NCNA REGIONALS 2022-2023

NCNA REGIONAL SCHEDULE (Contest Date is February 25, 2023)

NCNA REGIONAL REGISTRATION

To register a team, please register the team on the ICPC Registration System for NCNA.

The early registration deadline is 11:59pm, Friday February 4.  Please register by this deadline to help us organize the contest. If you miss the early registration deadline, you can still register by the latest 11:59pm, Friday, February 18.

NOTE: The NCNA Region will not be charging a registration fee this year. However, individual sites might charge to help defray their costs.

NCNA REGIONAL RULES

The following contest rules are specific for the NCNA Region and conform to the ICPC Regional Rules for the 2022-2023 Regionals as proscribed by the ICPC Steering Committee.  Please refer to them for more complete information, as redundancy is minimized here. Note that for the reader’s convenience, the ordering of topics in this document is the same as in the ICPC Regional Rules.  Please read and save all rules for future reference. 

Mission

The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) provides college students with opportunities to interact with students from other universities and to sharpen and demonstrate their problem-solving, programming, and teamwork skills. The contest provides a platform for industry and academia to encourage and focus public attention on the next generation of computing professionals as they pursue excellence. 

The purpose of the North Central North America (NCNA) Regional Programming Contest is to bring together as many students from as many different institutions in the North Central North America region as possible to compete in a spirit of fun and excitement. 

Organization

The NCNA Steering Committee is responsible for establishing contest rules, policies, and guidelines for the NCNA Region. The Committee is composed of the Regional Contest Director (RCD), the Deputy RCD, selected Site Directors and other interested persons as determined by the RCD. They oversee the operation of the NCNA Region and assist with revisions of the NCNA Official Rules document. 

Team Composition

Each institution of higher education in the NCNA region is invited to sponsor one or more teams for the NCNA Regional Contest. 

The team’s coach must ensure that teams are fully registered in the ICPC Registration System no later than one week prior to the contest. The system may allow the coach to partially enter team members who must then complete their registrations.  A team is not eligible to compete until the RCD or designated Site Director has accepted the team in the web registration system. 

Where to Compete

The NCNA Region includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, Western Ontario, Manitoba, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and the UP of Michigan.  There are numerous sites distributed across this large area.  Particularly during the pandemic, there are sites to which visitors are excluded.  The region has responded by authorizing these sites and additional schools from which travel is not allowed or feasible to form private “micro-sites” that host just their own teams.  Otherwise, teams may register to attend any open site in the region.

If there is limited space for teams within a reasonable travel distance, sites should cooperate in prioritizing that space by ensuring participation by teams from a maximum number of schools.  One formula could be by having each school prioritizing their own teams, then accepting first the top team from each school before accepting any more. 

The region is not assessing any team fees this year because of the uncertainties of the pandemic.  Individual sites may assess a fee to be paid upon arrival.  Such fees will be announced in advance and would be intended to cover the actual costs of hosting the teams.  (At this time most sites are choosing to absorb costs.)

The NCNA Region has generally been accommodating with teams appealing to attend sites across regional borders.  Allowable reasons have included proximity of sites and incompatible contest dates.

Guest Team Participation

Guest teams which are not able to advance toward World Finals may be allowed to compete unofficially if the RCD and Site Director concur that there is adequate space and resources.  Fees may be assessed to cover costs.

Regional Contest Attendance

All team members are expected to attend the day’s activities, starting with Registration. The coach is expected to attend or be available by phone or online during contest activities.  All members must be present for the start of the Contest.  Exceptions can be made by agreement of the RCD and Site Director, but only if the problem set has not been released. 

In the event an exception is granted:

(1) No adjustments/allowances will be made to the team or the late team member—the contest will end 5 hours after it starts.

(2) No recap of the information provided at orientation will be provided, and no consideration (time or any other) will be given if any of that information is requested and cannot be provided in a timely manner.

Conduct of a Regional Contest

Public notification of accepted runs will be suspended for the final half hour.

A contestant may submit a claim of ambiguity or error in a problem statement by submitting a clarification request through the Kattis system.

Contestants are not to converse with anyone except members of their team and personnel designated by the RCD or Site Director.  Such personnel may include systems staff in the case of problems with the workstation or network, volunteer runners in the case of needing supplies or printouts, but in no case about the problem set itself.

In order to enforce this rule, only team members (NOT alternates or coaches) are allowed in the contest area (which includes any study area and restrooms). Coaches and alternates (and other spectators) are asked to remain outside of the contest area, in the separate room, if one is provided.  Team members should not leave the contest area except to use designated restrooms.

Scoring of a Regional Contest

The team solving the most problems wins the contest.  Ties are broken by the lowest total number of minutes taken to solve each problem, starting from the beginning of the contest and adding a 20-minute penalty for each incorrect submission for a problem that was eventually solved.  Remaining ties are broken by the earliest time of the final correct submission.  The final tie breaker is the earliest time of the first correct submission.

Regional Contest Computing Environment

Each team will be provided with one workstation that includes IDE’s, compilers, documentation, access to the Kattis contest management system, and a team account on an empty folder.  There will be access to a (possibly shared) printer.  There will be time prior to the contest for the team to test the whole system.  The team account will be either replaced or emptied after testing so that the contest begins with an empty folder. 

The programming languages of the NCNA regional contest include C, C++, Java, Python, and Kotlin.  All sites will have reasonably recent versions of C, C++, and Java.  Some sites may not have Python or Kotlin.  IDE’s, operating systems and workstations may differ.  Sites should make public their particular specifications and capacities.  Standard language documentation should be accessible, whether on the machines or via specified URL’s.

Only the allowed contest languages may be used to solve problems.  Teams are not allowed to utilize system calls to any other languages, such as, but not limited to, perl and python (unless using python of course).  Use of the Internet for anything other than access to Kattis and authorized standard documentation is prohibited.  Access to any other contest machine either physically or over the network is prohibited.  Changing any system or environmental paths on your computer may risk ruining the contest configuration for your machine.

Items that may or may not be brought into the contest area (including study areas and restrooms):

(a) YES – books *

(b) YES – printouts of code *

(c) YES – class notes *

(d) NO CDs, DVDs, thumb drives or any other USB device or machine-readable media

(e) NO laptops, NO PDAs, NO cell phones

(f) NO headphones/CD Players/MP3 players

(g) NO calculators at all. (Use the one on the computer)

(h) Case by case approval – electronic translators and dictionaries

*Teams from the same school should NOT share these resources!!

Disqualification

Any team that jeopardizes the integrity of the contest or violates the rules of the contest will be disqualified and the team members may be banned from competing in the North-Central Region. Some examples of such actions are:

• • • accessing the Internet in any way,
    • disrupting power to computers,
    • corrupting judging materials or the judging process,
    • collaborating with anyone not on the team (this includes using a portable phone),
    • disobeying site officials’ instructions regarding appropriate conduct.