February 2016 Contest -- Final Results

This was our third contest of the 2015-2016 season. A total of 2249 users logged into the contest during its 4-day span. Of those, 1642 participants submitted at least one solution, hailing from 68 different countries:

  864 USA  142 CHN   56 VNM   43 ROU   39 RUS   33 IRN   33 CAN
   24 BLR   19 GBR   19 DEU   19 BGR   18 KAZ   17 KOR   16 TUR
   14 IND   14 BGD   14 AUS   13 MEX   13 FRA   12 HRV   11 TKM
   11 ITA   11 ARM   10 GEO    9 SGP    9 JPN    9 HKG    8 IDN
    8 GRC    8 FIN    8 EST    8 BRA    7 ISR    7 CUB    6 ZAF
    6 UKR    6 TJK    6 SRB    5 THA    5 NLD    5 COL    5 AUT
    4 SYR    4 MDA    4 AZE    4 ARG    3 TWN    3 SVK    3 POL
    3 MYS    3 HUN    2 TUN    2 SWE    2 MNG    2 MKD    1 UZB
    1 SVN    1 PER    1 MAR    1 LVA    1 LTU    1 EGY    1 DOM
    1 CZE    1 CYP    1 BIH    1 BEN    1 BEL

The average participant submitted solutions for 1.9 problems. In total, there were 3070 graded submissions, broken down by language as follows:

  972 C++11
  941 Java
  897 C++
  103 Python 3.4.0
   71 Pascal
   39 Python 2.7.6
   37 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 February Contest, Platinum

The Platinum division had 419 total participants, of whom 320 were pre-college students. The overall score distribution for platinum came out quite reasonable; there were a good number of perfect scores this time, as the contest was designed to be slightly easier than the January contest. Full results are here.

USACO 2016 February Contest, Gold

The Gold division had 524 total participants, of whom 429 were pre-college students. The gold division problems appeared reasonable challenging this time around, but we still saw a number of perfect scores.

All competitors who scored 600 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 February Contest, Silver

The Silver division had 699 total participants, of whom 586 were pre-college students. Overall, the score distribution for silver looked well balanced.

All competitors who scored 600 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the gold division. Detailed results for those promoted are here.

USACO 2016 February Contest, Bronze

The Bronze division had 811 total participants, of whom 642 were pre-college students.

All competitors who scored 800 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

This was perhaps the most uneventful contest to date -- no technical issues at all and no clarifications needed. I'm quite happy that the score distributions all came out looking reasonable, in particular with slightly higher scores in platinum this time (we designed this contest to be slightly easier after last month's much more challenging platinum contest). Plenty of students earned promotion to higher divisions.

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, Nathan Pinsker, Nick Wu, Travis Hance, Matthew Fahrbach, and Mark Chen. 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 (now upgraded with more memory!), and to our sponsors for their generous support: Usenix, Dropbox, and D.E. Shaw. We would like to give a warm welcome in particular to our newest sponsor, Ansatz Capital, a quantitative trading startup firm in New York. Welcome to the USACO family!

We look forward to seeing you all in early April for the US Open, our national championship contest. The US Open carries slightly more weight than our monthly contests when selecting finalists to attend our summer 2016 training camp.

Happy coding!

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

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