Australian Informatics Competition Sample Question Set 1

These questions are based on questions from past AIC papers. The data in the questions has been changed, so the answers will be different. In all other respects, the questions are the same. AIC papers have two parts. Part A consists of 6 multiple choice questions. Part B questions have integer answers, and in each question students apply their solutions to three sets of data. A book of 2005-2010 past questions, with answers and solutions is available for purchase on the AMT website www.amt.edu.au.

Australian Informatics Competition : Sample questions, set 1

Junior Questions: Part A

Each question should be answered by a single choice from A to E. Questions are worth 3 points each. 1. Hrossan Quilts 2010 J1, I1 The Hrossa of Malacandra make quilts of hexagonal patches in an overall triangular shape. The patches are coloured red, blue or green. Each hexagon and the two beneath it must be the same colour or three different colours. G R B  R R G G R B  R B G

How many blue patches are there in the quilt below?

R R G R R R (A) 4 (B) 5 (C) 6 (D) 7 (E) 8

2. Alarm Clock 2005 I.3 You have a clock with four buttons: H+, H, M+ and M. These buttons can be used to change the time. The two H buttons change the hours without affecting the minutes, while the two M buttons change the minutes without affecting the hours. H+ increases the hours by one. If H+ is pressed while the hours are set to 11, the hours will be changed to 00. H decreases the hours by one. If H is pressed while the hours are set to 00, the hours will be changed to 11. M+ increases the minutes by one. If M+ is pressed while the minutes are set to 59, the minutes will be changed to 00. M decreases the minutes by one. If M is pressed while the minutes are set to 00, the minutes will be changed to 59. The time shows 10:58 and you wish to set it to 03:08. What is the smallest number of button presses that you need? (A) 15 (B) 17 (C) 45 (D) 47 (E) 50

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3. Soccer 2008 J.3 Three teams enter into a soccer tournament: the gumbles, the bottersnikes and the puggles. Each team played the other two teams once. Overall, the gumbles scored 4 goals and had 3 goals scored against them, the bottersnikes scored 2 and had 2 scored against them, whilst the puggles scored 1 and had 2 scored against them. What was the score in the bottersnikes puggles match? (A) 2-1 (B) 1-0 (C) 0-0 (D) 0-1 (E) 1-1

4. Binary Encoding 2009 J.1 Messages consisting only of the letters ABCDE are to be transmitted. Before being sent, A is encoded to 00, B to 01, C to 100, D to 101, and E to 11. For example, the message BBD would be encoded to 0101101. The message encoded as 10010101101 is received. How many vowels are in the message? (Vowels are A, E, I, O, and U.) (A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 3 (E) 4

Australian Informatics Competition : Sample questions, set 1

Junior Questions: Part B

Each question should be answered by a number in the range 0999. Questions are worth 2 points each. 57. Emu 2008 J.7-9 It is well known that male emus look after the chicks when they hatch. It is less well known that male emus will take at most 3 steps from the nesting burrow in search of food. Moreover, they refuse to walk through water or even over water. In the diagrams below, B is the location of the burrow and the shaded cells are wet. An emu can cover up to 4 cells in one step. A step may not turn a corner. In the diagram below, the cells marked with an would take the emu two steps to reach.
B

In each of the diagrams below, in how many dry cells will the emu NOT search for food? (Dont include the cell containing the home burrow B.)

5.

6.

7.

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810. Alphabet Sort 2008 J.10-12 A sorting program does not understand about numbers. It treats all digits as letters, so that the numbers 10, 11, 100, 101, 111 would be sorted as 10, 100, 101, 11, 111. 8. 9. If the numbers 1, 2, ..., 99 are sorted, what is the 45th number? If the numbers 1, 2, ..., 999 are sorted, what is the 120th number?

10. If the numbers 1, 2, ..., 200 are sorted, what is the 195th number?

Australian Informatics Competition : Sample questions, set 1

Intermediate Questions: Part A

Each question should be answered by a single choice from A to E. Questions are worth 3 points each. 1. Evacuation 2006 I.3 Your school is preparing for its annual re drill. Each building in the school consists of a grid of classrooms, with the top-left classroom left empty. Each time the clock ticks another second, students may leave classrooms according to the following rules: If a classroom is adjacent to an empty room (or possibly several empty rooms), one and only one student may leave. This student leaves the building immediately (they do not spend any time walking through the empty rooms). If a classroom is not adjacent to any empty rooms, no students may leave. Note that you can never have several students leaving a room at the same time (even if the room is adjacent to several different empty rooms). Rooms are only adjacent horizontally or vertically, not diagonally. An example of a 2 3 grid of classrooms is shown below, with the initial numbers of students on the left hand side. It can be seen that the entire building is evacuated after four seconds.
0 1 1 2 3 1 0 0 0 2 3 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

