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Global Alignment with Scoring Matrix Description: Generalizing the Alignment Score The edit alignment score in “Edit Distance Alignment” counted the total number of edit operations implied by an alignment ; we could equivalently think of this scoring function as assigning a cost of 1 to each such operation. A...
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Genome Assembly with Perfect Coverage Description: Cyclic Chromosomes Recall that although chromosomes taken from eukaryotes have a linear structure, many bacterial chromosomes are actually circular. We represented a linear chromosome with a DNA string , so we only need to modify the definition of string to mo...
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Matching a Spectrum to a Protein Description: Searching the Protein Database Many proteins have already been identified for a wide variety of organisms. Accordingly, there are a large number of protein databases available, and so the first step after creating a mass spectrum for an unidentified protein is to se...
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Quartets Description: Incomplete Characters The modern revolution in genome sequencing has produced a huge amount of genetic data for a wide variety of species. One ultimate goal of possessing all this information is to be able to construct complete phylogenies via direct genome analysis. For example, say tha...
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Using the Spectrum Graph to Infer Peptides Description: Getting Real with Spectra In “Inferring Peptide from Full Spectrum” , we considered an idealized version of the simplified spectrum in which every cut through a given peptide was produced, so that the spectrum possessed all possible b-ions and y-ions cutti...
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Encoding Suffix Trees Description: Creating a Suffix Tree In “Finding the Longest Multiple Repeat” , we introduced the suffix tree . This data structure has a wide array of applications, one of which was to help us identify long repeats in a genome . In that problem, we provided the tree as part of the dataset...
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Character-Based Phylogeny Description: Introduction to Character-Based Phylogeny In “Creating a Character Table” , we discussed the construction of a character table from a collection of characters represented by subsets of our taxa . However, the ultimate goal is to be able to construct a phylogeny from thi...
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Counting Quartets Description: Introduction to Quartet-Based Phylogeny In “Quartets” , we introduced partial splits modeling partial characters on a collection of taxa . Our aim is to use the quartets inferred from partial splits to construct a phylogeny on the taxa. This procedure is called quartet-bas...
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Enumerating Unrooted Binary Trees Description: Seeing the Forest In “Counting Unrooted Binary Trees” , we found a way to count the number of unrooted binary trees representing phylogenies on $n$ taxa . Our observation was that two such trees are considered distinct when they do not share the same collecti...
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Genome Assembly Using Reads Description: Putting the Puzzle Together In practical genome sequencing, even if we assume that reads have been sequenced without errors, we have no idea of knowing immediately the particular strand of DNA a read has come from. Also, our reads may not have the same length. In 199...
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Global Alignment with Constant Gap Penalty Description: Penalizing Large Insertions and Deletions In dealing with global alignment in “Global Alignment with Scoring Matrix” , we encountered a linear gap penalty , in which the insertion or deletion of a gap is penalized by some constant times the length of the ...
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Linguistic Complexity of a Genome Description: Getting Repetitive We have seen that every genome contains a large number of repeats and noted that the Alu repeat recurs around a million times on the human genome. Yet exactly how repetitive is the human genome? To frame such a vague question mathematically, ...
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Local Alignment with Scoring Matrix Description: Aligning Similar Substrings Whereas global alignment (see “Global Alignment with Scoring Matrix” ) can be helpful for comparing genetic strings of similar length that resemble each other, often we will be presented with strings that are mostly dissimilar except f...
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Inferring Genotype from a Pedigree Description: Lying in Wait Single gene disorders can be encoded by either dominant or recessive alleles . In the latter case, the affected person usually has two healthy carrier parents, who were usually unaware that their child could inherit a deadly or debilitating genetic ...
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Maximizing the Gap Symbols of an Optimal Alignment Description: Adjusting Alignment Parameters As we change the parameters contributing to alignment score , the nature of alignments achieving the maximum score may change. One feature of maximum-score alignments worthy of consideration is the number and size of the...
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Identifying Maximal Repeats Description: Spies in the War Against Phages Figure 1 . A genomic region containing a CRISPR. Red substrings correspond to CRISPR repeats, and blue substrings correspond to unique spacers. Repeats are highly palindromic and fold into a hairpin loop when transcribed. In “Locating Res...
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Multiple Alignment Description: Comparing Multiple Strings Simultaneously In “Consensus and Profile” , we generalized the notion of Hamming distance to find an average case for a collection of nucleic acids or peptides . However, this method only worked if the polymers had the same length. As we have already ...
