BSS Annual Pairs Coding Challenge

Rules for Bayridge Pairs Coding Competition

• It is a 3-hour competition, starting at 10:30 (or around there) and there will be 7 questions

• Before the competition begins, competitors should download the entire folder of datasets.  In this folder are the datasets you'll need to attempt each of the questions.  The files are password-protected.

• Competitors are responsible for bringing devices and power cords.  If possible, extension cords would be a good idea

• External monitors are allowed, but please note with so many teams, space will be tight and again, extension cords would be a good idea.

• Competitors ARE allowed access to …

• • the official documentation of the language they are using (i.e. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/)

  • any books and notes they have (physical or digital)

  • any old programs that are on their machine.

Competitors ARE NOT allowed access to any other sites on the Internet, no stackoverflow, no Google searches, no ChatGPT or using a CoPilot AI sort of thing inside an IDE

JUDGING

•  Any language or IDE is fine – judges will only be judging output from the program.

• When a team is ready to officially answer a question, they will raise a piece of paper in the air, and a judge will come around with the password for that data set (again, you should have pre-downloaded the password-protected datasets). The students will test their program using the appropriate data set.

• In each case, there will be 10 sets of input, and the program should output a solution for each of the 10 sets.  

• For each correct output, a team gets 10 points.  If a team produces 10 correct outputs, they get a "perfect" 10-point bonus but only if it's on the first try.  

  • If a team doesn’t get it right, or if they don't get as many points as they wanted, they can try again, but they can’t get the 10-point bonus.

• When a team is judged, the time must be noted (as soon as the team puts their hand up) since there are time-bonuses as well.  So, if Team 1 gets problem 1 perfect 25 minutes before Team 2 gets it perfect too, Team 1 will have a higher score.

• When you attempt a question, you get to keep that data set and you also get to write down the solutions.  So, if you attempt problem 3 and get it wrong, you can keep that data and the solutions so you can try to more easily figure out what went wrong.

After one hour, if students are really struggling, they are allowed to declare themselves "out" of the competition (meaning that they can't win).  At this point, they are allowed to access the open Internet and any resources at all, trying to solve the problems.  The only thing you can't do at this point is use any sort of AI.