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Internet Problem Solving Contest 2004

Posted by simoniker on from the looking-quizzical dept.

misof writes "The sixth year of the annual Internet Problem Solving Contest (IPSC) will take place on Friday May 21st. IPSC is one of world's largest online programming contests with over 600 teams from more than 50 countries participating last year. The main purpose of IPSC is to compare problem solving skills of people from around the world and, of course, to have fun. IPSC is not oriented on a specific programming language instead you are given the input data and may produce the output data by any means. (This could actually be THE way to show your friends the superiority of both your skills and your favourite programming environment!) The contest is open for everybody and we invite you to participate!"

27 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. All the smartest people... by Plaeroma · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...in the world still can't fix the problem of stupid user syndrome.

  2. I wonder by BrianGa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if it's anything like Odyssey of the Mind

  3. Time of Day by XanC · · Score: 4, Funny

    I know I won't be at my best at 6 in the morning...

  4. T-Shirt? by fore1337 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can't I just get a T-Shirt, and *SAY* I participated?

  5. convergant or divergent solutions by Engineer+Andy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would be interested in seeing the extent to which people with similar training come up with similar solutions based on using the standard toolkit they are accustomed to hauling out for any problem. The other outcome would be of people are sparked into thinking outside the box by the competition not being tied to the "this is the way the company does this sort of thing and so you shall follow this methodology".

    Thinking in my own field of engineering, if you gave people problems to solve outside of the work environment you would probably get a far more creative set of solutions than you would if people were set the same problem at work in the context of a project.

    --
    "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
    1. Re:convergant or divergent solutions by The_reformant · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I dont really think this has anything to do with the sort of training you receive in the workplace. These are abstract problems which are a prime candidate for testing an applicants knowledge of fundamental algorithms and how to select the best datastructure for the job.

      Looking at the sample set of problems the tiling problem and the dependancy problem should be able to be solved optimally (in terms of time complexity) fairly easily since they are both simplifications of well known problems in CS.

      The smiley face problem is quite interesting and i agree that this one could expose some really good creatinve thinking.

      All in all based on the sample problems I think this competition would be ideally suited to strong computer science students or recent graduates. Most people in the work place have totally forgotten all of the necesary kind of skills since in the real world they don't work quite so well

      To be honest it makes a change to have a situation that favours students over those with experience in the industry. Slashdot all too often slams graduates fresh out of uni simply because they make mistakes due to lack of experience in the field.

      --
      I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
  6. Whitespace Language by SirChris · · Score: 3, Funny

    What was the whitespace language from like 2 april fools' days ago. I'll use that.

    1. Re:Whitespace Language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/

  7. Prediction by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    judging by the number of entries and the percentages of countries per entries I predict that at least 3 places out of the first 5 will go to the Russian teams, one out of the first 5 will go to a Chineese team, and the last one out of 5 will be another East European team.

    I won't participate since I have work to do.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
    1. Re:Prediction by thetroll123 · · Score: 3, Funny

      judging by the number of entries and the percentages of countries per entries

      Does it still count as a win for the country the team registered from if they outsource the actual work to India?

  8. suck rules by poincare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From http://ipsc.ksp.sk/rules.php

    Each team may use only one computer or one terminal (one keyboard and one monitor).
    You can't have a distributed team working through the internet.

    It is forbidden to use systems for symbolic computation (e.g. Mathematica, Maple, Matlab) and special libraries (e.g. LEDA).
    Most of the programming languages listed (Pascal, C, C++, Java, Basic, Smalltalk, Lisp, Logo, Perl, Python) have symbolic libraries, but it looks like you can't use those and'll have to reinvent those wheels. Hmmmm.

    1. Re:suck rules by tesmako · · Score: 4, Funny

      That is just sadistic, they state problems that just scream 'Please use prolog to crunch me!' and then forbid symolic manipulators (read: prolog). It's like a drinking contest where you cant use your mouth :P

    2. Re:suck rules by gunix · · Score: 3, Informative

      That sucks!
      Are you supposed to win if you can write the basic datastructures, trees, etc, faster than anyone else?
      That's not a very interesting competition then.

      Half of the work is to understand the problem. The rest is to tell a computer to do stuff to find the solution. It shouldn't matter how you tell it to do stuff. The point is that you should try to learn as many tools as possible and be allowed to use them.