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Creating a Restriction Map Description: Genetic Fingerprinting Recall that a restriction enzyme cuts the endpoints of a specific interval of DNA , which must form a reverse palindrome that typically has length 4 or 6. The interval of DNA cleaved by a given restriction enzyme is called its recognition sequence ...
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Counting Rooted Binary Trees Description: From Unrooted to Rooted Trees Recall that a rooted binary tree is a binary tree for which the root is the only node of degree 2. Such a tree differs from an unrooted binary tree only in the existence of the root. Different phylogenetic methods may be better s...
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Sex-Linked Inheritance Description: Chromosomes Determine Sex Figure 1 . Morgan's two experiments on fruit fly eye color. In the first experiment, a white-eyed male is crossed with a purebred red-eyed female; in the second experiment, a red-eyed male is crossed with a white-eyed female. The results of Morgan's expe...
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Phylogeny Comparison with Split Distance Description: Quantifying Binary Tree Comparison We may often obtain two different phylogenies on the same collection of taxa from different sets of data. As a result, we would like to have a way of quantifying how much the two phylogenies differ. In the simplest case, w...
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The Wright-Fisher Model of Genetic Drift Description: Hardy-Weinberg Revisited The principle of genetic equilibrium is an idealistic model for population genetics that simply cannot hold for all genes in practice. For one, evolution has proven too powerful for equilibrium to possibly hold. At the same time, evol...
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Alignment-Based Phylogeny Description: From Characters Toward Alignments In “Creating a Character Table from Genetic Strings” , we used strings to create a collection of characters from which we could create a phylogeny . However, the strings all had to share the same length, which was a problem. In practice, ...
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Assessing Assembly Quality with N50 and N75 Description: How Well Assembled Are Our Contigs? As we have stated, the goal of genome sequencing is to create contigs that are as long as possible. Thus, after fragment assembly , it is important to possess statistics quantifying how well-assembled our contigs are. ...
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Fixing an Inconsistent Character Set Description: Pitfalls of Character-Based Phylogeny In “Character-Based Phylogeny” , we asked for the construction of an unrooted binary tree from a consistent character table . However, the assumption of consistency is often inaccurate, as many character collections derived f...
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Wright-Fisher's Expected Behavior Description: Reaching Population Equilibrium In “The Wright-Fisher Model of Genetic Drift” , we introduced the Wright-Fisher model of genetic drift . Although the effects of genetic drift are inevitable, we should be able to quantify how many alleles for a given trait will r...
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The Founder Effect and Genetic Drift Description: Strength in Numbers Charles Darwin is known first and foremost for his notion of natural selection , the elegant statistical fact that changes in populations are attributable to the observation that organisms better equipped to handle their environment are more like...
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Global Alignment with Scoring Matrix and Affine Gap Penalty Description: Mind the Gap In “Global Alignment with Scoring Matrix” , we considered a linear gap penalty , in which each inserted/deleted symbol contributes the exact same amount to the calculation of alignment score . However, as we mentioned in “Globa...
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Genome Assembly with Perfect Coverage and Repeats Description: Repeats: A Practical Assembly Difficulty Genome assembly is straightforward if we know in advance that the de Bruijn graph has exactly one directed cycle (see “Genome Assembly with Perfect Coverage” ). In practice, a genome contains repeats lon...
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Overlap Alignment Description: Overlapping Reads with Errors As also mentioned in “Error Correction in Reads” , the sequencing machines that identify reads can make errors. However, the problem that we considered in “Genome Assembly as Shortest Superstring” assumed that all reads are error-free. Thus, rath...
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Quartet Distance Description: Another Tree Distance In “Phylogeny Comparison with Split Distance” , we examined the split distance for comparison of different phylogenies on the same collection of taxa . Yet quartet-based phylogeny offers another way in which two phylogenies can be compared (see “Quartets...
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Finding a Motif with Modifications Description: Finding Mutated Motifs We have discussed at length the importance of motif finding in biology for genetic strings . However, searching for exact substring matches is of little use in applications because a motif can vary under the effect of mutation . Fortunately...
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Semiglobal Alignment Description: Gaps on the Ends are Free We have covered both global and local alignments . However, sometimes we need a hybrid approach that avoids the weaknesses of these two methods. One such alternate approach is that of fitting alignments outlined in “Finding a Motif with Modifications...
