Thoughts on the problems. Overall, seemed like a good problem set this time through. A few problem descriptions were a bit wordy, but that happens. All the teams got at least one problem. Two teams got 6, another got 5 and bunch more with 3 and 4. So overall, looks like a decent set. One of UD's EE/CIS servers took a nosedive during the contest. I don't know if we caused it or not. (The machines are usually hardened a bit more than that, so I suspect something else was the main cause. We may have just exasperated the problem.) The machine did act flaky early on which caused the judging to pause for a few minutes. And then the judging stopped for a while when the machine died and I had to restart elsewhere. ------------------ Problem 1: Scientific Notation: ** Only real problem that happened here was printing more than 2 digits after the decimal place. As stated in the problem, I wasn't picky about the format (e.g., 1.00e9, 1.00e+09, 1.00e09 and so on were all accepted). ------------------ Problem 2: Benford's Law: ** I think for Benford's law, you should probably count 1.23 as a single number. But I thought it might be easier to parse if you count them as two separate numbers. ** One issue to consider: when parsing numbers out, you have to keep in mind that the number may *end* the line. (No number spans multiple lines, but a number may end the line.) Some solutions didn't realize that and missed some numbers. ------------------ Problem 3: Which Way to the Exit: ** The equidistant exit thing seemed to trip up some teams. ------------------ Problem 4: A Silly Stack Language: ** DBG_PRINT violates the semantics of a stack, so you have to either use something else (like vector) or handle DBG_PRINT carefully (maybe by using 2 stacks or something). ** There were some solutions that didn't properly pop the stack when there was only 1 word for an operator that required 2 pops. ------------------ Problem 5: Network Diameters: ------------------ Problem 6: Fantasy Football Schedules: ** Initially it looks like you may have to worry about 16! combinations, but that's not the case. The semantics of the scheduling mean you have to worry, at most, about 9! combinations, which can be done via brute force (though, there's probably better ways of doing it).