Your building is slightly larger a 4 4 grid of classrooms, as illustrated below. How many seconds does it take to evacuate your building? 0 1 4 3 2 4 2 1 5 3 5 4 3 2 4 2

(A) 11

(B) 13

(C) 14

(D) 15

(E) 45

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2. Rising Sequences 2006 I.2 A rising sequence is a list of numbers where each number is greater than the sum of all the numbers before it. For example, 1, 2, 4, 12, 22 is a rising sequence because 1 < 2, 1 + 2 < 4, 1 + 2 + 4 < 12 and 1 + 2 + 4 + 12 < 22. On the other hand, 1, 2, 4, 6, 17 is not a rising sequence because 1 + 2 + 4 < 6. You are given the following list of numbers: 3, 5, 8, 11, 25, 30, 45, 50, 60, 95. Your task is to form the longest possible rising sequence using numbers from this list. How many numbers are in your rising sequence? (A) 4 (B) 5 (C) 6 (D) 7 (E) 8

3. Dungeon 2005 I.6 A token (marked X in the diagram) is in a maze. You may move the token around according to the following rule: in each move the token may travel any distance either horizontally or vertically, but it cannot pass over or stop on a shaded square.

For example, from its starting position the token could travel either one square left, one square right, or one square down in a single move. To reach any other square would require more than one move. What is the minimum number of moves that you need to ensure that the token can reach any white square from its starting position? (A) 8 (B) 9 (C) 10 (D) 11 (E) 12

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4. SMS Payments 2009 I.4, S.2 The footy season is over, the bets have been added up and it is time for settling the debts. The members of the tipping competition are scattered over Australia, so they decide to use SMS payments. SMS payments charge 1% of the amount for each transfer, and the tippers deem it a point of honour to pay as little as possible in charges. For instance, transferring $10 from A to B and $10 from B to C would cost 20, but the same result could be achieved by transferring $10 from A to C for a total charge of 10. The actual amounts owed to each other by the tippers were: Ann owed $4 to Bob and $2 to Col Bob owed $5 to Eric Col owed $6 to Eric Don owed $7 to Bob and $5 to Col Eric owed $3 to Don What is the smallest amount of SMS charges possible in settling all debts? (A) 10 (B) 15 (C) 25 (D) 26 (E) 32

Australian Informatics Competition : Sample questions, set 1

Intermediate Questions: Part B

Each question should be answered by a number in the range 0999. Questions are worth 2 points each. 57. Escape 2008 I.10-12 3 The escape has been planned but the prisoners have the wrong instructions. The prisoner in cell 1 should have instructions A, and the prisoner in cell 2 should have instructions B, and so on. Each day there is an opportunity for prisoners in adjacent cells to swap instructions, but more than one swap per day would be too risky. For instance if the instruction order was CDBA, it would take 5 days of swapping to get to the correct order ABCD. For each of the following orders, how many days of swapping would it take to get the correct instructions to every prisoner? 5. 6. 7. DCBAHGFE GHIDEFABC DHJIABFECG

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810. Spiral Amoeba 2010 I.13-15, S.10-12 3 The DNA of the spiral amoeba is laid down in a spiral pattern. The second base is placed directly above the rst and subsequent bases are added clockwise. (DNA is made up of bases A C G and T.) For example, the DNA sequence A C G T G T A C would be laid down as follows: C A A CG A CG CG AT . . . CAT ATG

A mutant base M has inltrated the DNA of the spiral amoeba, and scientists are concerned to nd its location in the DNA sequence. However, they can only read the sequence row by row from top to bottom, and within each row from left to right. So in the example above the reading of the sequence would be C G C A T A T G. For each of the readings of DNA sequences below, what is the position of the M base in the original DNA sequence? 8. 9. 10. M A C T G G C A T A G C T T G C A T T M T G C A G C A T M C C G G

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Senior Questions: Part A

Each question should be answered by a single choice from A to E. Questions are worth 3 points each. 1. Dating 2007 S.3 Your online dating agency has been running quite well, and you decide it is time for your rst speed dating event. Your ten males and ten females arrive and sit at a large round table, whereupon you realise with horror that they have all sat down in the wrong seats. There is no time to x the seating arrangements properly; however, you can at least arrange them in alternating male-female order around the table. To do this, you arrange a number of swaps in each swap, two people stand up and switch places. Note that the two people switching seats may be anywhere on the table; they do not need to be sitting next to each other.
F M F F M F F M M F M M F M M M F F F M

Given the seating arrangement illustrated above (where F represents female and M represents male), what is the smallest number of swaps required to seat the participants in alternating male-female order? (A) 3 (B) 4 (C) 5 (D) 6 (E) 7

