Q: Thoughts on winning?

A: It was nice to win overall but now the whole thing turns into a team sport so it really doesn't matter. Winning the last round was fun, but I still have a horrible number of wrong answers. The real victory was beating Waterloo :P

Q: How would you rank problems C, D, E, F in order of difficulty?

A: I think their difficulty was based on what similar problems you had seen before. For me the difficulty was C, E, D, F. The scoreboard shows different people solving different problems which shows how the problems didn't have a uniform difficulty.

Q: What's your opinion on today's problem set?

A: I thought the problems were standard. C and E were both variations of problems I have seen before. Also I think A should have been removed and another hard problem added.

Q: What's your overall impression of this year's selection process?

A: I was surprised that the teams didn't become more defined earlier. I think part of that is due to the ranking function because it really rewards a first or second place.
Having an objective system is obviously the way to go. We just need to tweak it to see how we can get the best results in the least amount of time.

Q: What are some changes that you think should be made?

A: I think we should consider having fewer contests. Fewer contests will allow more time for people to get use to the system. Also it gives the problem setter a bit more time to get dialed in to what difficulty problems are right for the group.
I don't like our ranking system. Winning a contest by two problems and by ten time penalty yield the same result. I think the final ranking should be the standard ACM rankings (take the total number of problems solved then total time penalty). This system doesn't make sense if people can drop contests, but it we have four mandatory contests then it makes way more sense.

Q: The regional contest is in less than 4 weeks, any thoughts on that?

A: It really scares me. That is not that many practices to get a team working well together. I have some experience working with Si Young, but basically none with whoever the third member will be. Two years ago we were in a very similar situation and it turned out really well, but it required a ton of work. I don't even remember how many 5 hours contests we did.

Q: Anything to add?

A: Anyone who is doing this for the first time should realize that this system is incredibly unfair to them (but there isn't a better way of doing it because of time constraints). If you stick with it you will be much more competitive next year. A vast majority of people (including myself) did not get many problems their first year.