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29th ACM Intl. Programming Contest Results
mathinator writes "The 29th ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, hosted by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, are now over and the results are in.
Congratulations to the top 4 teams who will be walking away with gold medals. They are Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg Institute of Optics and Mechanics, and Canada's University of Waterloo (coming in at 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively. The top 4 get gold medals).
Regional champions are: University of Waterloo, Canada (North America); Moscow State University, Russia (Europe); University of Cape Town, South Africa, (Africa and the Middle East); Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, Brazil (Latin America); Shanghai Jiaotong University, China (Asia); and University of New South Wales, Australia (South Pacific)."
Computer Programmers from Shanghai Jiaotong University in China Are World Champions -- Winners of the 29th Annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, Sponsored By IBM
SHANGHAI, China & SOMERS, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- April 6, 2005 -- Students from host school Shanghai Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China, took first place in the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), sponsored by IBM. The international "battle of the brains," in Shanghai, China, challenged students to tackle a semester's worth of computer programming curriculum under a grueling five-hour deadline, in a battle of logic, strategy, and mental endurance. The ACM-ICPC World Finals champions walk away with IBM prizes, scholarships, and bragging rights to the world's "smartest trophy."
Shanghai Jiaotong University was the only team to correctly solve eight of the ten problems in this year's Contest. Moscow State University, St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics, and University of Waterloo finished the competition in second, third, and fourth places, respectively, and all won Gold medals.
Regional champions are: University of Waterloo, Canada (North America); Moscow State University, Russia (Europe); University of Cape Town, South Africa, (Africa and the Middle East); Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, Brazil (Latin America); Shanghai Jiaotong University, China (Asia); and University of New South Wales, Australia (South Pacific).
"The ACM-ICPC shines the spotlight on the best and brightest problem solvers from campuses spanning the globe," said Dr. Gabby Silberman, Program Director, IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, Hawthorne, N.Y. "At the World Finals, these programmers were exposed to IBM's most advanced technologies, giving them a competitive edge as they launch careers in information technology."
This year, 78 teams earned coveted spots on the World Finals roster, out of more than 4,100 teams from 71 countries who competed in regional contests worldwide. During the Contest, students were united through the common language of code as they competed in a race against the clock to solve ten complex, real world programming problems. Team participation in the Contest has increased five-fold since IBM began sponsorship in 1997.
"The ACM is thrilled to partner with industry leader IBM to challenge these students to achieve extraordinary levels of problem solving," says Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive Director and Baylor University Professor. "The future of the IT industry is in the hands of these young innovators."
This year's top twelve teams that received medals are:
-- Shanghai Jiaotong University (GOLD, WORLD CHAMPION)
-- Moscow State University (GOLD, 2nd Place)
-- St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics (GOLD, 3rd Place)
-- University of Waterloo (GOLD, 4th Place)
-- University of Wroclaw (SILVER, 5th Place)
-- Fudan University (SILVER, 6th Place)
-- KTH - Royal Institute of Technology (SILVER, 7th Place)
-- Norwegian University of Science & Technology (SILVER, 8th Place)
-- Izhevsk State Technical University (BRONZE, 9th Place)
-- POLITEHNICA University Bucharest (BRONZE, 10th Place)
-- Peking University (BRONZE, 11th Place)
-- The University of Hong Kong (BRONZE, 12th Place)
The three-person teams were awarded medals based on the number of problems they solved in the shortest time during the competition.
In an exciting tournament style challenge prior to the World Finals competition, students were introduced to IBM's Blue Gene/L, the fastest supercomputer in the world, which runs on the company's Power processing technology. Teams created a parallel application on an IBM POWER-based platform, a technology used by universities, government agencies, research organizations and commercial enterprises to solve some of the most complex problems in physics, engineering, biology, geolog
If you look at the "Top 4", you will see that the region groupings only allows one winner from North America. A Canadian college got this one, but there are US schools in the results list of runner ups.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The complete list of problems can be found here, along with some sample inputs/outputs (usual format for these types of contest).
The finals problem set (PDF) is at the finals home page.
