Texas Solution to the BPA State Prompt in 2015.
There is a competition called Business Professionals of America. They give us a prompt and a limited amount of time to solve it. We compete to solve as much of the problem as we can in a limited amount of time.
The top students in each region competed at the state competition. There are about 17 regions in Texas, and the top 3 (or 4, depending on your region) advance to state.
We are given an hour at state level to develop the piece of code given on the prompt. Before writing the code, part of our time must be allocated to thorougly reading the prompt and rubric and understanding the task at hand. The rubric scores each component of the prompt separately, giving students the chance to prioritize certain tasks over others. In the event of a tie, the student who finishes earlier wins, so most students who win the competition do not take up the entire time unless completely necessary.
Although the code appears to be a short and simple solution, much of your time in the room is spent analyzing the prompt for details that could be overlooked and acquire penalties against your score.
This prompt specifically catered to computing the optimal change to return to a client. This is code similar to what you'd see written for a cash register, or change machine (which was literally the name of the prompt).
First in the State of Texas.