2018 December Contest -- Final Results
The 2018 December contest featured algorithmic programming problems covering a wide range of techniques and levels of difficulty.
A total of 5290 distinct users logged into the contest during its 4-day span -- a new record for participation!. A total of 4724 participants submitted at least one solution, hailing from 72 different countries:
2882 USA 838 CHN 86 CAN 69 MYS 68 VNM 66 GEO 60 ROU
53 BLR 48 IND 43 KOR 38 FRA 31 IRN 30 RUS 28 TWN
23 ARM 21 MNG 20 SGP 20 DEU 20 AUS 18 UKR 15 AZE
13 COL 11 GBR 11 BGR 10 TUR 10 TUN 10 KGZ 10 JPN
10 HRV 9 TKM 9 SLV 9 BRA 8 MEX 8 LTU 8 ARG
7 IDN 7 EST 6 ZAF 6 KAZ 6 EGY 5 SWE 5 POL
5 HKG 5 GRC 4 SRB 4 NLD 4 HUN 4 FIN 4 CUB
3 NZL 3 ITA 3 DOM 3 BGD 3 BEL 2 UZB 2 THA
2 SAU 2 NGA 2 MDA 2 CYP 1 TJK 1 SYR 1 SVN
1 SVK 1 PRT 1 PHL 1 PAK 1 NPL 1 ISL 1 IRL
1 BHS 1 ALB
In total, there were 15470 graded submissions, broken down by language as follows:
5223 Java 4995 C++11 3302 C++ 1595 Python 3.4.0 263 Python 2.7.6 78 C 14 Pascal
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 2018 December Contest, Platinum
The platinum division had 458 total participants, of whom 319 were pre-college students. The platinum contest this time arounde proved to be quite challenging, with only four perfect scores in the pre-college division. Congratulations to all of the top scorers for their excellent results! Results for all participants are here. Note that the coaches decided to add some extra test cases to the last problem before computing final scores, since the original test data was not as exhaustive as hoped (recall that as per our rules, the coaches can always add or remove test cases prior to final grading if needed, so you should always test your code thoroughly and not assume it will earn perfect marks just because it solves the test cases present in the contest itself).
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USACO 2018 December Contest, Gold
The gold division had 842 total participants, of whom 672 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 750 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the platinum division. Detailed results for all those promoted are here.
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USACO 2018 December Contest, Silver
The silver division had 1967 total participants, of whom 1614 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 750 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the gold division. Detailed results for all those promoted are here.
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USACO 2018 December Contest, Bronze
The bronze division had 3784 total participants, of whom 3103 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 750 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the silver division. Detailed results for all those promoted are here.
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Final Remarks
Another year with record levels of participation! More than 5000 participants joined this contest, an impressive milestone for the USACO (next goal: 10,000!). At its peak level of participation, the number of simultaneous participants in this contest was twice that of the most recent IOI. Nonetheless, things went quite smoothly with the contest from a technical standpoint. Many were promoted to higher divisions (as is typical for the first contest of the season), and overall the score distributions looked very reasonable.
For those not yet promoted, remember that the more practice you get, the better your algorithmic coding skills will become -- please keep at it! 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. To help you fix any bugs in your code, you can now re-submit your solutions and get feedback from the judging server using "analysis mode".
A large number of people contribute towards the quality and success of USACO contests. Those who helped with this contest include Mark Gordon, Nathan Pinsker, Dhruv Rohatgi, Nick Wu, Travis Hance, Grace Cai, Yang Liu, Franklyn Wang, and Spencer Compton. Thanks also to our translators and to Clemson CCIT for providing our contest infrastructure. Finally, we are grateful to the USACO sponsors for their generous support: D.E. Shaw, Jump Trading, and Ansatz Capital. As we have recently lost one or two key sponsors, we are actively looking for additional sponsors who might be interested in supporting our efforts to contribute to the computing talent pipeline -- please feel welcome to send me a note if you know any good prospects I should consider contacting.
We look forward to seeing everyone again for the next contest in January.
Happy coding!
- Brian Dean ([email protected])
Director, USA Computing Olympiad