Frequently Asked Questions
How Can We Help You?
To participate in a coding contest, you need an Access Code with a Non-Math Credit, which can be purchased from the Caribou Shop on our main math site. Alternatively, a School can buy a School Wide Non-Math Pass, unlocking all Coding Contests in the Caribou Cup year for all their students. Pricing is available on the Coding Contest Dashboard.
You can also get an access code by redeeming a voucher for non-math contest access, if you have one.
Depending on your sponsor status, you can download either student or school non-math vouchers via the "Create Voucher Codes" tab on your Sponsor Main Menu. A student non-math voucher can be redeemed for a single non-math credit (good for one contest for one student), while School non-math vouchers can be redeemed to give a school wide Non-Math pass for the duration of the current Caribou Cup. A school wide pass provides an unlimited number of credits for the students of that school.
If you are not a Caribou Coordinator and are looking to redeem a student voucher code, you can redeem it on our public voucher redemption page. If you are a Caribou Coordinator, you can redeem both student and school non-math voucher codes in the "Redeem Voucher Codes" page on your coordinator homepage on the math site.
Once you have your access code, log into the Coding Contest site. There, you sign in using your Access Code and the first and last name registered alongside the code.
Once you're logged in, you can switch to the "Contests" tab to see the list of scheduled contests, in addition to a set of "Practice" contests you can use to practice and familiarize yourself with the contest structure. On the day of a coding contest, you can click on the checkbox to the left of the contest you wish to participate in to start the contest.
Only send us an email after you've read through the FAQ and still have an issue, or if there is a major bug. Our email address is: [email protected]
You can see a list of scheduled Coding Contests the Coding Contest Homepage.
There are three different levels of contest, Beginner, Junior, and Senior, which act like grade levels. However, the coding contests themselves are not tied to grade level. You can participate in any of the contests regardless of your school grade; we simply recommend that you choose the contests you feel are appropriate for your skill level. You can login as a Guest and do some of our Practice contests to get a feel for the difficulty of each level.
The 'All Submissions' tab contains all of your past code, scores, and error logs. Therefore, you can use it as a testing environment to improve your code as well as debug it if there are any errors when checking the error log for each submission. For 'Final Submissions' one can have only 1 final submission for each question. This submission contributes to your point total.
You can submit your program/solution in any programming language and only need to submit it in one of the supported programming languages for each problem. Our system currently supports the following programming languages: C, C++, Python 2, Python 3, PyPy 3 and Java.
Points are awarded based on the number of our test cases you pass for each problem. The time spent by the program and the amount of memory used cannot exceed the limits listed under each problem. When multiple people have the same amount of points, they are ranked based on the amount of time spent on the contest, with fewer time spent being better. Program length, memory usage, and efficiency is not a factor in determining participant ranking.
Currently, coordinators are able to see all their students' submissions and results, and have the role of communicating problems to Caribou if any arise. Students do not NEED coordinators to participate.
There are no prizes currently, but we may add them in the future.
Before running your program, we preprocess your submission, which includes removing all included libraries from your program and adding our own predetermined list of libraries. Therefore, no libraries you include will be used when evaluating your program. We will include all necessary libraries to solve the problems we give you. This is done for all langauges to ensure fairness and enforce program security. The complete list of available libraries is available in our Submission Guidelines.
Student are only allowed to use the internet to edit code, compile code, submit to a contest, or consult official programming language documentation. You can see some examples of official documentation in the rules section of the homepage.
A Practice contest is any contest with 'Practice' in the name of the contest (ex. Beginner Practice Contest). Practice contests are available to guests without Access Codes and don't require a Non-math credit to participate. We recommend trying them out to get a feel for the contest structure and the difficulty of each level of Contest.
Prior coding knowledge is needed to be successful at writing the coding contest. You can easily learn the basics of python or one of our supported coding languages via online tutorials such as w3schools to be able to attempt our Junior coding contest. We reccommend you start with python and learn up to the 'arrays' section on w3schools, as it is one of the easier langauges to pick up. Then, you should have most of the skills to be successful at the Junior Contest.
Unfortunately, there are currently no solutions, but you can most likely find ideas to solve the problems if you look online.