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Finding All Similar Motifs Description: The Case of Mutated Repeats In “Finding a Motif with Modifications” , we considered a problem in which we were given a motif and a long string (perhaps representing a genome ), and we aimed to find the "closest" substring of the long string to the motif. In that probl...
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Local Alignment with Affine Gap Penalty Description: Building Upon Local Alignments We have thus far worked with local alignments with a linear gap penalty and global alignments with affine gap penalties (see “Local Alignment with Scoring Matrix” and “Global Alignment with Scoring Matrix and Affine Gap Pe...
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Isolating Symbols in Alignments Description: How Much Does it Cost to Align Two Symbols? As we saw in “Counting Optimal Alignments” , there will usually be a huge number of different optimal alignments of two given strings . In this problem, which represents a first attempt to understand how much optimal alignm...
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Identifying Reversing Substitutions Description: Reversions Complicate Phylogenies Figure 1 . Illustration of an amino acid's reversing substitution after two point mutations. In “Fixing an Inconsistent Character Set” , we mentioned how the construction of a phylogeny can be complicated by a the reversion ...
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#exclude<scoring> Description: You are participating in a programming contest cup. The cup consists of a series of programming contests, followed by a final at the end of the season for the $15$ top ranked contestants in the cup. With only one contest left to go before the final, you are starting to wo...
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#include<scoring> Description: As you may know, LTH Challenge is part of a series of seven competitions called the Swedish Coding Cup. Each contest in the series gives the contestants a number of points depending on how well they place in the contest. After each contest, scores are assigned according to t...
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'S No Problem Description: The Yllihc Engineering and Technological Institute (YETI), located in northern Snowblovia, has two problems: snow and money. Specifically, they have too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Every winter (and fall and spring, for that matter) the campus is covered ...
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(More) Multiplication Description: Educators are always coming up with new ways to teach math to students. In 2011, an educational software company, All Computer Math (ACM), developed an application to display products in a traditional grade school math format. ACM is now working on an updated version ...
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(un)Fair Play Description: It is not an easy job to be a coach of a football team. (A note to our American friends: football = soccer.) Especially if you do not coach great teams like Ajax, Inter, Dynamo (ok, fill in the name of your dream team), but only a mediocre one like FC Dead Horse, playing in t...
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0-1 Sequences Description: You are given a sequence, in the form of a string with characters ‘0’, ‘1’, and ‘?’ only. Suppose there are $k$ ‘?’s. Then there are $2^ k$ ways to replace each ‘?’ by a ‘0’ or a ‘1’, giving $2^ k$ different 0-1 sequences (0-1 sequences are sequences with only zeroes ...
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1's For All Description: The complexity  of an integer is the minimum number of $1$’s needed to represent it using only addition, multiplication and parentheses. For example, the complexity of $2$ is $2$ (writing $2$ as $1+1$) and the complexity of $12$ is $7$ (writing $12$ as $(1+1+1)\times (1+1+1+1)$...
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1-D Frogger (Easy) Description: Frogger is a classic $2$-D video game that challenges the player to move a frog character safely across a traffic-filled road and a hazardous river. What is not well known is that Frogger actually began as a prototype board game based on a $1$-D concept at a now-defunct ...
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1-D Frogger (Hard) Description: Frogger is a classic $2$-D video game that challenges the player to move a frog character safely across a traffic-filled road and a hazardous river. What is not well known is that Frogger actually began as a prototype board game based on a $1$-D concept at a now-defunct ...
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10 Kinds of People Description: The world is made up of $10$ kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who do not. These different kinds of people do not always get along so well. Bob might ask for a $10000$ ounce coffee (meaning binary) and Alice might make misinterpret his request as...
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2, 4, 6, Greaaat Description: Against her wishes, Rainbow Dash was put in charge of coach the buckball halftime cheerleading squad. While she doesn’t have the slightest care for cheerleading (she’d much rather coach the team), she’s determined to give it her all to show everypony in the squad how much ...
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2048 Description: 2048 is a single-player puzzle game created by Gabriele Cirulli1. It is played on a $4 \times 4$ grid that contains integers $\geq 2$ that are powers of 2. The player can use a keyboard arrow key (left/up/right/down) to move all the tiles simultaneously. Tiles slide as far as ...
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24 Game Description: In his unending goal to become the greatest programmer of all time, Gustav has decided to go to Singapore. Curiosity leads him into the game room, where some of his new friends are playing cards. "What game are you playing?" he asks. His friends go on to tell him about a seemingly ...
