Welcome to the 2012-2013 season of the USA Computing Olympiad! As in past years, the USACO coaching staff plans to offer six on-line programming contests this season: Nov 16-19: November Contest Dec 14-17: December Contest Jan 11-14: January Contest Feb 8-11: February Contest Mar 8-11: March Contest April 5-8: US Open Contests are free, open to all students, and available in three levels of difficulty: bronze (novice), silver (intermediate), and gold (advanced): - Bronze-level problems require basic programming knowledge and only fundamental algorithmic skills (e.g., sorting, recursion). - Silver problems involve "standard" algorithmic techniques (e.g., shortest paths, straightforward dynamic programming, greedy algorithms). - Gold problems are quite challenging, requiring clever combinations of sophisticated algorithmic ideas. All new competitors start out in the bronze level, and earn promotion to higher levels by demonstrating excellent performance on a contest in their current level. Contests are usually 3-5 consecutive hours in duration, which students can schedule any time during a 4-day contest window. Students can submit programs in C, C++, Java, Pascal, or Python. Our website (http://www.usaco.org) offers hundreds of hours of free on-line training materials for those seeking additional resources to help improve their algorithmic coding skills. The very best students in the USA who excel in our contests will be invited to attend the USACO summer training camp in late May, where they will receive advanced instruction and the opportunity to compete for membership in the 4-person team representing the USA at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the most prestigious high-school computing contest at the international level, held in 2013 in Brisbane, Australia. For additional information, please see our website: http://www.usaco.org We're looking forward to a challenging and fun season! Happy coding, - Brian Brian C. Dean (bcdean@clemson.edu) Director, USA Computing Olympiad Associate Professor, School of Computing, Clemson University Box 340974 | Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0974