General Information

The competition will be conducted online. We will be using the platforms Discord and HackerRank. Discord will be used to monitor participants to ensure fair play and will be the main means of communication and hosting.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

Any suitable operating system: Windows 7 or higher, or MacOS 10.11 or higher. Participants’ system must have an internal or external mic, camera and speaker, and must support screen sharing on discord. Participants must have Discord installed on their system. The competition will be conducted on the HackerRank website. All participants must create a HackerRank account for the same.

CATEGORIES

CATH CON will have two categories of minimum 200 participants for each:

  1. Junior – Grades 8 – 10
  2. Senior – Grade 11 and 12

Each category will have 4 rounds.

PREREQUISITES

LANGUAGES: Fluency in Java, Python or C++

TOPICS TO BE TESTED: Conditionals, Loops (Nested & Non-Nested), Arrays (Single & Double Dimensional, and may need to be mutable), String Handling and simple algorithms and manipulation techniques for all the same.

AWARDS

1st place- INR. 5,000

2nd place- INR. 3,000

3rd Place- INR. 2,000

All participants will be awarded participation certificates.

FACTORS FOR JUDGING

  1. Accuracy
  2. Time taken to complete

THE EVENT

ROUND STRUCTURE

The competition shall consist of a total of 4 rounds divided into three sets as outlined below. For each round only the first response of each participant shall be counted.

Set 1: Elimination Round

Eliminator 1 (E1) – On Friday, 9th August, 2024 6:00 PM

All junior participants shall attempt two easy questions and all senior participants shall attempt two medium questions for a duration of 1.5 hours. Questions shall be common within each entire category. The rounds shall be conducted on Discord. The participants will be divided into groups and each group will have one invigilator. Participants shall keep their videos on and mics unmuted and shall be required to share their screen.

All participants shall be ranked based on their score as per the scoring guidelines outlined below. After such ranking, the top 50 participants from each category shall be selected to participate in the qualifier rounds and the remaining participants shall be eliminated.

Set 2: Qualifier Rounds

Qualifier 1 (Q1) – On Saturday, 10th August, 2024 10:00 AM

Qualifier 2 (Q2) –On Saturday, 10th August, 2024 5:00 PM

The selected top 50 participants from each category shall attempt two questions, common to the entire category, per round. The time limit for each round will be 1.5 hours. The rounds shall be of increasing difficulty of questions. The rounds shall be conducted on the CATH CON 2024 Discord Server and the participants of each category shall be divided into 5 groups of 10 participants each, with each group connected to a different voice channel for ease of invigilation. Each such group shall have one invigilator. Participants shall keep their videos on and mics unmuted.

The participants shall be ranked based on their average score on the two rounds as per the scoring guidelines outlined below. After such ranking, the top 25 participants from each category shall qualify to participate in the final round and the remaining participants shall be eliminated.

Set 3: Finals Round

Finals (F) – On Sunday, 11th August, 2024 10:00 AM

The qualified top 25 junior participants shall attempt one medium question and the qualified top 25 senior participants shall attempt one hard question. Such a round shall last for one hour. Questions shall be common within each entire category. The round shall be conducted on the CATH CON 2024 Discord Server and the participants of each category shall be divided into 3 groups of 10 participants each, with each group connected to a different voice channel for ease of invigilation. Each such group shall have two invigilators. Participants shall keep their videos on and mics unmuted and SHALL BE REQUIRED to share their screen as well.

The participants shall be ranked based on their score of the finals round (F), only, as per the scoring guidelines outlined below. After such ranking, the top 10 participants from each category will be awarded a certificate of distinction. The rest of the participants shall be awarded participation certificates.

 

Please note that all timings are in Indian Standard Time (IST)

SCORING GUIDELINES

For the purpose of scoring, the entire competition has been divided into three sets of rounds:  Set 1: Elimination Round, Set 2: Qualifier Rounds, and Set 3: Finals Round. All participants shall be ranked based on their combined score of all rounds of a particular set of rounds. The scoring system is designed to rank participants on the accuracy of their code(s) of a particular set of rounds. In case of a tie in accuracy of code(s) and time taken to complete shall be used to break the tie. In case of a tie in both, accuracy and time taken, such participants may be awarded a tie in that set of rounds, OR the ranking of such participants for that set may be decided by the CATH CON team based on other rubrics. The decision of the CATH CON team shall be final, binding and undisputed.