Return of the Aztecs: from the problemsetters' desk
Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2003 5:27 pm
Hi,
We'd like to thank all the contestants who participated in our contest today. Congratulations to the winning team "A D A". They've really got us worried when they solved 8 problems inside 2 hours!! We knew they would surely solve all the problems. We would also like to congratulate the other two teams "Argonauts" and "WishingBone" for solving all the problems.
The problemset had problems of varying difficulty. Here's the summary of the view that the problemsetters had about the problemset:
A - Aztec Knights -- moderately difficult
B - Big Big Real Numbers -- easy, but lengthy to code from the scratch
C - Homer Simpson -- easy
D - How Far? -- easy
E - Parse Tree -- painfully difficult
F - Rigid Circle Packing -- moderate
G - To Carry or not to Carry -- too easy
H - Shifted Coefficient Number System -- moderate
I - Can't be too GREEDY -- moderate
J - Fastest Vs Cheapest -- painfully difficult
We would have suggested the order G, D, C, I, B, F, H, A, J, E
However, we seemed to have wrong idea about problems C, D and A. We apollogize for problem C where the problem statement might have been somewhat confusing to some contestants. We posted one clarification in the message board on that topic. But we were really baffled to see so many wrong answers for problem D and A.
We wanted all the teams to solve at least one problem, problem G almost did that job for us. We also wanted all of the problems to be solved, but we didn't anticipate that one team would solve all the problems. Problem E and J was there to ensure that. Well, that didn't quite save us. But honestly, we're happy to see that we found at least 3 teams who proved us to be wrong.
This was our first contest. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to the contestants, once again.
Problemsetters:
Tomal, Adil and Sohel
We'd like to thank all the contestants who participated in our contest today. Congratulations to the winning team "A D A". They've really got us worried when they solved 8 problems inside 2 hours!! We knew they would surely solve all the problems. We would also like to congratulate the other two teams "Argonauts" and "WishingBone" for solving all the problems.
The problemset had problems of varying difficulty. Here's the summary of the view that the problemsetters had about the problemset:
A - Aztec Knights -- moderately difficult
B - Big Big Real Numbers -- easy, but lengthy to code from the scratch
C - Homer Simpson -- easy
D - How Far? -- easy
E - Parse Tree -- painfully difficult
F - Rigid Circle Packing -- moderate
G - To Carry or not to Carry -- too easy
H - Shifted Coefficient Number System -- moderate
I - Can't be too GREEDY -- moderate
J - Fastest Vs Cheapest -- painfully difficult
We would have suggested the order G, D, C, I, B, F, H, A, J, E
However, we seemed to have wrong idea about problems C, D and A. We apollogize for problem C where the problem statement might have been somewhat confusing to some contestants. We posted one clarification in the message board on that topic. But we were really baffled to see so many wrong answers for problem D and A.
We wanted all the teams to solve at least one problem, problem G almost did that job for us. We also wanted all of the problems to be solved, but we didn't anticipate that one team would solve all the problems. Problem E and J was there to ensure that. Well, that didn't quite save us. But honestly, we're happy to see that we found at least 3 teams who proved us to be wrong.
This was our first contest. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to the contestants, once again.
Problemsetters:
Tomal, Adil and Sohel