ROUND 7 (November 7th) – “THE GRAND FINAL”
After almost two months of competition, the Grand Final happened. At this round, three challenges have been proposed: “EnterTheMatriz”, “NumerosReversos”, and “QuadradosEstranhos”. All the teams wanted to finish their participation in a great style, and they succeeded: 2 teams finished the three challenges, 8 teams solved two challenges and only 3 teams solved one.
The round started with five teams competing for the first place. After this hard dispute, the team “Asterístico” won the championship, followed by the teams “Rush” and “ASDF Group”.
The staff thanks for the effort and dedication of all participants, and we hope that competitors have enjoyed this unique opportunity. This year’s championship has ended, but we expect everybody’s support for next year’s, so that we can do a great championship like this one.
Click here to see the photos taken on this round!
___________________________________
Round 7 challenges and solutions
(Clique no nome do desafio para baixá-lo)
ROUND 6 (OCTOBER 31st) – “BLACKOUT”
Four challenges have been presented at this round: “EmissorDeCodigos”, “Sudoku”, “Popularidade”, and “NumerosFelizes”. The biggest number of challenges so far. Despite the surprise regarding the number of challenges, the teams organized themselves and the problem “Popularidade” had 10 correct submissions. But after that, they found difficulties. The main doubt was related to choosing the next problem. Most teams concentrated in trying to solve the problems “Sudoku” or “EmissorDeCodigos”. Among the teams, ASDF Group was the most successful, as they solved two challenges: “Popularidade” and “Sudoku”. Another team almost found the soluton for “NumerosFelizes”, but they got stuck with a “PresentationError” message.
Hint for competitors: distribute the problems between all team’s integrants, so that you can optimize the time.
Other valid observation is about the class Scanner. It’s very important to competitors to know these class’s function, because in many challenges, the data input must be totally implemented by the teams.
A brief blackout happened during this round, an because of that, all computers were shut down. The problem was solved and all teams gained 15 more minutes.
Anyway, after the 6th round, the competitors received their championship T-shirts (We want everybody using them next week!!)
Brace yourselves, the Grand Final will come on November 7th!
Click here to see the photos taken on this round!
___________________________________
Round 6 challenges and solutions
(Click on challenge’s name to download)
ROUND 5 (OCTOBER 17TH) – “PLOTS & THE BOOK IS ON
THE TABLE”
Everything went OK at BXCOMP II – Round 5!
At this round, three challenges have been presented: “Bricks”, “TipoSanguineo” and “O Senhor das Balsas”. The great novelty was found at the challenge “Bricks”, whose wording was in English. We realized that the teams did not have any problems with a foreign language, since this challenge was the most solved.
The wordings were other highlight at this round. We tried to do them in a more creative way to attract the attention of competitors, and let the reading easier. By the way, reading is always very important.
About the challenges: the problem “Bricks” could be easily solved if the teams realized that the number of bricks’s combinations followed the Fibonacci Series; “Tipo Sanguineo” was trickier for two reasons: it required a more careful reading of the wording, which explained how the human blood-type is composed, and the competitors had to discover all possible combinations.; at last, the problem “O Senhor das Balsas” required a good logic and a careful reading too, since there were crucial details to a correct answer.
Although no team has solved all challenges, each one was solved by at least one team. We want to congratulate team “Rush”, the only one that could solve two problems at this round.
PS: Next week, October 24th, there will be no rounds!! Therefore, take a good rest and prepare yourselves to the next round!
Click here to see the photos taken on this round!
___________________________________
Round 5 challenges and solutions
(Click on challenge’s name to download)
ROUND 4 (October 10 th) – “THE DEATH ROUND”
BXComp II’s fourth round occurred smoothly, without major problems, although it brought a killing surprise!
The round had three challenges: “Produto Escalar”, “Acima da Média”, and the so feared “Triângulo de Pascal da Morte”. The three challenges involved mathematical logic. The “Triângulo de Pascal da Morte” was by far the hardest of this round. Of the 10 teams that submitted their resolution to this challenge, only 2 could solve it. On the other hand, most of the teams went very well on the other 2 challenges. Almost everyone could do them! We congratulate the team “Asterístico” for their great performance on this round, solving the 3 challenges in about 1 hour with only 4 wrong submissions.
During this round, no major problems were identified, but the organization has some tips.
- It’s of paramount importance to read the problem statement. Sometimes, inattentive reading makes the teams fall into pranks that could be easily avoided. Thus, be careful!
- Remember studying some Java libraries that have been important in the challenges resolutions! Scanner and String have very important methods which could facilitate the resolution of the major part of the contest challenges. Thus, searching about that could save precious time!
We clearly realized that the teams are getting used to the time dynamic. We are very satisfied with the results the contest is presenting upon the freshmen.
Congratulations to everyone and ‘till next round (October 17 th)!!
Click here to see the photos taken on this round!
___________________________________
Round 4 challenges and solutions
(Click on challenge’s name to download)
Round 3 (october 3RD) – “BACK TO THE
CHALLENGES”
The third round of BXComp II was the most peaceful of all so far. Even after a week free from BXComp, freshmen are already adapted to the dynamics.