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3-Sided Dice Description: Just like every fall, the organizers of the Southwestern Europe Dice Simulation Contest are busy again this year. In this edition you have to simulate a $3$-sided die that outputs each of three possible outcomes (which will be denoted by $1$, $2$ and $3$) with a given probability,...
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3D Printed Statues Description: You have a single 3D printer, and would like to use it to produce $n$ statues. However, printing the statues one by one on the 3D printer takes a long time, so it may be more time-efficient to first use the 3D printer to print a new printer. That new printer may then...
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3D Printer Description: 3D printing is a technique for manufacturing items from a digital template. The printer lays down layers of a polymer material, building an entire 3D object as a series of flat plates of varying shapes, stacked upon one another. The polymer is initially sticky enough so that the...
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4 thought Description: Write a program which, given an integer $n$ as input, will produce a mathematical expression whose solution is $n$. The solution is restricted to using exactly four $4$’s and exactly three of the binary operations selected from the set $\{ *, +, -, /\} $. The number $4$ is th...
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99 Problems Description: You’re creating problems for competitive programming practical examination, but you’re told your problems are either too hard or too easy. Fortunately, you’ve got 99 problems and coming up with more ain’t one. To decide on suitable problems, you will discard problems based on t...
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99 Problems Description: Ingrid is the founder of a company that sells bicycle parts. She used to set the prices of products quite arbitrarily, but now she has decided that it would be more profitable if the prices end in $99$. You are given a positive integer $N$, the price of a product. Your task is...
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A (Fast) Walk in the Woods Description: Brice Bilson loves to take jogs in a nearby forest known as Orthogonal Woods. The forest gets that name as the paths – all two-way – are laid out along an orthogonal grid, with all turns being 90 degrees. Brice is a bit persnickety when it comes to his jogs, and ...
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A Brief Gerrymander Description: The evil ruling party, the Liberatives, are redistributing the electoral regions (ridings) in your city, and are nefariously attempting to pack certain opposition-friendly neighborhoods into as few ridings as possible. If this plan succeeds, it will be the end of democr...
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A Cappella Recording Description: Geoffry is preparing an a cappella composition where he sings the entire song by himself. Each note of the song has a pitch between $0$ and $10^9$. Because of the varying pitches in the song, Geoffry will record himself singing multiple times. In a single recording, he wi...
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A Classy Problem Description: In his memoir “So, Anyway”, comedian John Cleese writes of the class difference between his father (who was “middle-middle-middle-lower-middle class” and his mother (who was “upper-upper-lower-middle class”). These fine distinctions between classes tend to confuse North Am...
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A Complex Problem Description: There are many problems in the field of computer science, and some are harder than others. Computer scientists have accordingly categorized problems using complexity classes, and like to analyze these classes to see how they interact with each other. A complexity class i...
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A Different List Game Description: You are playing the following simple game with a friend: * The first player picks a positive integer $X$. * The second player gives a list of $k$ distinct positive integers $Y_1, \ldots , Y_ k$ such that $(Y_1+1)(Y_2+1) \cdots (Y_ k+1) = X$, and gets $k$ poi...
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A Different Problem Description: Write a program that computes the difference between non-negative integers. ## Input Each line of the input consists of a pair of integers. Each integer is between $0$ and $10^{15}$ (inclusive). The input is terminated by end of file. ## Output For each pair of inte...
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A Favourable Ending Description: Fiction books are all the same. The author has decided everything in advance, from beginning, middle, to the final plot. You, the reader, just read from page 1 to the very last page, in that order. So predictable. A choose-your-own-story fiction book is different. The book...
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A Feast For Cats Description: Your crazy aunt has asked you to watch her cats while she’s attending a seminar about making cat hats out of cat fur. Your aunt owns a great number of cats – all toms – and, due to the complex social structure of cats, every cat has a specific but different amount of hate ...
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A Flea on a Chessboard Description: An infinite chessboard is obtained by extending a finite chessboard to the right and up infinitely. Each square of the chessboard is either black or white with the side length of $S$ millimeters. The leftmost bottom square of the chessboard is black. A flea is po...
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A Furious Cocktail Description: In Minecraft, potions can be made and drank. When drank, they apply the corresponding potion effect to the player for some specified amount of time. “A Furious Cocktail” is the name of the advancement where a player has every potion effect applied at the same time. This ...
