MCC 2021

Key Dates

• 12 September 2021 (Sunday): Registration opens.
• 16 October 2021 (Saturday): Deadline for registration.
• 30 October 2021 (Saturday) 00:00 (GMT+8): MCC 2021 begins.
• 31 October 2021 (Sunday) 23:59 (GMT+8): MCC 2021 ends.

What is MCC?

The MCC (Malaysian Computing Challenge) is an annual online competition designed to evaluate participants’ computational thinking abilities. Knowledge of programming is recommended but not required.

Format

This year, MCC will be held on SimpleCMS (our in-house contest system!). Participants will be required to solve 4-6 problems within a two-day window. Participants may work on the contest anywhere, including at home. Please review the Honour Code below. The problem statements will be available in both English and Bahasa Malaysia.

• Each problem consists of a statement describing the problem, and several tasks.
• Each task consists of an input that is unique to each participant.
• For each task, participants will be required to submit an output (by typing/pasting the output into a text box) that satisfies the statement and input.
• Full score for a task will be awarded if the output submitted is correct, zero score will be awarded otherwise. Participants will know whether their submission is correct immediately after it is made.
• Each task has a submission limit independent of each other.
• The more difficult tasks will likely require programming knowledge.
• Note: Participants will not need to upload any files during the contest (including any code they may have written). Therefore, participants may use any programming language (or even solve by hand for small inputs).
  • Python is recommended for beginners, and C++ is recommended as it is the only language supported in some of the later competitions at the moment (see the Beyond MCC section).
• Participants are encouraged to save any code they have written to be submitted for the exit interview.

Sample Problem 1

Given a list of numbers stored in list arr. Output the sum of all numbers.

arr = [22, 39, 68, 90, 22, 53, 80, 36, 16, 44, 48, 29, 13, 24, 51, 69, 99, 65, 58, 41, 68, 57, 66, 5, 44, 10, 23, 1, 24, 64, 29, 85, 6, 22, 51, 14, 98, 93, 71, 77, 100, 92, 62, 69, 76, 83, 19, 68, 75, 40, 16, 20, 47, 95, 60, 71, 34, 11, 80, 90, 14, 39, 69, 71, 18, 64, 63, 89, 57, 88, 52, 2, 71, 2, 71, 20, 12, 49, 97, 33, 43, 7, 30, 37, 8, 83, 9, 68, 96, 72, 99, 21, 53, 68, 25, 71, 2, 31, 65, 69]

For this test case, you should provide the output:

5021

Sample Problem 2 (MCC 2017)

N balls are arranged in a row. Each ball is moving either left (L) or right (R) with the same speed. When two balls collide, they each move to the opposite direction with the same speed as before. How many collisions will happen?

N = 5
balls_direction = ['L', 'R', 'R', 'L', 'R']

For this test case, you should provide the output:

2

The actual tasks to solve will have N ranging up to 100,000. Sample code solution is available at https://repl.it/@zhiwei/collisions

Categories and Awards

There are three categories for the MCC:

• Bongsu / Junior – Form 1, 2, 3, or Primary school;
• Muda / Intermediate – Form 4, 5;
• Sulung / Senior – Form 6 (lower & upper), Pre-U (Matriculation, Foundation Studies, IB, A-Levels, etc.).

All students will take part in the same competition, but prizes will be awarded by category. There will be Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards.

We will be giving out digital certificates instead of physical ones.

Registration

Eligibility

The MCC is open to primary, secondary and pre-university students who are:

• either studying in Malaysia or Malaysian citizens studying abroad AND
• born after 1 July 2002.

Independent Participation

We strongly urge that anyone interested to participate to talk to your school teacher about sending a team. In the case that your school is not sending a team, or you are not currently attached to any school, you may register as an Independent Participant. If you would like to participate as an Independent Participant, please ask your parent to register on the registration website above.

Fee

The fee is RM10 per participant.

Payment Method

You may pay the registration fee via bank-in or online transfer to our bank account (info below). Payment should be uploaded (via registration website) after submission of participants list to finalize the registration.