Because of problems faced in the last round, the competition returned to being held only at the laboratory 7.
The challenge consisted of 2 problems: “Meteoro” and “Piramide”. The novelty was that, in one of the challenges, the participants had to create their own method for reading the data input (something that was already done in the challenges presented so far). And the teams did well: 9 of those who sent submissions to the challenge “Meteoro” (which was delivered entirely empty, with no additional methods to help), 7 managed to solve it. We take this opportunity to congratulate the team “Unagi”, which was the fastest in solving two challenges, sending only 1 wrong submission.
In this round, the biggest problem was an inconsistency in the constraints of the challenge number 1 (“Meteoro”), which specified that the tests would only be for the first quadrant of the Cartesian plane, while in fact, they could be made across the Cartesian plane – that is, the input with negative numbers should be treated. The problem was identified during the round and all participants were warned. Importantly, after the round, a survey was conducted among all submissions sent before the participants were warned about the need to address the negative input. We confirmed that no team was hampered. And, since we’re talking about it, it’s important to notice that the restrictions passed in each problem wordings should not be implemented – they are there only to ensure that the tests are not outside a given range. So, there’s no harm treating them, but it’s not required, it’s optional.
Finally, another point highlighted by some competitors, was that, at this round , many have noticed the need to study some java libraries such as Scanner and String in order to achieve better performance in the competition, and not waste time with the syntax.
See you next round , which will happen next week on 10/10 on lab 7.
Click here to see the photos taken on this round!
___________________________________
Round 3 challenges and solutions
(Click on challenge’s name to download)
Round 2 (September 19th) – “TENSION, UNEXPECTED
PROBLEMS AND… PRESENTATION ERROR”
BXComp II’s second rouund started tenser. And it’s no wonder, this time it would be for real!
Seeking more comfort, this round was organized in two Laboratories (6 and 7), allocating 10 teams in each one. Just before the start of the round, the teams were informed about a new category of response from the correction system: “Presentation Error”. This response would be used if the team got a correct resolution from the challenge, but the output of their program had formatting errors (spaces and skipped lines). So the balloon popped, and the second round began. !
Right in the beginning, we had a few unexpected problems. The use of the second lab, with computers having different configurations, caused some organization issues. Although we had done tests in the new lab on the day before the round, we couldn’t cover all the possible problems.
The second unexpected problem was that some installations of the Netbeans IDE impacted the performance of 2 teams, that had to be relocated to different computers. To these teams, a little extra time was given at the end of round, as a way to make up for the time they had lost changing computers.
Structural difficulties aside, this round had 2 challenges: “Campo Minado” and “Equilibrio”. The greater difficulty compared to the last round was evident. However, we would like to highlight that even having only 2 teams that concluded the round, most of the submissions by the other teams received in response a “Presentation Error” message. This means that despite the adversities, many teams were able to solve the challenge(s)! They only lacked more attention to the answer’s format. Remember: everything about the output format (like the need to skip lines or spaces) will be explicit at the wordings – as it was told during the round.
Ultimately, because of the problems occurred on the execution of this round, the PET-SI group has decided not to publish a ranking right after the round. We realized that it is important to discuss about the best way to treat the round. We would appreciate the competitor’s comprehension and we announce that the ranking will be presented next week, just after we meet to discuss the situation calmly (we meet on Tuesdays).
We would like to congratulate the two teams that have done both challenges: “Asterístico” and “Rush”. And would like to ask all the teams to continue on the championship, because we still have 5 more rounds coming. Like we saw last year, the championship gets more thrilling and defiant by the next rounds.
The next round will occur only on October 3rd, so we will have a lot of time to practice and to do a more exciting round.
Click here to see all the photos taken on this round!
Tip: downloading the possible solution from each challenge can help understanding the mistakes you made and preparing for the next rounds.
___________________________________
Round 2 challenges and solutions
(Click on challenge’s name to download)
ROUND 1 (September 12th) – “Let the games
begin …”
The first round of BXComp II occurred last Wednesday (09/12/12) and had the participation of 19 among the 20 teams registered. With the lab 7 almost full because more than 70 competitors were present, plus the event organizers, teams were instructed how they should handle the system BOCA, and each freshman answered a questionnaire about personal experiences and expectations about BXComp.
Then, playtime was over, and the first round started: “Let the games begin …”. The teams were challenged to solve 2 problems, called “Somatória” and “Jokenpo.” First, it was proposed to formulate an algorithm to calculate a finite series based on two values A and N. And the second challenge requested the contestants to define the winner of a jokenpo contest, based on an N amount of matches and a string with the choices of each player in each of the N matches.
Was it easy? Medium? Difficult? It is relative, but if you want to see the wordings and the solution proposed by the organization, visit the links at the end of this post to download the challenges.
The first step of BX was worth only 2 points, one for every challenge solved, and it didn’t consider the time or the wrong amount of submissions. But, from the second round on, it will get serious! We advise all teams to practice for the next rounds, as they will be worth 12 points, and time will be a crucial factor. Brace yourselves! Next Wednesday has more coming!
Click here to see the photos taken on this round!
___________________________________
Round 1 challenges and solutions
(Click on challenge’s name to download)
