Rules

Rules Table of Contents

• Age Limits
• Teams
• Supervision
• Resources Allowed During Competition
• Entry Times
• Entry Cost
• Judging Correctness of Solutions and Awarding Prizes
• National Selection

Age Limits

Participants must be secondary school students to be eligable to participate in the ACPC. Students will therefore be no older than 18 years of age.

There are two divisions in the competition.

• Junior
  Up to and including 15 years old. This includes students turning 15 years after Jan 1 in year of competition (for , competitors must be born in or after).
• Senior
  16 years and over (younger competitors may compete in the Senior division). This includes students turning 16 years after Jan 1 in the year of competition (for , competitors born in or earlier must compete in this division).

The two divisions are differentiated by problem difficulty.

Teams

The ACPC is a team event. Schools may enter as many teams as they desire.

A team has access to only one computer during the competition. The use of this computer should be managed wisely to achieve the creation of as many solutions in the allocated time.

A team is made up of no more than three (3) students. A team can therefore consist of one, two or three people.

A student may not participate in more than one team.

Supervision

Supervision of teams during the competition is the responsibility of the nominating school. Schools must appoint a supervisor who will arrange supervision during the competition. The supervisor is most often the Computer Co-ordinator from the school but does not need to be able to write computer programs. The supervisor may not assist students during the competition.

The supervisor must:

1. Enter the school and teams using this website;
2. Ensure that each team has one computer with a compiler, editor and/or IDE installed and this computer has access to the competition website;
3. Ensure each team has access to an appropriate programming language reference;
4. Ensure each team has paper and pens/pencils for planning during the compeition;
5. Provide teams with their access password when it is time to compete;
6. Supervise teams during the competition ensuring there is no communication between teams; and
7. Contacting the competition organisers if any difficulties are encountered.

Where a student is studying outside normal schooling conditions (eg home schooling) the competition organisers should be contacted to arrange entry into the competition.

Resources Allowed During Competition

During the competition, teams are allowed access to the following.

• One computer.
• A compiler, editor and/or IDE in the team's chosen language
• A single language reference in paper or electronic form
• Paper and pens/pencils for planning

Teams will require access to the competition website to access problems and submit solutions. Accessing the Web for other reasons will disadvantage students as this will waste time. Solutions to problems will not be found on the Web.

Entry Times

The competition runs in a two hour time slot nominated by participating schools during the two week competition period.

Schools may enter their school or additional teams (as long as all teams compete simultaneously) any time up to the end of the competition. Schools may change their entry time any time prior to their existing entry time. If the school supervisor realises after the entry time that the teams are unable to compete at the allocated time they should contact the competition organisers.

Entry Cost

The cost to enter for Australian teams is $6.60 (incl. GST) for Australian teams and AU$6.00 for overseas teams.

Entry fees are to be paid by cheque for Australian schools and International Money Order for schools outsite Australia.

Judging Correctness of Solutions and Awarding Prizes

Initialy solutions are judged correct if they produce the correct output. Judges may discard a solution if it is found to be an invalid solution.

Prizes may be awarded to teams from either Junior or Senior divisions as the Judges see fit. Prize-winning teams are judged according to number of problems solved, time take to solve problems and the quality of solutions presented.