ACSL Competition

This series is to prepare students for pre-college computer science competitions in the context of ACSL Competition - a team-based competition organized by American Computer Science League. Each ACSL contest consist of two parts: five short questions and one coding challenge. The short questions test students the basic knowledge of CS theory. Topics include Number Systems, Boolean Algebra, and Graph. The coding challenge requires a good understanding of strings, arrays and file IO.

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Thi course teach the relevant knowledge required by the competition but focuses on building students algorithmic problem solving skills and programming fluency. This course builds on the skills that students have gained in Intro to CS in Python classes. The curriculum focuses on teaching students problem formulation. 

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The objective of this class series is to take students’ coding to the next level. It builds students’ problem solving and algorithmic programming skills through solving ACSL (American Computer Science League) contest problems. The intended audience are those who have prior Python experience and are ready to apply their programming knowledge to solving real world problems and/or competitions.

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Based on our experience, ACSL is a good starting place for students to learn competitive programming. In order to be successful in programming competitions, students need to have strong problem solving as well as programming skills. Past years’ ACSL problems are used in this class in teaching problem formulation, algorithm development and efficient implementation.

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