Comments

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  ottawastem  commented on July 16, 2019, 6:37 p.m.

  Agree!

  CCC should within Canadian high school math curricula and IOI syllabus!

  The CCC contest should have been fair for all students!

  CCC is not for the CCC organizers to knock down students!

  If CCC organizers want to challenge the students, get another contest.

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  nework  commented on March 5, 2019, 6:30 p.m. ← edit 3 →

  CCC has become terrible in recent years, thanks to Mr. Troy Vasiga and his team. Lots of server issues and crashes on the main CCC site since at least 2016. Some of them were blamed on the public. This doesn't happen in other programming contests but they got away with it because they didn't provide proper data to back their claims. It is easier to blame your server crashes on the users, your team, or the wind blowing than learn a bit about load balancing to prevent overloading your servers.

  This must have emboldened them to make the 2018 and 2019 Senior contests a disaster. Take for example Problem S3 in 2019 - Arithmetic Square. It has an efficient solution using advanced math such as linear algebra, matrices and Gaussian elimination. However, these subjects are not in the Canadian high school math curricula, let alone computer studies. Even grade 12 Calculus and Vectors AP doesn't touch these.

  In fact, linear algebra and Gaussian elimination are both SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED from the IOI syllabus, and have been so for many years. See here, on page 8: https://people.ksp.sk/~misof/ioi-syllabus/ioi-syllabus.pdf

  Maybe there are other ways to solve it but they'd be extremely contorted. Linear algebra provides a decisive advantage. Unsuspecting kids who attempt to circumvent or reinvent linear algebra will burn out their entire contest time and more. After all, it took Gauss some years to invent Gaussian elimination.

  The other problems in 2019 CCC Senior are equally out of whack. Either graduate level math research, like algorithms for the famous Goldbach conjecture, or endless debugging like the question with the triangles. No fun graphs or trees which make up the majority of the IOI syllabus.

  Since the organizers clearly didn't design this contest for a good IOI selection, nor to encourage the participants, they look like a bunch of one-trick-ponies who have ruined the contest on purpose. They get to look like geniuses to the corporate sponsors. You know, they get to show they are much smarter than the kids who couldn't invent on the spot all the advanced math that some of the organizers learned in university.

  Considering that CCC participants will soon compete with the CCC organizers for jobs and grants, botching the contest in 2016-2019 was a clever strategy for the organizers. They also got to make their favorites win by knocking down everyone else with unfair subject matter and server issues. Or maybe not?

  We'll see if the powers that be are willing to fix the 2019 CCC botch. They need to get someone more responsible to redo the contest and properly select the IOI team. This contest used to run smoothly before Troy Vasiga took over and wasted it year after year after year. CCC is a tremendous asset for Canadian education, it is important for thousands and thousands of students each year, and it deserves honest and competent leadership.

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  MishaLarionov  commented on March 8, 2019, 3:13 a.m. ← edit 2 →

  Complain about the syllabus, sure, but why would you go and accuse the organizers of a conspiracy?

  Makes your whole thing weaker imo, everything up to 2nd last paragraph makes sense (Not that I necessarily agree) but then it just becomes laughable

  To me it seems that they just lost focus and need to be held more closely to the IOI syllabus, although imo the problems this year weren't bad

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  p1geon  commented on March 6, 2019, 2:58 a.m.

  inb4 comments disabled again OMEGALUL

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  Plasmatic  commented on March 5, 2019, 11:21 p.m.

  this man has ascended

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  kipply  commented on March 5, 2019, 8:12 p.m.

  Imagine reading the editorial for S3 :o

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  CheezWhiz  commented on March 6, 2019, 6:55 p.m.

  Imagine reading the comments on s3 before they were taken down

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  Plasmatic  commented on March 6, 2019, 7:04 p.m.

  comment section was fun times

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  p1geon  commented on Feb. 27, 2019, 1:54 a.m.

  unfortunately I did not enjoy this year's CCC :c

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  Arihan10  commented on March 7, 2019, 7:06 p.m.

  Honestly, did anyone?

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  Zeyu  commented on March 7, 2019, 8:05 p.m.

  Despite not getting the score I was aiming to get, I enjoyed and did not regret taking the CCC this year. It was a learning experience where I hope I won't fall for the same mistakes next year!

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  nework  commented on March 12, 2019, 4:09 p.m. ← edit 2 →

  The contest should have been fair for all students, not heavily favor those who have already studied linear algebra outside Canada. That's why there is an IOI syllabus: to level the playing field, attract participants, and make the results worth something. (CCC is supposed to be Canada's feeder contest for IOI.) It would be a shame to pit one group of students against another like Mr. Troy Vasiga did, so here are some more thoughts.

  Even if some participants may win something with a low score, it's not as good as it may seem. Downgrading the honours threshold for seniors in 2018 actually reduced their bragging rights. There's a reason for that threshold. If a participant's future employees, hiring manager, or auntie in the old country find his/her name next to a score of 40% they may be less inclined to get invested in that participant. Would they care to research whose boo-boo it was or just take it as a red flag, as in overpromise and underdeliver? Their future kids, lit major spouse or future students might not understand either. No one plays rep soccer on a tilted field. Noncompliance requires a re-match, not just shifting the goalposts to "fix" the results like in 2018.

  You may think you're fine if you just wrote the junior contest. However, they shifted the thresholds for the junior awards too in 2018, but in the opposite way instead of the same as senior, as might have been expected for consistency and fairness. There was no good reason to penalize the juniors, statistical or otherwise. It looks like another crappy attempt by the CCC organizers to sweep their own mistakes under the carpet: shift focus by punishing the juniors or something.

  Why couldn't the organizers learn from their mistakes in 2018? It takes ill will to refuse to learn and get worse every year. That's no way to conduct business. It should automatically bring about a change at the top. Ill will is almost impossible to budge so I hope the contest will be adequately re-run by someone else this year. If not, we can expect worse and worse.

  I'm not going to take any further action with this because I have no idea whether it would be judged by the same CCC organizers, the only programming contest organizers ever who blamed server crashes on DDoS. Sorry I have no more time to continue here either. If you want the benefits you deserve and not be steamrolled by someone's worthless biases, conscious or not, you should feel free to complain to someone who cares. Good luck everyone!

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  kipply  commented on March 13, 2019, 1:07 a.m. ← edit 3 →

  Imagine employers caring about your CCC score :o

  Or, if that's too hard, imagine employers not being able to understand percentiles and rankings when they see the CCC results document :o

  Or, If tHaT'S tOo hARd, imagine that you actually scored high enough for your name to be published on the Honour Roll list (which, by the way, is the only scenario for which your name will be published) :o

  But seriously, my previous advice still stands!!!1 Imagine reading the editorial for S3!!1! To take it a step further, imagine a c t u a l l y u n d e r s t a n d i n g it

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  chrollo  commented on March 13, 2019, 11:35 p.m. ← edited →

  ImAgInE iF wAtErLoO aDmIsSiOnS lOoKeD aT yOuR cCc ScOrE... oh wait

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  xiaowuc1  commented on March 12, 2019, 6:52 p.m. ← edited →

  Can you please back up your claim that this contest heavily favored contestants that knew linear algebra by either linking to an AC solution that relies heavily on linear algebra concepts that are not easily derivable by individuals with zero understanding of linear algebra, or by describing the solution in enough detail that it can be uploaded as part of the editorial to the problem?

  I am sure that plenty of people would be interested in a clean solution to S3 that did not depend on any casework.