else:                 num = eva(nums, i)             if num < lnum:                 lnum = num            print "The best price is $%.2f" %lnum

[crossley7]

Can't write this anymore since I'm in Uni now but there questions look decent. Q4 might be a little trickier than in past years but I think for some regions that is much needed.

Overall though looks like a good balanced contest. Though maybe a few more types of questions would help. Seems a bunch of these were simulation/ad-hoc. A geometry or graph search problem would be helpful to balance it out