To participate in a coding contest, you need an Access Code with a Non-Math Credit, which can be purchased from the Caribou Shop on our main math site. Alternatively, a School can buy a School Wide Non-Math Pass, unlocking all Coding Contests in the Caribou Cup year for all their students. Pricing is available on the Coding Contest Dashboard.
You can also get an access code by redeeming a voucher for non-math contest access, if you have one.
You can also get an access code by redeeming a voucher for non-math contest access, if you have one.
Depending on your sponsor status, you can download either student or school non-math vouchers via the "Create Voucher Codes" tab on your Sponsor Main Menu. A student non-math voucher can be redeemed for a single non-math credit (good for one contest for one student), while School non-math vouchers can be redeemed to give a school wide Non-Math pass for the duration of the current Caribou Cup. A school wide pass provides an unlimited number of credits for the students of that school.
If you are not a Caribou Coordinator and are looking to redeem a student voucher code, you can redeem it on our public voucher redemption page. If you are a Caribou Coordinator, you can redeem both student and school non-math voucher codes in the "Redeem Voucher Codes" page on your coordinator homepage on the math site.
Once you have your access code, log into the Coding Contest site. There, you sign in using your Access Code and the first and last name registered alongside the code.
Once you're logged in, you can switch to the "Contests" tab to see the list of scheduled contests, in addition to a set of "Practice" contests you can use to practice and familiarize yourself with the contest structure. On the day of a coding contest, you can click on the checkbox to the left of the contest you wish to participate in to start the contest.
Once you're logged in, you can switch to the "Contests" tab to see the list of scheduled contests, in addition to a set of "Practice" contests you can use to practice and familiarize yourself with the contest structure. On the day of a coding contest, you can click on the checkbox to the left of the contest you wish to participate in to start the contest.
Only send us an email after you've read through the FAQ and still have an issue, or if there is a major bug. Our email address is: [email protected]
You can see a list of scheduled Coding Contests the Coding Contest Homepage.
There are three different levels of contest, Beginner, Junior, and Senior, which act like grade levels. However, the coding contests themselves are not tied to grade level. You can participate in any of the contests regardless of your school grade; we simply recommend that you choose the contests you feel are appropriate for your skill level. You can login as a Guest and do some of our Practice contests to get a feel for the difficulty of each level.
The 'All Submissions' tab contains all of your past code, scores, and error logs. Therefore, you can use it as a testing environment to improve your code as well as debug it if there are any errors when checking the error log for each submission. For 'Final Submissions' one can have only 1 final submission for each question. This submission contributes to your point total.
You can submit your program/solution in any programming language and only need to submit it in one of the supported programming languages for each problem. Our system currently supports the following programming languages: C, C++, Python 2, Python 3, PyPy 3 and Java.
Points are awarded based on the number of our test cases you pass for each problem. The time spent by the program and the amount of memory used cannot exceed the limits listed under each problem. When multiple people have the same amount of points, they are ranked based on the amount of time spent on the contest, with fewer time spent being better. Program length, memory usage, and efficiency is not a factor in determining participant ranking.
Currently, coordinators are able to see all their students' submissions and results, and have the role of communicating problems to Caribou if any arise. Students do not NEED coordinators to participate.
There are no prizes currently, but we may add them in the future.
Before running your program, we preprocess your submission, which includes removing all included libraries from your program and adding our own predetermined list of libraries. Therefore, no libraries you include will be used when evaluating your program. We will include all necessary libraries to solve the problems we give you. This is done for all langauges to ensure fairness and enforce program security. The complete list of available libraries is available in our Submission Guidelines.
Student are only allowed to use the internet to edit code, compile code, submit to a contest, or consult official programming language documentation. You can see some examples of official documentation in the rules section of the homepage.
A Practice contest is any contest with 'Practice' in the name of the contest (ex. Beginner Practice Contest). Practice contests are available to guests without Access Codes and don't require a Non-math credit to participate. We recommend trying them out to get a feel for the contest structure and the difficulty of each level of Contest.
Prior coding knowledge is needed to be successful at writing the coding contest. You can easily learn the basics of python or one of our supported coding languages via online tutorials such as w3schools to be able to attempt our Junior coding contest. We reccommend you start with python and learn up to the 'arrays' section on w3schools, as it is one of the easier langauges to pick up. Then, you should have most of the skills to be successful at the Junior Contest.
Unfortunately, there are currently no solutions, but you can most likely find ideas to solve the problems if you look online.