MidAtlantic 2001 Problem Set, Data and Solutions

Here are the datasets and judges' solutions for the 2001 problem set. Each problem had at least three independent judges' solutions written for it, in addition to hand-checking test data and solutions. Submitted solutions were graded with diff, with the -w option used when the problem specification was not specific about the amount of whitespace. The judging was not fully automatic, and the output of each program is seen by the judge before the output of diff.

Comments

Some common observations made by the judges:

For problem A, the sample solution uses integer arithmetic. However, the data was chosen so that the most obvious floating point solution would work, as well. The most common mistake on this problem was failing to properly round or format the result. Some solutions failed to initialize their accumulator variable to zero.
For problem C, for solutions that had most of the problem correct, one of the common mistakes was failing to ignore terms consisting entirely of punctuation.
For problem D, the key realization was that you need to have two arrays, holding both the values of the current time step and of the next time step.
There are multiple valid solutions to the problem F dataset. These solutions were checked for manually (not using diff). Most incorrect solutions failed to discover the shortest path properly.

Clarifications

The following clarifications were issued during the contest. The problem set distributed is what was actually used during the contest. It was not edited to fully reflect these clarifications.

   Problem  : FDNY to the Rescue
   Question : How many fire stations can there be?  Can there be more
   than one fire station per intersection?
   Answer   : There can be no more than one fire station per intersection.

   Problem  : For the Porsche
   Question : is the min cost and max cost range inclusive, or exclusive?
   Answer   : inclusive

   Problem  : For the Porsche
   Question : The output format instructions refer to "Feature Set N." 
   Is this the number of the first customer who requested exactly that
   set of features? This phrase appears nowhere else in the spec.
   Answer : Replace the first paragraph of Output Format with the
   following:

The first line of output for each data set should indicate which data
set is being considered.  These should print "Feature Set N", where N
is the data set these results are for, counting from 1.

   Problem  : A New Growth Industry
   Question : if after we add the d[k] to the density of the point we
   get something outside the 0 3 interval, do we just make it 0 for
   negatives and 3 for positives or there will be no such case
   Answer : if the density drops below zero, it should be set to zero.
   if it rises above 3, it should be set to three.

   Question : if after we add the d[k] to the density of the point we
   get something outside the 0 3 interval, do we just make it 0 for
   negatives and 3 for positives or there will be no such case
   Answer : if the density drops below zero, it should be set to zero.
   if it rises above 3, it should be set to three.

   Problem  : Start Up The Startup
   Question : Should we round up our final answer to two decimal places?
   Answer   : The problem statement was ambiguous.

Please round your answers.  However, we have accepted truncated
results, as well.

   Problem  : Financial Management
   Question : what's the correct formatting for 0.00???

eg. $.00 or $0.00
   Answer   : $0.00

   Problem  : I Think I Need a Houseboat
   Question : Should an end of line be outputted after the "END OF
   OUTPUT." string?
   Answer   : yes

Data and solutions

Problem	Problem Name	Difficulty	Test Input	Test Output	Judge's Solution
A	Financial Management	Easy	pA1.in	pA1.out	checking.C
B	I Think I Need a Houseboat	Easy	pB1.in	pB1.out	erode.c
					houseboat.java
C	Start Up the Startup	Easy-Medium	pC1.in,	pC1.out,	docmatch.cpp,
			pC2.in,	pC2.out,	Search.java
			pC3.in	pC3.out
D	A New Growth Industry	Easy-Medium	pD1.in,	pD1.out,	newGrowth.cpp,
			pD2.in,	pD2.out,	newgrowth.java
			pD3.in,	pD3.out,
			pD4.in	pD4.out
E	Algernon's Noxious Emissions	Medium	pE1.in,	pE1.out,	emissions.cpp,
			pE2.in,	pE2.out,	algernon.java
			pE3.in,	pE3.out,
			pE4.in,	pE4.out,
			pE5.in,	pE5.out,
			pE6.in,	pE6.out,
			pE7.in,	pE7.out,
			pE8.in,	pE8.out,
			pE9.in,	pE9.out,
			pE10.in,	pE10.out,
			pE11.in,	pE11.out,
			pE12.in,	pE12.out,
			pE13.in,	pE13.out,
			pE14.in	pE14.out
F	FDNY to the Rescue	Medium	pF1.in,	pF1.out,	firehouse.cpp
			pF2.in,	pF2.out,	firehouse.java
			pF3.in,	pF3.out,
			pF4.in,	pF4.out,
			pF5.in,	pF5.out,
			pF6.in,	pF6.out,
			pF7.in,	pF7.out,
			pF8.in	pF8.out
G	For the Porsche	Hard	pG1.in	pG1.out	porsche.C,
					features.c
H	Oh, Those Achin' Feet	Hard	pH1.in	pH1.out	city_map.c,
					city.java