I just have two questions regarding USAAIO
For questions that seem like you need to use your pen and paper for, can you still write some code (like for computation), as long as you follow the imports said in the question?
Also, for coding questions can you utilize the help() or ? to access documentation within the coding environment?
Here’s some answers:
Yes, absolutely, as long as you write this code from scratch and don’t get any outside help. Unless stated specifically in the rules, like using LinAlg to compute something when the problem says not to, knock yourself out!
Yes, as it is considered basic coding documentation and not giving an advantage of any sort. Any documentation, (or as stated in the rules, that pop-up that appears when you write functions or variables), is allowed inside of your test.
They just released the new rules so it will likely clarify any new questions you have.
Is this year’s 9 questions a step up from the three, or did I only just see those three (out of nine) questions from last year?
Last year only had 3 questions that were split into a bunch of parts, seems like they changed the format for this year.
How similar would this year’s questions be to the samples? I did alright on the samples and I hope it carries over. Also, if there are less parts, what do you think the cutoff this year will be?
I can’t really say because last year was the first year and they changed the format drastically for this year. Last year’s cutoff was also really easy because there weren’t many participants.
Would the cutoff be similar to last years? Apparently they are letting more people into Round 2 this year
It would be interesting if this happened; I think it would start off slow (like around 70s) for this year and steadily increase by a few parts every year until they find a good equilibrium.