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2. Trainee Spies 2005 S.3 The local spy training school is instructing its bright new recruits in the art of disguising messages. They are told to change each letter of the original message according to one of the following rules: Replace each V in the message with XW; Replace each W in the message with V; Replace each X in the message with YZ; Replace each Y in the message with Z; Replace each Z in the message with WY. Because they are spies, they do not use any letters other than V, W, X, Y or Z in their messages. The instructor gives a message to Anne who disguises it according to the above rules and passes it on to Bernard. Bernard disguises the message he receives and passes it onto Clarice. Clarice in turn disguises the message and passes it to David who disguises it and returns it to the instructor. The nal message the instructor receives is VZXWWY. What was the original message? (A) V (B) W (C) X (D) Y (E) Z

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3. Frog 2005 S.6 A frog is sitting on a lily pad in a large pond, which is illustrated in the diagram below. White squares represent lily pads and grey squares represent water. The frog may jump from one lily pad to another. However, the frog may only jump horizontally or vertically. It can jump over large spans of water, but it may not jump over another lily pad (and it may not land in the water).

For example, if the frog is sitting on the lily pad in the top right corner, it may jump two squares to the left or it may jump three squares down. To get to any other lily pad, the frog would need to make additional jumps. Suppose the frog begins on the lily pad marked F. What is the minimum number of jumps the frog needs in order to ensure that it can reach any other lily pad from this starting position? (A) 3 (B) 4 (C) 5 (D) 6 (E) 7

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4. Musca 2009 I.5, S.4 Musca is a game played by two players who take turns to move a counter on a grid. The winner is the player who moves the counter to the bottom left hand corner. The rules for moving the counter are: the counter may be moved one or more cells to the left; or the counter may be moved one or more cells down; but the counter may not be moved onto or across a shaded cell. In Musca, some cells will be winning cells for the player who goes rst, and some will be losing cells. For example, in the diagram below, each of the cells in the leftmost column are winning cells, as are the cells in the bottom row. The cell L1 is a losing cell as the only move permitted by the rst player is to move the counter down 1 cell, after which the second player can win by moving the counter 3 to the left. The cell W is a winning cell because the rst player can move the counter 1 cell to the left, forcing the second player to move the counter down 1. The cell L2 is also a losing cell because the only two moves permitted are to move the counter down 1 cell or down 2 cells, after either of which the second player can win.

L2 L1 W

In the diagram below, how many of the cells marked are winning cells?

(A) 0

(B) 1

(C) 2

(D) 3

(E) 4

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Senior Questions: Part B

Each question should be answered by a number in the range 0999. Questions are worth 2 points each. 57. Flipping Counters 2006 S.7-9 You have a line of counters on a table. Each counter has one red side and one yellow side. You are able to change the colours of the counters using one or more ips. A ip involves taking three consecutive counters (all next to each other) and turning all three of them upside-down at once. Your aim is to make every counter yellow using as few ips as possible. For example, suppose that the line of counters begins as R R Y Y Y R Y (where R represents a counter with its red side up, and Y represents a counter with its yellow side up). You can make every counter yellow using three ips: (i) Flip the three yellow counters in the centre. This gives R R R R R R Y. (ii) Flip the three leftmost counters. This gives Y Y Y R R R Y. (iii) Finally, ip the three remaining red counters. This gives Y Y Y Y Y Y Y, the desired outcome. Moreover, this is the best solution possible you cannot make the entire line yellow using two ips or fewer. Each of the following scenarios gives an initial line of counters. For each scenario, what is the smallest number of ips required to make the entire line yellow? 5. 6. 7. R Y R Y Y R R R Y R Y Y Y R Y R R R Y R Y Y R R Y R Y R Y Y R Y

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810. Golden iPods 2008 I.13-15, S.13-15 After years of research and parsecs of travel you have nally reached the third planet of Sol, ancient birthplace of humanity. You enter the great Jobs Repository and there is the object of your quest the fabled golden iPods. You cast an expert eye over them, evaluating each. You cannot take them all. Your research indicates that taking any two adjacent iPods will cause the immediate destruction of the planet, you included. But you wish to maximise the value of the iPods you take. For instance, if there were ve iPods with values 5 6 3 1 2 you would take the 1st , 3rd and 5th , with a total value of 10. If their values were 5 8 2 2 9 you would take the 2nd and the 5th with a total value of 17. For each set of iPod values, determine the maximum total value you can get without taking adjacent iPods. 8. 9. 1 3 1 3 4 4 4 3 1 4 4 5 8 5 3 4 1

10. 4 3 2 5 8 6 2 2 3 2 2 2 1 1

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Answers
Junior Intermediate Senior 1 B C B 2 3 A C B A C C 4 A B D 5 6 9 10 12 27 4 6 7 8 9 10 16 5 207 94 25 9 5 1 8 13 18 22