USACO (USA computer Olympiad) Camp in the winter

There are only four contests instead of the usual six 2014-2015 school year.

Dec 12-15: First Contest

Jan 16-19: Second Contest

Feb 20-23: Third Contest

April 3-6: US Open

May 21-30: Training Camp

July 26-August 2: IOI’15 in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Jimmy will help you prepare for the contest

From August 2013 to August 2014, Jimmy’s USACO class has helped many students reach the Gold, Silver and Bronze levels of USACO. The parents and students say that Jimmy is the best USACO teacher. He is responsible, reliable, knowledgeable and good at teaching.

Time:

USACO Bronze: 2-6pm (2 hours for lecture then 2 hours for practice session)

USACO Silver:  4-8pm (2 hours for practice session then 2 hours for lecture)

Dates:

December 21, 2014 to January 3, 2015 with a total 12 classes.

[No class on Christmas Day (12/25/2014) and New Year’s Day (1/1/2015)]

Note: An optional practice session on January 3, 2015 at 8-10pm for practice questions from the last day or for any last questions.

Location: 1340 S De Anza Blvd, Suite 204, San Jose, CA 95129

Contact: 408-366-2204; spring.light.edu@gmail.com

 

Fee:

Class and practice session____$850

Practice session only ________$350

Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qW_1_6O8Vvti9LFZznVbKF1kqUO2lMGDO1pU1F2a8fk/viewform

Bronze requirements: Fluency in JAVA or C++. You should be very familiar with conditional statements (if/else), loops (for/while), arrays, and strings. Knowledge in classes, object-oriented programming, comparators, iterators, etc. is preferred.

Silver requirements: Ability to consistently solve Bronze problems. The Silver material assumes knowledge of Bronze class material, such as knowing how to do BFS, DFS, and sorting, as well as know how to use standard data structures like arraylists, linked lists, stacks, queues, deques, heaps (priority queues), and binary search trees (TreeMap/map, TreeSet/set).

The purpose of the practice session (4-6 pm), shared between Bronze and Silver, is to provide a time when students from either classes can ask questions and receive help while coding. If you have previously taken Jimmy’s class and want extra time to practice and ask questions, it’s possible to sign up for just the practice session.

For Bronze students, the practice session is right after the lecture and will allow students to work on the exercises from that day and optional problems if they have finished. For Silver, the corresponding practice session is before the next day’s lecture. The Silver problems are more challenging, so this will allow students time to think about and work on problems at home before asking for help the next day.

For Silver students, the first practice session will be before the first lecture, so it will be a practice test consisting of Bronze problems to see what level you are at. There will also be an optional extra practice session on the last day, 8-10 pm, so Silver students can practice and ask questions for exercises from the last class and so all students can ask any last questions before the class ends.

Please try to attend all classes as there will be no make-ups. If you must miss a class, send me an email and I’ll send you the lecture notes for that day. Read over the lecture notes and try to do the exercises. If you have questions, you can ask for help at the next practice session.

The practice sessions are intended to allow you to have time to work on the problems while getting help. If you have time at home, you should still work on the problems at home. If you want to do well on USACO, you should practice a lot of problems.

Instructor Background:

Jimmy Zeng

SpringLight teacher for USACO Gold, USACO Silver, USACO Bronze, Java, C++ (Feb. 2013 – Aug. 2014)

MIT Freshman

USACO finalist (2013)

USACO gold division (2012 – 2014)

Gunn High Programming Contest: 1st (2012), 2nd(2013)

Harker Programming Invitational: 1st (2012), 2nd(2013)

Lynbrook Exemplary Student Award for AP Computer Science (2012)

Physics Olympiad Semifinalist (2013)

Science Olympiad: silver medal (2011), gold medal (2013)

National AP Scholar – 9 APs, all 5’s