Category Archives: E-Lite

E-lite 2014 Programming Senior Finals Solutions Part1

Here is the editorial for the Senior Programming Finals. The contest can be found here

Problem1. Odd
This was a straightforward question. Only perfect square numbers have an odd number of factors. Though this can be seen by observation(and is sufficient for solving this problem), you may want to know how we formally prove this:
Assume that there is a perfect square N. Let A be the set of natural numbers which are strictly smaller than floor(square_root(N)) . Let B be the set of natural numbers derived form A such that for every element(a) belonging to A there is a corresponding element N/a in . The sets A and B do not intersect since if they did, a=N/a => a^2=N => a is the square root of N, but the square root of N does not belong to set A and we have a contradiction. Since these sets do not intersect, the total number of factors of N is 2*k + 1(where k is the number of elements in A, and 1 extra factor is the square root of N). Thus, N had an odd number of factors.
So, we need to output the sum of the first N perfect squares(where N was given in the problem) modulo M. The formula for that is N*(N+1)*(2*N+1)/6.
Some of you had a problem outputting the answer modulo 10^9 + 7.  This is where language matters : python can easily handle large numbers and you could have just done (print ans % M) to get your solution accepted. Its different with C++ however since there can be overflows while handling large numbers, You can read more about modulo operations here. Another common mistake was using x^y over pow(x,y):  x^y does not mean x raised to power y in C++, it means x XOR y.

Problem2. Walk Over Me
This is a classic Dynamic Programming problem. First of all you would need to figure out the intersection points, since the arrays are sorted this can be done in linear time. After this is done, the recurrence is simple,
maxSum(i) = max_(over all intersections j<i){ maxSum(j) + branchSum(j..i) }
For the people who got interviewed, the above recurrence is what I wanted as an answer: when we are given the optimal solutions to 1..i-1, we can find the optimal solution to i using the above recurrence.

Problem3. Mad Scientist
This was a tough problem to solve if you are not familiar with graphs. Unfortunately, some people jumped to this problem without attempting the first one(!). How you choose the problems pretty much decides how well you do in a programming contest.
For each pair of chemicals which can react, we add an edge in the graph. Once we have this information in a graph, we can find the “connected components” of this graph. When two chemicals are in a connected component, it basically means there is a sequence of links by which one can reach one of the chemicals starting from the other. For example, if A reacts with B, B reacts with C, and A reacts with D, then A,B,C,D form a connected component. Note that the order of adding chemicals within a connected component does not matter, the final power after adding all the chemicals is always initialPower * 2^(Size of Component – 1). So, the solution is to form the graph and then report the answer as 2^(V-number of  distinct connected components).

Problem4. Non Zero
This was an AdHoc implementation problem. Going from the left, maintain a counter recording the position of the last zero. Whenever a nonZero element is seen, swap that element with the element at counter, and increment the counter. I think the above is better understood by some code:

nonZero

Problem 6. Knights
This was a relatively hard graph problem. Consider the N*N squares on the (chess?)board as vertices. Then find the shortest distance between each pair of vertices. I used Breadth First Search to do this. The running time of this step is O(N4). Floyd-Warshall is not recommended here, since the graph is relatively sparse, and using it will cause solutions to time out. Then we wish to find the optimal point for the knights to gather at, and the total distance they need to travel to get there. For this, we iterate over each of the N*N candidate points and for each candidate point, we sum the distance each knight would need to travel to get to that point. Then we find and print the minimum value among the so-calculated distance sums of each point. The running time of this step is O(N2*M), which simplifies to O(N4) for lazy implementations, like my own. The total running time is hence O(N4).

Exun e-Lite 2014

The Exun Clan presents Exun e-Lite 2014, Exun’s annual recruitment event open to all students from classes 6th to 11th. The event will be divided into two categories :

The Onsite Events will be held through two days, i.e., Tuesday, 15th July, 2014 and Wednesday, 16th July 2014. and will comprise of a myriad of events all connected to the diverse and ever changing world of technology. Further details are availablehere.
Registrations for the Onsite Event are now closed.

Exun e-Lite 2013 Creative Event Finals

The following students must report to the Web Resource Centre for the e-Lite Creative Event finals on Monday, i.e. 5th August 2013, in the 5th period:

  • Anumay Mishra
  • Abhishek Anand
  • Tanmay Bansal
  • Devansh Gandhi
  • Abhinav Chaddha
  • Prannay Khosla
  • Pratham Joshi
  • Mallika Gupta
  • Markendey Khanna
  • Anirudh Goyal
  • Pranit Chaddha
  • Suvansh Manektala
  • Arnav Singh

All events details will be given on the spot.

