Contest format
•
•
•
•
5 hours, around 8-12 problems
One computer running (likely)Linux, plus printer
3 people on one machine
No cell phones, calculators, USB drives, Internet
(C++ STL available, cplusplus.com and java api’s
are available)
• All the paper resources you want, including
books, print outs of code, anything!
– If it fits in the van, bring it!
Scoring
• Sorted first by number of problems solved
• Then sorted by time
– If you submit a problem at :30 and one at 1:30,
your total time is 120 minutes
– Find the easy problems and do them first!!!
– Watch the standings and see what other teams
are doing!
– 20 minute penalty for wrong answer on a single
submission, but it’s only counted if you eventually
solve that problem
Submitting
• You will receive one of several responses:
– Format error
– Time limit reached
– Runtime error (division by 0, out of memory,
exception thrown, etc.)
– Compile error
– Wrong answer
– Correct!
• The judges only give you one at a time
– If you have two or more problems, you’ll usually only
get the more embarrassing of them
Always have someone typing
• Typing and compiling is time intensive, and
there’s only one keyboard
– If your program isn’t working, print it and debug it by
hand
– Let someone else sit and type!
• If you’re waiting for the computer, write some
code out by hand or ask a neighbor for their
opinion on your algorithm
• If it has you read until end of input, use:
while (cin >> x)
Questions
• You can submit questions to the judges about
problems
• Updates will be given to everyone if there is a
typo or other error
• You will get one of two responses:
– A clarification
– No answer (i.e. read the problem more closely)
Test the judge’s input
• They give you 1 or 2 sample inputs and
solutions; test them!
– There will normally be simple cases.
• Make sure your format exactly matches the
judge’s sample output!
– They use a file compare (via a script) so it must be
very close
End cases
• The judges are very tricky with their tests
• If the problem says inputs will be between A
and B, you can almost bet that inputs of size A
and B will be tested
• Be wary of carefully worded questions!
Tree or not a tree
•
A tree is a well-known data structure
that is either empty (null, void,
nothing) or is a set of one or more
nodes connected by directed edges
between nodes satisfying the
following properties:
– There is exactly one node, called
the root, to which no directed
edges point.
– Every node except the root has
exactly one edge pointing to it.
– There is a unique sequence of
directed edges from the root to
each node.
Counting characters in a range
• Input will consist of two
integers, 0 < N < 100
• For each of the numbers
in between these two
numbers (inclusive),
count the occurrences of
each digit
• Example: 17 21
– 17 18 19 20 21
– 0=>1
7=>1
1=>4
8=>1
2=>2
9=>1
• cin >> a >> b;
for (i = a; i <= b; ++i)
{
++arr[i / 10];
++arr[i % 10];
}
• 17 21 ?
• 21 17 ?
Be generous with your memory!
• Make your arrays twice as big as necessary
– Off by one error are difficult to find!
• Use the STL (strings, vectors, everything!)
• Use long long instead of int
• Use double instead of float
Code quickly at the cost of efficiency
• The faster you type, the faster you submit!
• Use the STL if it makes it easier for you
– If you can’t remember how to use the STL sort,
write a simple (bubble?)sort. Who cares!
• Generally, if you get a “time limit reached”,
your algorithm needs to be changed, not just
little things in your code
Helpful suggestion
• Bring printed code, such as the algorithms
we’ll talk about.
• You won’t have to remember them and know you have
a working/correct version too.
– If someone is not typing in an answer, type in the
algorithm so the template is ready to use.
– Also data structures you may want to use (trees
for example).
– Including a “read a file” code. You know it works,
then one least thing to think about.
math
• Number theory
– Very popular in the program contests
– For ICPC, you need a rather small but useful set
• Prime table generation, primality testing, greatest
common divisor, modular arithmetic and congruence
(solving linear congruences), and Euler’s
– A Note, Java’s BigInteger class has a number of
number-theoretic functions, like gcd, modular
exponentiation, primality testing, etc.
String manipulation
• There have been a number of string
manipulation questions over the years.
• Learn the string library
– At the least substring, replace, find etc.
– Regex maybe really helpful.
algorithms
• Brute force algorithms
– From nested loop algorithms to backtracking (easier
with recursion).
• Breath first search.
• Depth first search is recursive and has nice bracktracking
features.