Glad to see "Canada's Top Math and CS University" is pulling in good results overseas too. ;)
Expectations are for the unprepared.
http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Finals/Scoreboard/inde x.html
I'm a Waterloo student and it's awesome to see how we did. Waterloo competes regularly and has had a winning place several times before.
As for the people who have been insinuating that the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rigged the results, take a look at the past winners page. They were the winners in 2002 as well (hosted in Honolulu).
As for the actual problem set: it can be found (PDF)here.
Actually, this is the INTERNATIONAL Collegiate Programming Contest. The way it works is that each country is split up into regions. The first round consists of regionals and the qualifiers move to the final round where they compete against the top teams from other countries. So, in a sense, this *was* a US-based competition for the first round.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
"I'm not sure how you could objectively measure something like this"
I did the competition in 2001 when I was in college. It may be slightly different now, but back then each team of 3 students got 9 problems and an hour to code solutions on one machine. You submitted your code to a server and it compiled it and ran it against unknown input and output (we knew the parameters, but not the actual input). Success/failure notices, or compilation errors were quickly IM'd back to you.
The team is scored using this criteria
1. Number of problems solved
2. The total time taken before submitting correct answers + any penalty minutes for submitting incorrect or incompilable code.
So a team who got 9 questions right in a half hour would score better than a team who got 9 right in 45 minutes.
(As for how we did, we were able to solve 4/9 questions and tied for 17th place. Results here. I was on the American University team, AU One)
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
I participated in the southern regional ACM programming contest. GaTech won with Florida coming in second. The questions are extremely hard. We solved one problem. They give you 5 lines of test data but when the judges test it they will use hundreds of lines of test data. Not only must your program be correct it must also be fast (less than 3 minutes)
;)
oh and honorable mention means you didn't solve any. Take that Tech!
-Brian
Okay, a bit of explaining here. At the ACM you don't come up with fancy solutions printed on a piece of paper, you *implement* them. Your source code needs to pass a set of tests and is given a very limited amount of time for each one of them. In most cases you need to optimize your code a lot (and by this I mean use the best algorithms possible). You submit your code, it gets evaluated automatically and you get a message like "OK", "Error", "Bad format", "Core dump" -- I don't remember exactly all the names, it's been a few years since I participated at an ACM World Finals (Vancouver, 2001). After that you wonder what the heck went wrong (just like in real word, I may add), you modify it, you submit it again and so on. Of course, penalties add up for multiple submissions for the same problem.
DFM (Design for Manufacturing) -- yes, you are correct. But ACM and the other international contests prepare you exactly for that.
--B
Probably has more to do with students being inclined to compete in the various US-based ACM competitions rather than travel to China.
That's not true. The way the contest works is the world is broken up into regions. The people who place first and second at regionals (and occasionally a few honorable mentions) are allowed to move on to the international competition.
Here are the regions for North America, and here are the list of teams that went to compete in the international competition - 11 North American regions, 25 North American teams. I sincerely doubt that anyone who won a regional competition here in the US would forgo the opportunity to compete in the internationals, and if they did, I think the third place team would go in their place.
The US did send teams, they just didn't win. Oh, and if you look at past contests you will see that they schools that did well this year, have historically dominated the contest.
No kidding. The grandparent should be moderated troll. Before accusing someone he know nothing about of cheating, perhaps he could have check the past results and see that this school (along with all the other leaders) has performed very well at every contest in recent history, including winning the 2002 contest in Honolulu, Hawaii. Or maybe the US coordinators were in a conspiricy againt the US teams as well.
Now it is about 6-9 questions and you have 5 hours to solve them. Code is submitted using the PC^2 system.
The score board is frozen one hour before the contest finishes. This is a long standing rule of ACM/ICPC contest, they claim that this way you'll be keep interested in wait for the final award ceremony.
You can see past winners here: http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/default.htm
It's 25 pages then, instead of 5
Other things which seem to be new - they give a calculator now, it should be handy, and Pascal seems to be falling off the cliff...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
University of Waterloo is THE top school in Canada according to Maclaens and is THE top University in Canada for Engineering + CS. The University has the largest Co-op education service in the world. All engineering students and CS students have Co-op every other term. I'm on my co-op term right now. The University's main goal as of now is to ready its students for the work force. We gain 2 years work experience by the time we graduate.
