I was thinking recently about such possibility. What if an ACM team members are practicing a lot together, have same code template, have same coding conventions, have same usual names of variables and functions, and have same library of prewritten code. It may happen that they write very similar (if not completely identical) source code for some problem. Especially, when a problem can be trivially reduced to some standard algorithm (like problem C from round 2 to max matching in bipartite graph). It looks like exactly what happened to you and natalia. I remember same thing happened with me and my ACM teammate, when we wrote almost identical solutions to some problem. Fortunately, it was just local trainings, so we weren't disqualified from anywhere, it was just fun to see almost same code written independently by two different people.
I want to note to admins that their team is very strong. They were 4th in the last ACM ICPC final and both Nerevar and natalia have red rating in TopCoder algorithm competitions. Although I don't even know personally, but I tend to believe that they didn't have any reason to cheat. And I hope that admins will reconsider their decision. On Oct 6, 1:11 am, dmitrymatov <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm in complete shock. We have been working hard for years to build > the unified team coding style, and now it is the reason for > disqualification:) > > You may ask, why I'm writing this post. I want to know your opinion, > especially opinion of the ACM ICPC participants. Look at the code. Is > it so specific to be written independently by members of the same > team? Do you believe me or do you think the same way as the jury? > > So... > > It's better to post the letter chain here (read from the bottom): > > 2009/10/5 Dmitry Matov <[email protected]> > > We met with Natalia today and guessed the reason together:). May > be you won't consider it as an appeal, but I'll try to explain the > similarity of our solutions. Natalia and I are members of one ACM ICPC > Team, Saratov SU#1. We have participated together for 4 years. We have > unified coding style and use the same patterns. We use the same > template file for our solutions. We use the same pdf with common-use > algorithms (on ICPC Finals such pdf is called Team Notebook), and we > do not hesitate to copy parts of the code from it. Ask any experienced > former ACM participant from your Code Jam Team. They will confirm that > the members of the ACM ICPC team should write code and even think the > same way if they want to reach success. The similarity is too > subjective concept, an it's so sad that you use such vague criterion. > We didn't co-operate during the contest, you can't prove the fact. You > are able to disqualify anyone using such criterions. > > 2009/10/5 Bartholomew Furrow <[email protected]> > > Dear Nerevar, > > While reviewing the source code submitted by all the > contestants, we discovered that your source code was similar or > identical to another user's. Specifically, you had code that was very > similar to user natalia's for C-small. Since entering the contest > multiple times is not allowed, and neither is co-operation with other > contestants, we have disqualified both of you from the competition. > > Regards, > Bartholomew Furrow > > On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 03:55, Dmitry Matov > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello. > > Sorry, but I dont't understand which of the rules I have > violated. Could you specify the exact rule or term? > I think it will be fair if I know the exact reason of my > disqualification. Only after knowing it I can decide whether to appeal > or not. > > Thank you. > > 2009/10/5 <[email protected]> > > Hello Nerevar, > > Unfortunately, we determined that your participation in Round 2 > was in violation of our Official Rules, as stated > athttp://code.google.com/codejam/rules.html, and you have been > eliminated from this year's contest. Please read through both our > Rules and our Terms & Conditions (available > athttp://code.google.com/codejam/terms.html) > thoroughly. If you would like to appeal your disqualification, or have > questions about it, contact us at programmingcontest- > [email protected] before October 6th at 19:00 UTC**, which is > roughly 38 hours after this email was sent. > > Regards, > The Code Jam Team --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "google-codejam" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-code?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
