Competition for programmers №2

Project ttools.ru announces contest for programmers №2!

You can read about project contests in the “ Contests ” section of the blog ttools.ru

The experience of the previous competition was taken into account and reflected in the rules and plan for the competition
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About the task of competition # 2:

The task will be more difficult and interesting task of the competition # 1 . Nevertheless, from the experience of the first contest, I am sure that the strongest participants will be able to program the decision in the first hour. However, the volume and nature of the data for processing are chosen in such a way that with such a solution the computation time will be significant, which will automatically give an advantage to the participants, with a more optimal solution algorithm. At the same time, the optimization of the algorithm should not be so complicated that the time for its implementation was unjustified and did not give advantages to other participants. It will be required to find the most effective solution in the shortest possible time. I hope you will be interested to compete!


Competition plan:

1. March 14, 2011 at 14.00 Moscow time on the site ttools.ru will be published the text of the problem.
2. The initial data for the task is the file attached to the task text. For the second contest the file will be binary. The file size is 12,000,000 bytes, the size of the archive is zip 9,405,759 bytes. You can download the file in advance here now: konkurs2 . Just in case, you can check the correctness of the download with checksum: MD5 (konkurs2_task.zip) = 331d04e0de3eb4f3aa69906a014d427d (the hash is calculated by the plugin for far'a )
3. You can solve the problem in any convenient programming language.
4. The result of solving a problem is a file whose contents are unambiguously the right or wrong answer. There is only one correct answer. The source code of the decision algorithm is not required from the participant.
5. The competition is considered completed after the announcement of the completion of the competition, after that the answers are not accepted. The end of the competition will be announced if at least one correct answer is received during the processing of the answers, or if there are no correct answers, the competition will be stopped after a week. Responses will be processed once a day. The results of the competition (the list of participants who sent the correct decision) and the winner will be announced within one day after the end of the competition.
6. This time, the experience of the previous competition was taken into account, and therefore the prize money to the winner in this competition is not provided. The idea of ​​a cash prize provoked negative reviews and suspicions about the collusion of the winner and the organizer. In spite of this, positive feedback was received from the participants that they liked the idea of ​​holding contests, and that the main motivation is to compete in solving interesting problems, and not a money prize. Thanks to these people, contests will continue. I would like to preserve precisely this atmosphere of motivation to participate in contests and just such a club of participants. If you are not interested in solving problems without a cash prize, please do not participate.
7. As during the previous competition, a cash prize of 5,000 rubles was promised for the maximum number of solved competitive tasks - the promise remains in force. The result will be calculated on the basis of 10 contests. I will not in any way prove the fairness of the distribution of the prize, except for the given word. The prize was left only because it was promised earlier. It is easier to assume that it is not. If you do not like such conditions of participation, please do not participate. However, if you participated in the first competition, it makes sense to use the same e-mail for the second and all subsequent competitions.

Competition rules:

1. Anyone can take part in the competition.
2. Special registration for the competition is not required. Confirmation of participation in the competition is the answer option in the attachment to the letter at the e-mail address konkurs@ttools.ru. Important: the response file should be sent not in the archive, the file name must match your email address and have the extension .dat. Those. if your email address is “ivan65535@yandex.ru”, then the file in the application should be called “ivan65535@yandex.ru.dat”. Answers will be processed automatically and other letters to this address will be ignored.
3. Each member has only one attempt. If the file with the decision is sent, it is impossible to make corrections to your answer. If 2 or more different answer options are received from the participant, none will be counted.
4. The winner of the competition is considered to be one participant who first sent the correct decision.

The text of the task and all the necessary initial data of the second competition
will be published on the website ttools.ru on Monday, March 14, 2011 at 14.00 Moscow time.