      --
      Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
    3. Re:suck rules by pjt33 · · Score: 3, Informative

      As I read it, they're not prohibiting you from using libraries for basic datastructures like trees, but from using libraries for things like symbolic algebra and graph algorithms. The example given, LEDA, contains basic datastructures but it also contains MSTs, max flow algorithms, BFS, convex hull, ... The competition is about problem solving, not real-life programming, so it's perfectly reasonable to let people use their favorite language rather than require them to do some research into which libraries are available for the languages permitted.

  9. Cool, but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    During the competition, do not read e-mails and www pages except the e-mails from the IPSC and the IPSC www pages.

    Don't think I could do it...

    Not even slashdot??!

  10. SUperior programming language by pdxdada · · Score: 5, Funny

    This could actually be THE way to show your friends the superiority of both your skills and your favourite programming environment!

    All the hours of practice, the computer science degrees, all the long dateless Friday nights coding, I now know they have led up to this contest. Why I can program anything, except for this emotion you call "love."

    --
    Don't mess with the bunny, outsideworld.org
  11. Glaven by lewko · · Score: 5, Funny
    This could actually be THE way to show your friends the superiority of both your skills and your favourite programming environment!

    Friends?

    --
    Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
  12. The most superior coding environment... by djcreamy · · Score: 4, Funny

    PHP? pfffft. Perl? pfffft. C++? pfffft. Hell I don't know even know of any more languages. Not that any of them matter. I can finally prove to the world that HTML is more than just font and table tags. HTML really is all you need to know. And I use Microsoft Frontpage. I'm SO gonna win.

    1. Re:The most superior coding environment... by Shivantrill · · Score: 3, Funny

      ASP, Bah!
      Shell Scripting, So 70s
      LISP, AWK, BASIC (Visual and DOS), Java, Javascript ... all pale in comparison to HTML
      I will SO join you. Lets show these so-called "real programmers" what some HTML magic can really do!
      You know I'm kidding right? right?!

      --
      Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
  13. Change of plans, guys... by shigelojoe · · Score: 5, Funny

    The competition has been outsourced to India.

  14. Internet Problem Solving? by tmk · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hope the participants code - a new AOL software - an Outlook-Skin for TheBat - a new IRC protocol and - WinXP Servicepack 3

  15. will take place on Friday May 21st. by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 3, Funny
    Thanks for the advance notice.

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
  16. Problem Solving Skills by xyote · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's lots of different types of problem solving skills. Some are innate. Some are learned. And practice makes a big difference. What remains to be seen is whether there is any definitive correspondence between "slam" problem solving and real life significant accomplishments. There could be other more important factors. In other words, being terrible at these kind of contests may not be a good predictor of being good at things that count.

  17. similar means, similar solutions by davids-world.com · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While most programming languages are turing-equivalent, they do shape the way we THINK about a problem.

    What strikes me in this contest is that it's not problem solving that is asked for, but "thinking in a procedural or object-oriented way".

    Contrary to the original post, I CANNOT use my "favorite" development environment. My favorite environment is the one that suits the task, and for many tasks, I prefer to use Prolog. The fact that they exclude logic formlisms and also the Internet as today's vital research medium means that this is not about solving novel (and hard) problems, but more about the old compare high school student's skills when given a well-known problem in a very restricted environment.

  18. I won something like this... by Cytlid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... in high school. It was about 1990 and called something to the effect of "International Computer Problem Solving Contest". Of course then it wasn't about the Internet at all, and the programming was done in Basic on 286's. Think our school had one or two 386's at the time. They gave you something like 4 hours to solve 5 problems... and they were pretty hard (well for me being a sophmore at the time). You could work in teams, a friend of mine David and I were a team, we took first place for the school in answering 3 questions in the allotted time. Had we done 4, we would have gone to the national level. One of the downsides, I can remember we were only allowed to use one computer.

    Anyone know if this is related? I didn't see any mention of it on the site, maybe it's a coincidence?

    --
    FLR
  19. Compare around the world? by Fjord · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Problems will be posed in English. During the contest, all communication between IPSC and contestants will be in English. If you are not able to communicate or read in English, you can invite an interpreter to help you with translations.

    Not exactly fair towards non-English countries.

    I also find the no www rule to be kind of bad, only in that it is impossible to enforce.

    --
    -no broken link
  20. ACM Contest by kingj02 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The ACM Contest is similiar; it's linked at the bottom of the IPSC website. You have 5 hours to do 6-9 problems. Most are a real pain and brute force usually won't work... it needs to be time and memory efficient. But it's fun. Their website has a ton of problems, like 10,000+, and you can submit to there online judge... it always gives me something to do on Friday/Saturday nights.

    --
    Ardente veritate incendite tenebras mundi