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Problem Sessions

During the course there are four problem sessions, consisting of a number (typically 6 or 7) problems.  The problems are solved in groups of two students during 4.5 hours.

Of the four problem sessions, the results are only counted in the three where you perform best.  On these sessions, each solved problem gives 3 grade points to the "LAB1" module.

Part of the challenge during problem sessions is to identify which of the problems are the easiest, since you should only expect to solve a small number of them.  During each problem session, you will be able to see which problems the other groups are solving (or attempting to solve), to help you with this selection.  Links for this will appear on the popup19 page in Kattis. Links to an external site.

In addition, the contest KTH Challenge 2019 (Date TBD) may also be counted as a problem session.  Each problem solved here might not give 3 grade points (as in a normal problem session).  We will make an assessment after the contest how many grade points each problem in KTH Challenge will give.

General advice for the problem sessions:

  • Try to find the easy problems! Read all the problems -- don't start coding just because you find a problem that you think you know how to solve, there may be an even easier problem to start with. Keep track of the result board of what others have solved.
  • Having one completely solved problem when the time is up is better than having several half-finished ones. Try to plan accordingly -- initially it can be useful to work on several problems in parallel, but towards the end, focus on one problem at a time.

Rules for the problem sessions:

  • You may only use a SINGLE computer per group for coding, but it can be your own laptop if you prefer it over the stationary computers.
  • You may use a second computer for reading problem statements and looking at the result board, and ONLY for these two purposes.
  • You may use prewritten code that you wrote yourselves, e.g., lab solutions.
  • You may look up algorithms on wikipedia or similarly, but you may not use code/solutions.
    Encyclopedic material such as Wikipedia or Mathworld is fine to use, but you may not search for resources specific to the given problems (e.g., a page that explains how to solve the given Kattis problem).
  • Try to keep noise levels down -- keep in mind that this is an exam.