Scoreboard Help		    Wed Oct 18 12:00:20 EDT 2000


Interpreting the Scoreboard
------------ --- ----------

The scoreboard lists for each team (contestant account)
a `score' for each problem and a total time.  Teams with
more problems correct rank higher in the scoring, and
the total time, which is just a sum times to solve each
problem, is only used to rank teams with the same number
of problems correct.  The team with the smallest total
time ranks highest among all teams with the same number
of correct problems.

Teams are sorted in rank order in the scoreboard, with
highest ranking teams first.

For each team and problem a problem score is given.  The
problem score `......' means the team has not submitted
the problem.  `..../N' for some decimal number N means
the team has submitted the problem N times but all these
submissions are incorrect.

If a team has submitted a correct solution for a prob-
lem, the problem time is the elapsed time between the
start of the problem and the time of the correct solu-
tion.  The problem score on the scoreboard can represent
this as `M:SSsN', with decimal numbers M, SS, and N,
meaning that the problem time is M minutes and SS sec-
onds, and there were N submissions, including N-1 incor-
rect submissions before the first correct submission.
The `s' means the time SS is in seconds.

`H:MMmN' instead means the time is H hours and MM min-
utes, rounded down to the nearest minute.  `D:HHhN'
instead means the time is D days and HH hours, rounded
down to the nearest hour.  `DdN' means the time is D
days, rounded down to the nearest day.  The choice of
time unit, s, m, h, or d, is made to give the problem
time to the greatest accuracy within 6 display charac-
ters, including the unit character.  However the actual
problem time used for computing the total score below
is always in seconds.

For a formal contest the start time of all problems is
the start time of the contest.  For informal contests
the start time of a problem may be the time the problem
was gotten by the team using hpcm_get, or the time the
team got its first problem using hpcm_get.

The total time is the sum of the correct problem times,
in seconds.  For some contests a penalty is added for
each incorrect submission of a problem before the cor-
rect submission of that problem.  Typical penalties, if
they are being used, are 10 to 20 minutes.  There is no
penalty for incorrect submission of a problem never
submitted correctly by a team.

In some contests, problems are scored first by an auto-
judge, and then if they are not completely correct, the
score is reviewed by a human judge.  If you see a `*'
preceding any problem score or any total time, this
means that one or more submissions used to compute the
score or time have been scored incorrect by the auto-
judge, but are still awaiting review by the human judge.