Welcome to USACO'99


USA Computing Olympiad Team to IOI 1999
Dan Wright(S), Percy Liang(B), David Chen(B), and Ben Mathews)B)

  

 

This year the USACO  conducted three Internet-hosted contests, several Challenge of-the-Week's, the National Championship, and the summer training camp and Finals.Also, teams from the United States attended the Baltic Olympiad in Informatics (BOI) in April, the Central European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI) in Septtember, and the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in October.
Internet Contests

Schedule
Continuing the highly successful Internet competition held last year, the USACO is holding three Internet contests (Fall, Winter, and Spring) to foster competition, recognize outstanding performance, and increase the level of expertise of pre-college programmers.

The Internet competitions have different formats: varying numbers and types of problems, varying time limits, and even varied entrance criteria. Most of the contests, though, emphasize individual competition and programming (vs. team contests popular in other venues). Each contest has two divisions; National, and International.

  • Nov 4-10, 1998 :
    The USACO Fall US Open. It is open to all pre-college students who have Internet access.
  • January 20-26, 1999 :
    The USACO Winter Tournament is open to all pre-college students who have access to the Internet.
  • March 3-9, 1999 :
    The USACO Spring Open is open to all pre-college students who have access to the Internet.
Challenge-of-the-Week
Rob Kolstad, has created a Challenge-of-the-Week (COW) for high school students interested in solving computer programming problems. It is maintained via e-mail at hs-computing@delos.com Send a message to: majordomo@delos.com. Include the text "subscribe hs-computing" in the body of the message. This is a wonderful opportunity for those seriously interested in making the final round of the USACO.
National Championship

Schedule
The USACO National Championship is a five-hour proctored competition that is conducted at local high schools under the direction of a local coordinator. A 1999 USACO National Champion and International Champion will be crowned.

  • April 14, 1999
Summer Training Camp

Schedule
USACO Olympiad Training Camp and USACO Finals, is held at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Approximately 15 students are invited by the USACO committee. All expenses are paid by USENIX. Four students will be chosen to represent the USA at the 11th IOI in Turkey.

  • June 15 - 23, 1999
New Criteria For 1999
We will use all contest results and many problem submissions as evaluation criteria for choosing attendees at the USACO training camp to be held in June, 1999. This means that candidates who show long-term strength (and/or growth) are more likely to be chosen for camp than those who have one lucky contest.
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We will be keeping a record of all submissions for the challenge of the week and will be asking some of you to write up your solution and its techniques to share with the `aces' on our list. To that end, we'll be trying to grade some of the weekly problems. Presume it will take a couple weeks. we'll announce those who do exceptionally well