December 2016 Contest -- Final Results

This was our first contest of the 2016-2017 season. A total of 4141 distinct users logged into the contest during its 4-day span. Of those, 3550 participants submitted at least one solution, hailing from 75 different countries:

 1689 USA  374 CHN  166 VNM  107 ROU   93 RUS   81 CAN   72 IND
   71 IRN   67 BLR   51 GEO   48 POL   42 KAZ   41 FRA   37 UKR
   31 KOR   31 AUS   30 BRA   28 ITA   27 KGZ   27 IDN   25 DEU
   24 GBR   22 THA   22 SGP   21 MNG   20 BGD   18 GRC   17 BGR
   15 TKM   15 MEX   14 HRV   14 COL   13 TWN   12 BEL   11 EST
   10 JPN   10 ARM    9 TJK    9 FIN    9 CUB    9 ARG    8 ZAF
    8 TUR    8 LTU    8 HUN    7 ISR    6 BIH    5 UZB    5 TUN
    5 SVK    5 SRB    5 HKG    4 NZL    4 MKD    4 EGY    3 SYR
    3 SWE    3 NLD    3 MYS    3 CZE    3 AZE    2 LUX    2 ESP
    2 BLZ    2 AUT    1 VEN    1 SVN    1 SAU    1 NPL    1 MDA
    1 LVA    1 GUY    1 DOM    1 CYP    1 ALB

The average participant who submitted code submitted solutions for 2.7 problems. In total, there were 7533 graded submissions, broken down by language as follows:

 3264 C++11
 2314 Java
 1939 C++
  278 Python 3.4.0
  230 Python 2.7.6
   94 Pascal
   68 C

Below are the detailed results for each of the platinum, gold, silver, and bronze contests. You will also find solutions and test data for each problem, and by clicking on any problem you can practice re-submitting solutions in "analysis mode". If you are logged in, you will also see your own specific results below alongside the contest(s) you took.

USACO 2016 December Contest, Platinum

The platinum division had 392 total participants, of whom 231 were pre-college students. The overall score distribution was quite reasonable, with 20 perfect scores worldwide, and 3 in the USA. Full results are here. Congratulations to all of the top participants for their excellent results!

USACO 2016 December Contest, Gold

The Gold division had 1020 total participants, of whom 637 were pre-college students.

All competitors who scored 750 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the platinum division -- congratulations to you all! Detailed results for those promoted are here.

USACO 2016 December Contest, Silver

The Silver division had 1423 total participants, of whom 1042 were pre-college students.

All competitors who scored 750 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the gold division. Detailed results for those promoted are here.

USACO 2016 December Contest, Bronze

The Bronze division had 2830 total participants, of whom 2201 were pre-college students.

All competitors who scored 750 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the silver division -- to all who were promoted, congratulations! Detailed results for those promoted are here.

Final Remarks

We saw record levels of participation for the first contest of our 2016-2017 season, continuing a strong upward trend in participation numbers over the past few years. The contest itself ran quite smoothly, with no technical issues. As expected for the first contest of the season, we saw many perfect scores, with hundreds of competitors being promoted to higher divisions. With the amount of computing talent demonstrated on this contest, we are looking forward to a strong season!

For those still waiting to achieve promotion, remember that USACO contests are designed to challenge even the very best students, and it can take a good deal of hard work to excel at them. Remember that the more practice you get, the better your algorithmic coding skills will become! To help you fix any bugs in your code, you are encouraged to consult the official solutions above and to make use of "analysis mode" to re-submit improved versions of your solutions.

A large number of people contribute towards the quality and success of USACO contests. Those who helped with this contest include Mark Gordon, Richard Peng, Nathan Pinsker, Travis Hance, Mark Chen, Nick (Huaiyu) Wu, Lewin Gan, William Luo, and Viktoriia Schwartz. Thanks also to Amy Quispe for helping to maintain our social media presence (Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UsacoContests, Twitter: (https://twitter.com/UsacoContests), our translators for allowing us to offer this contest in five additional languages, to Clemson CCIT for providing our main contest server, and to our sponsors for their generous support: Usenix, D.E. Shaw, Jump Trading, and Ansatz Capital.

We hope you will all join us for our next contest in January.

Happy coding!

- Brian Dean ([email protected])
Director, USA Computing Olympiad
Associate Professor of Computer Science, Clemson University

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