Bank account information:

Account Name: PERTUBUHAN INFORMATIK DAN PENGATURCARAAN MALAYSIA
Account Number: 8600213076
Bank: CIMB Islamic Bank (Taman Danau Kota branch)

Instructions for schools

Teachers

• Registration
  1. Head to the registration site and create a teacher account. Each school should have no more than 1 teacher account.
  2. Verify your email address by clicking the link in the email sent to your address.
  3. Log in and complete your school profile.
  4. Add participants to the list under the “Students” tab and hit “save”. Remind your students to complete their part of the registration.
• Payment
  1. View payments under the “Payments” tab. “Payment due” is the overall amount that your school has to pay. “Payment outstanding” is the amount that your school has not yet paid.
  2. Make payment. See “Payment Method” above for more information.
  3. Click “New Payment” to enter amount paid and upload your proof of payment.
  4. Once your payment has been verified, the status will be updated to “verified”.
  5. You may add or delete participants at any time before registration closes. The “Payments” tab will reflect the corresponding amount you have to pay.
  6. After the contest, we will email you a receipt.

Participants

1. Once your teacher has created an account and added you to the list, you may head to the registration site and log in using your IC number (or passport number if you’re not a Malaysian citizen).
2. You may edit your name. Note that this is the name that will appear on all certificates that you will receive.
3. Enter your email address and verify it by clicking the link in the email sent to your address. This is very important as we will send your login credentials for MCC to this address.
4. Fill in the rest of your credentials and check the box if you agree to the terms.

Instructions for independent participants

Parents

• Registration
  1. Head to the registration site and create a parent account.
  2. Verify your email address by clicking the link in the email sent to your address.
  3. Log in and click “New Student” to add your child. Fill in your child’s information.
  4. Make sure that your child verifies their email address. This is very important as we will send the login credentials for MCC to that address.
• Payment
  1. View payments under the “Payments” tab. “Payment due” is the overall amount that you have to pay. “Payment outstanding” is the amount that you have not yet paid.
  2. Make payment. See “Payment Method” above for more information.
  3. Click “New Payment” to enter amount paid and upload your proof of payment.
  4. Once your payment has been verified, the status will be updated to “verified”.
  5. You may add or delete participants at any time before registration closes. The “Payments” tab will reflect the corresponding amount you have to pay.
  6. After the contest, we will email you a receipt.

Honour Code

All participants in MCC agree that they will:

• Not discuss the problems with anyone else during the competition time;
• Neither share solutions nor post solutions online during the competition time;
• Notify the organizers (mcc [at] ioimalaysia [dot] org) immediately if he or she becomes aware of other participants cheating.

During the competition, usage of search engines like Google and access to all online references like Python tutorials are permitted.

Result

The cutoffs for gold, silver, bronze awards for each category are as follows:

Senior: 580, 430, 330

Intermediate: 580, 430, 330

Junior: 500, 400, 210

The problems and solutions are available here.

Last updated: 13 Nov 2021, 12:45

Senior Category

Intermediate Category

Junior Category

Beyond MCC

MCC is the preliminary selection process of a year-long program to identify and train the top computing talents in Malaysian schools. Top scorers in MCC will be:

• Invited to a training camp introducing algorithms and algorithmic thinking, tentatively to be held in December 2021. (Due to Covid-19, a physical camp would be highly unlikely. We have not yet planned for a virtual one.)
• Invited to the Malaysian Computing Olympiad (MCO), a programming competition to be held tentatively in April 2022.

The top scorers in MCO will be called for a series of intensive training camps conducted by experienced Olympiad participants. Students who qualify at this level will participate in the Asia-Pacific Informatics Olympiad (APIO), an annual online contest among countries in the Pacific Rim region. After the training camps and APIO, four students will be selected to represent Malaysia in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2022 which will take place in Indonesia in August 2022.

Organizers

MCC is brought to you by the Malaysian Informatics and Programming Society. See our About page for more details.

Contact

Please direct all inquiries about MCC via email to mcc [at] ioimalaysia [dot] org.