The University is very young (I think found in 1957) and has rapidly grown because of its connections with companies like RIM and COM DEV. Our Chancellor is the President of RIM! RIM Headquarters is next door to us. Across the street we have the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Also, UW is the recruiting ground for M$ (maybe we all hate them, but meh). A lot of the top engineers and programmers in Canada come from UW and end up in the states due to nice offers and oppurtunities. We call that the "Brain Drain."
UW DOES NOT have courses or teachings that are directed towards contests. The courses are extemely rigourous with high expectations. All courses force a lot of critical thinking. We take Math and Science seriously here.
UW conducts nationwide math, physics, and chem contests to high schoolers as well. In Engineering you have to write an entrance math test (which most people fail, but its Bell Curved). If your below standards, they offer mandatory math tutorial services to you. We also recently placed 4th in PUTNAM math comepetition.
Also, addressing the jokes about US being beaten by Canada: Canada has played important roles in science and engineering. Especially since the layed off workers from the Arrow project worked on NASA's Mercury and Apollo missions. That's right, it's our engineers and scientists that helped US get to the Moon. The Arrow project in itself is a great feat for Canada. Arrow was for more advanced than any US aircraft for very long time.
Currently, UW is looking towards raising funds and improving our Graduate programs to become top notch like MIT. We are also investing quite a lot of money to bring top professors in. UW is already good enough to be treated like an Ivy League school in my opinion. However, once we do invest in research I can garantee 50 years from now it will be well known and respected Internationally.
O, by the way...I'm an American :P.
Of course, even something this simple can have problems. At the Fall 2004 Mid-Central(IL, MO, etc) competition, the judging software was set up incorrectly so that it compared your resulting output to... your resulting output. The only way to fail was for a program to not compile or to run too long(i.e. get stuck in an inf loop), so at the very end of the contest one of the teams picked up on this after submitting something they knew shouldn't have worked, and solved the "hard problem" by outputting the completely nonsensical string "everybody wang chung tonight".
The solution to the problem however, due to the fact that by the time the judges realized this the contest was over, was to simply re-judge all the entries correctly, meaning that the only way to get a problem right in the end was to have been 100% correct in the first place(whereas normally you could resubmit the program if it was outputting the wrong data, taking a time penalty). As a result, I don't have much faith in the mid-central results this year, or even the whole of NA for that matter(there's just no way to know who really belonged at the finals from mid-central); and more importantly it shows while file comparisons can be a very bad idea.
To clarify, Waterloo was ranked the top school in the "comprehensive" category, which has 11 candidate schools ranked. Most of the other top Canadian schools are in a different category, "Medical Doctoral," which includes schools that have medical schools associated with them (having a medical school has an impact on funding levels, I believe).
Macleans rankings
Waterloo is a top school, but I felt it should be noted that it may not be THE top school.
Also, Macleans is not necessarily as much of an authority as most people would like to think, but that's another matter.
Jiao Tong are "host" only insofar as they laid out a great welcome mat for the world. The facilities were excellent and they showed us Chinese acrobats and a just-for-us fireworks show that rivals any I've seen.
ACM ICPC is an American organization, and they have complete control over the judging. IBM supplied the hardware and the ICPC staff supplied the software and judging staff.
In the last hour, any of the 4 gold medallists could have won. Waterloo submitted problem A but didn't get it. The Russian teams submitted problem G but didn't get it. Jiao Tong overcame a 1-problem deficit and then, with about 10 minutes to go, solved problem D to win.
Have a look at the problems and you can decide for yourself whether or not they catered to any particular audience. I think not.
I congratulate Jiao Tong and thank them for their hospitality.
Gordon Cormack
coach,
Waterloo
No Waterloo student receives a class credit for participating in the ACM contest. They get the occasional free pizza and trips to exotic lands. That's it.
Gordon Cormack
coach
Waterloo