ACM ICPC 2017 Online Round Solutions discussed on maths stackexchange

I was totally disheartened when i saw so many problems happened during the contest ,though we solved 3 and are hopefully attending onsite round ,but i feel really bad for my seniors who did have a greater knowledge and experience in coding, could not even have a look at the third question since they lost all hopes when they got stuck in the second one due to codechef errors.

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I had a conversation with one of my friends in another college. He was highly ecstatic to say that he solved 3 problems without much effort. On asking further, he straight away told me that the math.stackexchange link was posted in the college FB group. Imagine the mass cheating that took place that day.

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We solved 2 problems.for 2nd problem we did our best when we got that extra time so they provide and extra time for such issues is technically fine in my aspect ,but cheating was not good and ultimately its the mistake of that candidate who wished to find that answer on google rather than solving by themselves so let it be hats off to such questions _/_ @admin

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Recontest isnt a solution. No one can assure that such things will not happen again. And also for most colleges semesters will be starting soon. So most of us cant manage time for preparing again. I know many deserved candidates didnt get chance but like this there will be just an infinite loop of recontests. I know the contest wasnt fair but again recontest isnt a solution. Maybe the admins of those sites should be cautious in these times and anything related to ongoing contests should be deleted asap.

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And for internal errors everyone faced that. Whenever you see something unexpected refer to the comments section. I saw the admins did respond pretty quickly anyone who asked about the verdict they got for their solution.

You know what this can be solved !!! This cheating issue for the preliminary Round can be solved.

How ?

  1. Set questions that are Algorithmic (instead of mathematical) , having long codes and a lot of Test Cases.

Benefits -

1)This type of question wont be answered on any of the online sites like stackexchange.com etc withing 3 hours of time.

  1. Even if it is answered, then it would most probably be answered at the end of the contest on these online sites, like at 2:00 hrs of the competition , then those people who are negligent to think will eventually copy the code , as a result will end being caught under plagiarism.

3)Moreover, Having questions with long codes and good edge cases will make the contestants busy to think about solution rather than discussing on the college groups.

You can put the math questions on the regional rounds where there is no internet and no cheating can be done(only one’s knowledge and ability to think will be tested).

Yes, making such questions is tough.

So , things can be done , just don’t ignore the hardwork by saying “Nothing can be done” .

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:frowning: Pathetic!! It is very disappointing to see such things happening in such a big contest. My whole team kept on thinking how to solve 2nd problem for 3 hrs without knowing this was happening, I don’t know how will codechef find who all cheated but it would be unethical and highly disappointing if the teams who cheated will move into regionals.

Can someone tell total time mentioned in the result of amritapuri region is in which unit?

I will report it to @admin . Dont worry, teams in past have been disqualified for it, and this will continue to happen.

And how could you possibly identify those teams which found the solution on this link @vijju123 ?

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Reconducting contests is not a solution. What’s the guarantee that next time the participants will not ask on MathExchange?

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Regarding 1 - come on, when you have so many teams, with some people being used to cheating in general and some people just wanting to get to the next round badly, and you have so many options to cheat - you’ll have really hard time trying to avoid cheating.

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And what about the errors in 2nd and 3rd Question. The extension of contest by 20 minutes didn’t do any good to the teams who faced internal errors and provided unfair advantage to some who didn’t.

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But even if we were to ignore the first reason then @admin can still guarantee that there is no such question whose evaluation is done incorrectly in re-conducting the contest. A lot of teams including my own wasted a lot of valuable time in figuring out the problem with my solution but in the end re-submission of the same code gave AC! @swetankmodi @lebron And about the first reason if the solution of any problem in any contest is discussed then the contest is usually marked unrated or the question is removed from the contest as i’ve seen in general so why not for such a big contest?

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It’s easier said than done. A recontest is not the soltuion to whatever problems that occur. Problems like this have also occurred last year, yet there wasn’t a recontest. Also there’s no guarentee that the next one will be a fair one. And if some problems occur again next time some people will ask for another recontest. Go on, like this. XD

If there were really some serious issue, then 600+ people would have not been able to solve that correctly(with no complaints). :slight_smile:

Exactly the point of @akki744 , if contests at such small scale hold such strict decisions for such activities, why shouldn’t such a large scale contest do so ? considering the fact that so many people prepared for it well and now they are facing issues over which they have no control.

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@jaideeppyne there were less than 600 submissions for the 3rd problem, people got WA due to “absolute error” issue. It may not be a serious issue for you but it is for others.

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Looks like you did pretty well in the contest.

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@soham1234 I did not face an internal error, so I did not waste time on the 2nd problem, but many had to waste time only for an error which was not their fault! Obviously re-contest is not happening but whatever happened was sad since some deserving teams will not qualify just because they had a bad day (or a bad timing for submission) :expressionless:

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And this is exactly what I think. :slight_smile:
This year online contest was very different from those held in past years and by different I mean, not in a good manner.