• Dynamic Programming
– Recursive algorithm that is composed of subproblems
• Coin flipping and fibonacci are simple examples
• Longest Common Subsequence (LCS), Longest Increasing
Subsequence (LIS), Optimal Binary Search tree (OBST), 0-1
knapsack, edit distance, Matrix Chain Product are increasing
harder examples.
algorithms
• Trees and priority queues, not necessary an
algorithms, but can speed things up.
• Graph theory
– How to represent things and then use BFS and
DFS, and topological sorting.
• Does the graph have cycles?
Classic Problems algorithms
•
•
•
•
•
Shortest paths (Dijkstra for example)
Spanning trees (Prim or Kruskal)
Eulerain paths and circuits
Matchings in bipartite graphs
Network flow (max flow, min cost flows)
• Geometry.
STL: Deque
• #include <deque>
• deque<int> x;
• x.push_back(20); x.pop_back(); x.back();
x.push_front(20); x.pop_front(); x.front();
• x.resize(100);
• x[10] OR x.at(10);
• x.clear();
STL: Strings
•
•
•
•
#include <string>
string str; string str(“foo”); string str(10, ‘c’);
str += “bar”;
Find
–
–
–
–
str.find(“aaba”); str.rfind(“aaba”);
str.find_first_of(“AEIOU”);
str.find_last_not_of(“AEIOU”, 5);
Returns an int, or string::npos if none found
• str.substr(int position, int length)
STL: Algorithms
• #include <algorithm>
• swap(a, b); // Any type that has = can go here!
• reverse(arr, arr + 10);
reverse(deq.begin(), deq.end());
• Sorting
– sort(arr, arr + 10); sort(deq.begin(), deq.end());
– sort(arr, arr + 10, lessThanFunction);
bool lessThanFunction(const Type& t1, const Type& t2)
{
if (t1 < t2)
return true;
return false;
}
STL: Algorithms
• #include <algorithm>
• Permutations
int x[] = {3, 5, 4, 1, 2};
sort(x, x + 5);
do {
// stuff
} while (next_permutation(x, x + 5));
STL: formatting
• #include <iomanip>
•
•
•
•
•
double d = 12345.6789;
cout << d << endl;
cout << setprecision(3) << d << endl;
cout << setprecision(3) << fixed << d << endl;
cout << setprecision(1) << fixed << 0.55 << endl;
•
•
•
•
12345.7
1.23e+04
12345.679
0.6
•
•
•
•
•
int i = 42;
cout << hex << i << endl;
cout << hex << uppercase << i << endl;
cout << i << endl;
cout << dec << i << endl;
•
•
•
•
2a
2A
2A
42
Algorithms
• Brush up on
– depth-first search, breadth-first search (or just use
iterative deepening DFS)
• N-Trees, but lots of other uses as well.
• minimum spanning trees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spann
ing_tree
– Lots of varying algorithms
listed at the bottom of the page
Algorithms (2)
• shortest path, like Dijkstra’s algorithm
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra’s_algorithm
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortest_path_probl
em
• (Max) flow problems
– http://www-b2.is.tokushimau.ac.jp/~ikeda/suuri/maxflow/Maxflow.shtml
• Good demo of max flow and min cut algorithms.
• Also links to some other versions of spanning tree
algorithms.
Algorithms (3)
• Greatest common divisor is a fun one to
remember too
– And remember, if gcd(a, b) == 1, then a and b are
relatively prime!
Dynamic programming/memoization
• Recursive algorithm that is composed of
subproblems
– You keep recomputing the subproblems!
– Save them in an array and look them up
– Start with the recursive version first, then modify
it to save work
• Examples
– Fibonacci
– Coin problem
Geometric algorithms
Geometric algorithms
• Intersection
– Four points: a1, a2, b1, b2
– Compute:
•
•
•
•
dir1 = direction(b1, b2, a1)
dir2 = direction(b1, b2, a2)
dir3 = direction(a1, a2, b1)
dir4 = direction(a1, a2, b2)
– If dir1/dir2 are opposite signs, and dir3/dir4 are
opposite signs, they intersect
b2
dir1
b2
a2
dir4
dir4
dir2
dir3
dir2
dir3
dir1
b1
b1
a1
a1
a2
4
5
3
2
1
6