2021 January Contest -- Final Results
The 2021 January Contest contest featured algorithmic programming problems covering a wide range of techniques and levels of difficulty.
A total of 9569 distinct users logged into the contest during its 4-day span. A total of 8301 participants submitted at least one solution, hailing from 88 different countries:
4662 USA 1753 CHN 323 CAN 275 KOR 148 IND 112 VNM 83 MYS
61 BLR 53 ROU 53 GEO 52 ISR 48 POL 40 SGP 34 RUS
33 FRA 32 IRN 30 UKR 28 TWN 25 DEU 25 AUS 24 TUR
21 BGD 19 MEX 19 CUB 19 ARM 18 KAZ 18 HKG 18 GBR
17 COL 16 SLV 14 HRV 13 JPN 12 ZAF 11 MNG 11 IDN
10 VEN 10 TUN 10 THA 10 GRC 8 ARG 7 SAU 7 LTU
7 BRA 7 BGR 7 AZE 6 NGA 6 ITA 6 EST 6 EGY
5 KGZ 5 ESP 4 SRB 4 PHL 3 SYR 3 NZL 3 NOR
3 NLD 3 MDA 3 MAR 3 CHE 2 TKM 2 PRT 2 LUX
2 LKA 2 HUN 2 FIN 2 BEL 1 UZB 1 TZA 1 TUV
1 TJK 1 SVN 1 SVK 1 SOM 1 SDN 1 QAT 1 PRK
1 PER 1 NPL 1 MMR 1 LVA 1 ISL 1 IRL 1 GHA
1 DZA 1 CMR 1 BRN 1 ARE
In total, there were 23378 graded submissions, broken down by language as follows:
8383 C++11
6467 Java
4703 C++
3570 Python 3.4.0
130 C
119 Python 2.7.6
6 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 2021 January Contest, Platinum
The platinum division had 432 total participants, of whom 261 were pre-college students. Just like in December, the platinum contest proved to be quite challenging, with very few high scores. Results for top scorers are here.
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USACO 2021 January Contest, Gold
The gold division had 1078 total participants, of whom 805 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 2021 January Contest, Silver
The silver division had 4476 total participants, of whom 3561 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 800 or higher on this contest (195 of them, from the USA) are automatically promoted to the gold division.
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USACO 2021 January Contest, Bronze
The bronze division had 5400 total participants, of whom 4173 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 800 or higher on this contest (1218 of them, from the USA) are automatically promoted to the silver division.
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Final Remarks
Another successful contest! Normally participation drops off a bit for the second contest of the season, but I'm happy to see numbers very similar to those from December, with roughly 10K total participants and a maximum of more than 1000 simultaneous users during peak usage. Overall, the contest ran quite smoothly. Results were in line with past contests; the bronze through gold contests were perhaps just a touch easier this time around than in December, but nonetheless still quite challenging!
Language note: After testing a new grading server image during this contest, it looks like we should be able to support C++17 and Python 3.6 by the next contest. We are also considering discontinuing support for Pascal, due to a steady decline in usage --- this contest, no USA students used Pascal, and the number of students who submitted solutions in Pascal was actually less than the number of students who accidentally clicked Pascal as their language of submission, intending something else! Details will be posted on the main page if / when any of these changes officially happens.
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 Benjamin Qi, Spencer Compton, Dhruv Rohatgi, Andi Qu, Shreyas Thumathy, Hankai Zhang, Danny Mittal, Chris Zhang, Nick Wu, and Riya Arora. 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: TwoSigma, D.E. Shaw, and Ansatz Trading, and a new sponsor who we are thrilled to welcome to the USACO family: X-Camp.
We look forward to seeing everyone again for the February contest.
Happy coding!
- Brian Dean ([email protected])
Professor and Chair, Division of Computer Science, School of Computing, Clemson University
Director, USACO