Note : The finals will be attempted individually by all participants. All necessary software will be provided to the participants.

Exun e-Lite Creative Events Results

The following students have been selected for the second round of the creative event in their respective fields (In no particular order):

  • Anumay Mishra
  • Abhishek Anand
  • Tanmay Bansal
  • Devansh Gandhi
  • Abhinav Chaddha
  • Prannay Khosla
  • Pratham Joshi
  • Mallika Gupta
  • Markendey Khanna
  • Anirudh Goyal
  • Pranit Chaddha
  • Suvansh Manektala
  • Arnav Singh

Participants are requested to improve on their skill sets, since the standard of submissions was not quite up to the mark.We will soon announce the dates for the second round which will be a timed offline event(on-the-spot). It’s emphasis will be on simplicity and aesthetics(fonts,color combinations,arrangement of information).

We will be soon sending a mail to the participants who haven’t qualified informing them about the parts of their submission that did not meet the brief and lost them points.

 

Exun Elite Senior Programming 2013 Results

The e-Lite 2013 Senior Programming Finals were held on 10th May 2013. The teams, however, could not be ranked because every Non-Exun team was tied at a total score of zero. A re-Final would be conducted tentatively after the vacations. However, the purpose of conducting a re-Final would be defeated if the qualified teams do not improve their programming skills. The participants should be well versed in Dynamic Programming and Recursion at the event.  The following are some good resources to start with

g-ELite 2012

The ExunClan is organizing g-Elite 2012 for GIRLS of classes VI-IX on Friday, 17 August 2012.

What you should look forward to:

  • Quiz : Power up that grey matter and sharpen that neural network because this is the ultimate battle of the brains! You’ll be asked to recall everything ranging from modern gadgets, to latest software to popular internet phenomena! There will be two participants per team.
  • Group Discussion: Quick-thinking, confidence and coherence backed up by statistical data and facts ensure heated debates and discussions about topics that will be given on the spot. Make your point and accommodate other’s opinions to come out at the top! There will be individual participation.
  • Programming: Use your Arithmetic and Logic Unit to solve problems that have a simple and logical answer. Come armed with a pencil, paper and a keen logical aptitude.  The event is for students of classes VIII and IX. There will be two participants per team.
  • Creative Event:  Does the idea of creating something impressive from scratch excite you? Unleash your creativity in any digital medium, the only condition being that your work should be able to be viewed on a computer screen. Maximum number of people per team is three.  You may specialize in: Digital Imaging, Powerpoint, Flash Animation, Web Designing(HTML/CSS), Video Editing, 3D design or Audio Editing. More details will be uploaded shortly.

Visit exunclan.com/elite to register. Registrations are open between 10 August and 14 August.

Exun e-Lite 2012 Creative Event Prelims – Results

After viewing the submissions to the creative event, we have shortlisted the following students for the creative event finals:

  • Aditya Khandelwal
  • Vinamra Maloo
  • Kartik Bhatnagar
  • Markendey Khanna
  • Vibhu Pandey
  • Abhishek Vashishtha
  • Mohit Manchanda
  • Jivtesh Khurana
  • Simran Kaur
  • Nishant Mishra
  • Tanay Vardhan
  • S.Rohit
  • Harsh Vardhan Ballani
  • Shreevandana Kachroo
  • Srishti Gupta
  • Siddharth Bhogra
  • Tanish Pratap
  • Kushagra Samarth
The following students must report to the Shogun Lab tomorrow, i.e. 25th July 2012, (opposite the e-gurucool) for the finals in the 6th, 7th and 8th periods. All events details will be given on the spot.

Note : The finals will be attempted individually by all participants. All necessary software will be provided to the participants.

e-Lite 2012 (Seniors) – Group Discussion Prelims Results

Group Discussion Finalists

Note: The results are in no particular order.

  • Markendey Khanna (IX-G)
  • Abhishek Anand (IX-H)
  • Shikhar Arora (IX-H)
  • Karmanya Singh (X-L)
  • Nitin Mathai (IX-J)
  • Mrinaal Mittal (X-G)
  • Nikhil Ramesh (X-E)
  • Parth Mittal (X-F)
  • Angad Singh (XI-F)
  • Harsh Chandra (XI-C)
  • *Keshav Adhyay (XI-K)
  • Manik Panwar (XI-J)
  • Pallavi Singhal (XI-I)
  • Ravi Tripathi (XI-L)
  • Sharad Tara (XI-L)
  • Srishti Gupta (XI-K)
  • Vaibhav Bhutani (XI-K)

The finalists have to report tomorrow at 9:10 a.m. to the A.V.H.  for the GD finals.

Congratulations to all those who made it to the finals!

 
* Non-competitive