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ACM Collegiate Programming Contest Winner Announced

Posted by simoniker on from the clever-people dept.

Slob Nerd writes "The finals for this years ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals have just finished. And the winner is... St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics! Full results here, and details on all teams here. A pdf of the problems is also available. Congrats to all involved."

3 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Congratulations to the Russians by azaris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It comes as no surprise that Russian teams did especially well considering most of the problems relied heavily on mathematical understanding. It's perhaps the one country in the world where logic and math have been given their rightful place and respect in education.

  2. Re:Congrats to the winners, and bitter memories by ghamerly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was a contestant at the ACM world finals in 1999 and 2000, and have been a coach since.

    In 1999, we had a similar problem to what you just described -- the test data did not match the problem description. Many teams that followed the description exactly were not getting their programs accepted, while many other that simply accomodated for the flaw (without knowing that they were doing it) got their programs accepted.

    But you have a recourse in this contest, which I remember the Waterloo team (sitting across from us) used: you can intentionally crash your program (using assert()) if an assumption you make about the program fails. If it crashes, you know that your assumptions are not holding. This is what Waterloo did, and they found out that the their program was failing because of a mis-specification.

    As others have said, the ACM contest is about time-management, teamwork, good decision making, and clever and fault-tolerant programming. I understand your frustration (I'm right there with you), but I think the lesson to be learned is how to work together solve the problem, not how to hold a grudge.

  3. St.Petersburg guys, apply to MIT and Stanford by svetkins · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I participated in this contest twice, in '96 and '97.
    The first time, I was studying at a Bulgarian university (Sofia), and we scored 4th at the finals; MIT scored 5th. Two of us transfered to MIT that same year. Even though we had the skills to do well in such a contest (quick, efficient coding; algorithms knowledge; a little bit of teamwork), there's far more to computer science and engineering than that, and the rest is not taught in any Eastern European university.

    And this is basically why programming contests are so hot in that part of the world. And why American students generally don't do well. It's all about the incentive! Kids in the US don't need to do it, and have little to gain. Whereas in Eastern Europe, it's the way to get some kind of recognition, and get on the fast track to a good education, a good job, etc. (Usually, involving immigrating, of course.)

    Also, you should understand that these kids have been training for 5 years for such programming contests. Programming as a sport starts around 7 or 8th grade (IOI is the equivalent international contest for highschoolers), so by the time these kids get to college, they are highly experienced.

    So, yeah, I expect the winners to apply to the best American universities and get in, of course.
    MIT and Stanford can only gain by losing in that competition.