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A Horse Shoe-In Description: With Twilight Sparkle making preparations to ascend the throne as the new ruler of Equestria, she has resigned from her post as the headmare of the School of Friendship, appointing former guidance counselor Starlight Glimmer in her place. Knowing that the work will be too much...
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A List Game Description: You are playing the following simple game with a friend: * The first player picks a positive integer $X$. * The second player gives a list of $k$ positive integers $Y_1, \ldots , Y_ k$ such that $(Y_1+1)(Y_2+1) \cdots (Y_ k+1) = X$, and gets $k$ points. The first player pick...
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A Little to the Right Description: You’ve decided that you want to rearrange your trophy case lately. You want to order them all on a single line from left to right. However, you also want the arrangement of the trophies to be “satisfying”. Each trophy has a certain number of properties, such as heigh...
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A Mazing! Description: A maze consists of a collection of equal sized square cells, where any or all of the sides may be a wall or a door. The maze may have no exit or multiple exits. Cells are typically arranged so that they may share sides with other cells as shown in the four sample mazes below: Ea...
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A Multiplication Game Description: Stan and Ollie play the game of multiplication by multiplying an integer $p$ by one of the numbers $2$ to $9$. Stan always starts with $p = 1$, does his multiplication, then Ollie multiplies the number, then Stan and so on. Before a game starts, they draw an i...
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A Musical Question Description: Bob Roberts likes to listen to music while he drives, but the car he owns is a little antiquated. No Bluetooth or USB connections here, but at least he has a CD player, so he’s been transferring a lot of his music to CDs. At the moment he has only two CDs left and would ...
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A New Adventure Description: ‘Hunter’: a licensed profession for those who specialize in finding rare creatures or secret treasures. Gon has embarked on a new journey to become a Hunter. Yesterday, Gon arrived in Hanoi to participate in the Hunter Exam — an annual exam which an applicant must pass, in ...
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A New Alphabet Description: A New Alphabet has been developed for Internet communications. While the glyphs of the new alphabet don’t necessarily improve communications in any meaningful way, they certainly make us feel cooler. You are tasked with creating a translation program to speed up the switch ...
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A Pivotal Question Description: Quicksort is a recursive sorting algorithm developed in 1959 by Tony Hoare. One of the major steps in the algorithm is the partition  step: given an element $p$ in the array (the pivot  element) rearrange the elements in the array as shown below where all the values in $...
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A Prize No One Can Win Description: After the festive opening of your new store, the Boutique store for Alternative Paramedicine and Cwakhsahlvereigh, to your disappointment you find out that you are not making as many sales as you had hoped. To remedy this, you decide to run a special offer: you will ...
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A Question of Ingestion Description: Stan Ford is a typical college graduate student, meaning that one of the most important things on his mind is where his next meal will be. Fortune has smiled on him as he’s been invited to a multi-course barbecue put on by some of the corporate sponsors of his resea...
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A Random Problem Description: Generating a random number sequence is not easy. Many sequences may look random but upon closer inspection we can find hidden regularities in the occurrence of the numbers. For example, consider the following $100$-digit “random” sequence starting with $4, 7, 9, \ldots ...
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A Rank Problem Description: Coach is fed up with sports rankings – he thinks those who make up these bogus orderings are just nuts. In Coach’s opinion changes in rankings should be evidence-based only. For example, suppose the $4$th place team plays the $1$st place team and loses. Why should the ra...
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A Rational Sequence Description: An infinite full binary tree labeled by positive rational numbers is defined by: * The label of the root is $1/1$. * The left child of label $p/q$ is $p/(p+q)$. * The right child of label $p/q$ is $(p+q)/q$. The label of the root is $1/1$. The left child of label $p/q$ is $p/(...
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A Rational Sequence (Take 3) Description: A sequence of positive rational numbers is defined as follows: An infinite full binary tree labeled by positive rational numbers is defined by: * The label of the root is $1/1$. * The left child of label $p/q$ is $p/(p+q)$. * The right child of label $p/q$ is $(p+q...
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A Rational Sequence 2 Description: A sequence of positive rational numbers is defined as follows: An infinite full binary tree labeled by positive rational numbers is defined by: * The label of the root is $1/1$. * The left child of label $p/q$ is $p/(p+q)$. * The right child of label $p/q$ is $(p+q)/q$. ...
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A Real Challenge Description: ## Input The input consists of a single integer $a$ ($1 \le a \le 10^{18}$), the area in square meters of Old MacDonald’s pasture. ## Output Output the total length of fence needed for the pasture, in meters. The length should be accurate to an absolute or relative erro...
