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Canadian Computing Competition

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The Canadian Computing Competition (CCC) is a national programming competition for secondary school students in Canada. Sponsored by the University of Waterloo, the CCC takes place once a year. Stage 1 is a written at high schools and can be written in the programming language of the students' choice, with only a few, such as Maple and Mathematica, disallowed. There are two levels of problems presented, Junior and Senior. The top 20 (or so) students in the Senior division are invited to the University of Waterloo to participate in Stage 2. In Stage 2 students are restricted to languages permitted at the IOI, which currently includes only C, C++ and Pascal. The top 4 students at Stage 2 are selected for the Canadian IOI team. (Since 2005 the contest has also been offered to students in Hong Kong, and since 2007 to students in Beijing also, but they are not eligible for the Canadian IOI team.)

In addition, the top two students (for both Junior and Senior) of each region receives a plaque and $100. In case of a tie, $100 is awarded to each student, rather than splitting the $200 among more than two individuals; this is rare however. The regions are West (BC to Manitoba), Ontario North and East, Ontario Metro, Ontario Central and West, and Quebec and Alantic.

The questions in the CCC are algorithmic in nature, designed to test a student's ability to design and code algorithms rather than their knowledge of APIs or language-specific features. Stage 2 is much more difficult than Stage 1, but is still much easier than the IOI. The problems generally have memory, time or stack constraints (especially in recursion) forcing the programmer to find efficient solutions; inefficient solutions are unlikely to earn full marks.

Contest Layout

Stage 1

The contest is three hours long. There are five questions, each worth 15 points, for a total of 75. The grading is done by teachers, who then send the results to Waterloo to be verified.

Stage 2

At Stage 2, the contest is two days long, with three hours to do three questions each day (in 2009 four hours were given). There are six questions, each worth 100 points, for a total of 600. This score is added to four times the Stage 1 score (for a total of 900 points) to determine a final selection index for the IOI team. Bronze, silver, and gold medals are awarded, with each competitor receiving a medal; winners of gold medals proceed to the IOI. Cash prizes of $500 (gold), $250 (silver), and $100 (bronze) are awarded also.

See also

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