Hello, DFW-CSTA Teachers! I'm a little late advertising Richardson's programming contest, but we've been deliberating a few things before releasing the full details. Let start with some important links: • Frozen Eagle website • Frozen Eagle registration • Frozen Eagle financial payment request • Frozen Eagle dry run (via HackerRank) • HackerRank • HackerRank supported languages New things for this year (for you teachers to know, not necessarily for students to know) 1. We've been asked if the written test would be brought back. Student organizers objected citing they wanted to focus on the programming problems versus written problems. Plus, no one wanted to proof-read and triple-check the problems for errors and extraneous solutions. Also, no one wants to grade tests. 2. We have new equipment this year in various labs. Some of the machines are VDI (thin-clients) and we won't be using labs with those computers. Three of our labs have desktop computers suitable for programming. We have a fourth one located in another part of the school. Bear with us as we sort this matter out. 3. There's a costume "contest." The students organizers want the participants to dress-up because of the theme this year. I don't know what the prize(s) are. 4. Our primary goal is to attain student approval of a well-run, well-judged programming contest. We do appreciate feedback from past year's contests, and we take them into consideration. Now, the the FULL details of the contest (copy & pasted from the Frozen Eagle website for your convenience)!
The 16th Annual Richardson High School "Frozen Eagle" programming contest is on 
Saturday, November 9th, 2019
 
This year's theme: COUNTRIES (not country like "yee-haw, howdy-doody" country; country as in "United Nations" and geographical countries).
 
Your teams are highly encouraged to dress-up representing a country of their choice. We know you'll dress up as "Americans," but let's be a bit more open-minded and cultured for once, shall we?
 
Format for Frozen Eagle 2019
  1. The contest is three-hours long.
  2. We are not administering the 40-question UIL-style test this year. We have in the past, but we're focusing on the programming portion.  
  3. Expect 12 programming problems.
  4. We are using HackerRank as our judging system. Each team must have their own HackerRank account (just one).  Signing up is easy! Go to HackerRank.com.
  5. Teams may receive partial credit for problems. For example, if a team solves a problem with the correct output for 3 out of the 5 test cases, they get 60 points. If they re-submit the same problem again and achieve the correct output for 5 out of 5 test cases, they get the full 100 points.
  6. HackerRank does not input from a file; its STDIN (Scanner(System.in) for Java, std::cin for C++, input() for Python, etc).
  7. Ties are based off of time. 
  8. We are supporting multiple programming languages. Please go to https://www.hackerrank.com/environment/languages for a list of all the supported languages.
 
Dry Run
We are asking students to do the "Dry Run Contest" before the contest. This is so students can get familiar with the HackerRank interface, understand the judging, and know where to view the leaderboard. Individual students may make and use their own account to try this; it doesn't have to be the team's account.
 
 
Teachers: you can try this out, too! Let's see if you can out rank your own students.
 
Schedule (tentative)
8:00 AM    Registration opens
9:00 AM    Competitors Meeting (mandatory)
9:30 AM    Programming contest begins (3 hours)
12:30 PM   Programming contest ends
12:45 PM   Lunch
1:15 PM    Awards
1:30 PM    Event ends
 
Divisions
We have two divisions: Novice and Advanced.
  • Advanced - any student may compete in the advance division
  • Novice - students who are new to competitive programming and/or have limited experience with programming may compete in the novice division. 
If you are unsure where to categorize your student(s), please have them complete the past novice Frozen Eagle packets.  If they are able to complete all 12 problems in under 2 hours, they're more than likely advanced-level.  
 
As with our past few contests, Novice and Advanced teams will have separate programming problems.
 
Teams
Each team may have up to three students. If you have a mixed-experience team with one or two members being advanced-level, its best to register the team as Advanced. It would be unfair to the novice teams who have limited experience.
 
Resources
Students may bring a reference book to the contest. Online access to documentation (Javadocs, C++ docs, Python docs, etc) is permissible. Searching or using any online resources for algorithms is prohibited (ex. StackOverflow).
 
Awards
We are awarding the Novice and Advanced divisions separately from 1st place to 6th place.
 
Cost
The cost is $50 per team. Here's a link to a Google Doc you can download or copy, and then fill out for your financial department in order to have payment sent to us from your school or district.
 
Food and Drinks
We will be providing lunch at the conclusion of the contest. Snacks & drinks are permissible! We encourage your students to eat a healthy breakfast and bring some light snacks and drinks to the competition to keep them going! Just remind your students to clean up after themselves before leaving.
 
Registration
You may register on the Google Form on this web page or go to http://tiny.cc/RHSFrozenEagle2019
 
We’re asking schools to register by Thursday, November 7th. It’ll make things much easier on us knowing how many schools/team are participating.
 
Questions
Please Email Henry Vo (henry.vo@risd.org) if you have any questions about this contest.