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A Recurring Problem Description: You have a very big problem! You love recurrence relations, perhaps a bit too much. In particular, you are a fan of positive linear recurrence relations (PLRR), which can be defined as follows. First, you choose the order $k$ of the relation. Then you choose coefficient...
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A Royal Problem Description: The two rulers of Equestria, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, got into a massive argument, and Starlight Glimmer needs to help them resolve it, lest the kingdom of Equestria fall into chaos! For now, Starlight needs to ensure that Celestia and Luna do not encounter eac...
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A Safe Bet Description: Safe Ltd. is a company that manufactures high-quality safes. Its latest invention is an optical closure mechanism that uses a laser beam passing through a rectangular grid with several mirrors. When the laser is activated, a beam enters the top row of the grid horizontally from...
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A Second Opinion Description: Write a program that, given a duration in seconds as input, outputs the same duration as hours, minutes, and seconds. Hint: use integer division (//) and remainder (%). ## Input One line containing the integer $s$, the number of seconds that should be rewritten, where $0 \l...
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A Shortcut to What? Description: Write a program that reads an integer $n$ from the input. The program should add five to $n$, then triple the value and finally subtract ten. You are welcome to simplify the formula if you can, as long as the program gives the correct results. ## Input Input consists ...
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A Simple Game Description: Whenever Tyko and his mother Maj get into a disagreement on Tyko’s bedtime, they play $10^5$ rounds of their favorite game. If Tyko plays well enough, he gets to stay up for $1$ more hour! The game can be seen as an evolved version of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, in that ...
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A Stack of Gold Description: Lt. Columbo, arguably the best detective in the world, was faced with a problem. He was asked: if he was placed in a room with some number of stacks of gold-colored coins, where all but one stack consisted solely of tungsten coins, and the remaining stack consisted solely o...
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A Star not a Tree? Description: Luke wants to upgrade his home computer network from 10mbs to 100mbs. His existing network uses 10base2 (coaxial) cables that allow you to connect any number of computers together in a linear arrangement. Luke is particulary proud that he solved a nasty NP-complete probl...
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A Towering Problem Description: You’ve been put in charge of an art exhibit from the famous minimalist sculptor J (even his name is minimalist!). J’s work involves the careful layout of vertically dispositioned orthogonal parallelpipeds in a set of tapering obelisks — in other words, he puts smaller bo...
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A Tree and Two Edges Description: Given a connected simple graph (with at most one edge between any pair of nodes) with $n$ nodes and $n+1$ edges (that’s a tree with two extra edges), answer a list of queries: for two distinct nodes, how many simple paths are there between them? A simple path is a path...
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A Trivial Pursuit Description: It’s time for the Trivia Trot, a competition where anything—and everything—can be asked! Twilight is absolutely ready to wreck the competition and win it for the three-peat; she’s studied Ancient Legends, Wonderbolt History, and Spells So Old, Not Even Star Swirl the Bear...
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A Vicious Pikeman (Easy) Description: Note that this is an easier version of the problem pikemanhard. One of the reasons for this somewhat peculiar theory was the finding of ancient pike, a combat spear. Scientists have found many of these throughout the years. They come with a special symbol carved i...
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A Vicious Pikeman (Hard) Description: Note that this is a harder version of the problem pikemaneasy. One of the reasons for this somewhat peculiar theory was the finding of ancient pike, a combat spear. Scientists have found many of these throughout the years. They come with a special symbol carved in...
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A Walk Through The Forest Description: Jimmy experiences a lot of stress at work these days, especially since his accident made working difficult. To relax after a hard day, he likes to walk home. To make things even nicer, his office is on one side of a forest, and his house is on the other. A nice wa...
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A+B Problem Description: Given $N$ integers in the range $[-50\, 000, 50\, 000]$, how many ways are there to pick three integers $a_ i$, $a_ j$, $a_ k$, such that $i$, $j$, $k$ are pairwise distinct and $a_ i + a_ j = a_ k$? Two ways are different if their ordered triples $(i, j, k)$ of indices are...
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A+B or A-B? Description: Alice believes that a friendly mid-term contest should start with an $A+B$ problem. But Bob disagrees. To increase creativity, he thinks an $A-B$ problem should be used instead. To settle the dispute, the contest organizers have decided to use both problems. Given two inte...
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