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2006 ACM Programming Contest Complete

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-wrappered-up dept.

prostoalex writes "World finals for 2006 ACM programming contest took place in San Antonio, TX this year, and the results are in. Russia's Saratov State University solved 5 contest problems in record time, followed closely by Altai State Technical University (Russia) with 5 problems solved as well. University of Twente (Netherlands), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), Warsaw University (Poland), St. Petersburg State University (Russia), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Moscow State University (Russia), University of Waterloo (Canada) and Jagiellonian University - Krakow (Poland) all completed 4 problems."

9 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Re:One Question & A Short Rant by Hyram+Graff · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. Anybody managed to find the actual test questions?

    It looks like you will be able to get them in pdf from from the contest website. (As of the time of this posting, the link hasn't gone live.)

    --
    0*0
    00*
    ***
  2. Online ACM problems by BinaryOpty · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who want to know more about this contest in the form of actually attempting ACM questions, then I suggest heading over to their problemset archive which not only has ACM stuff from the last 5 years but a large number of non-ACM programming problems in the same vein. You can sign up with them and have your solutions to their problems checked for correctness.

    Since the website's a design massacre, to get to the ACM problems you need to click on the link marked THE CII ICPC LIVE ARCHIVE !!! in the news bar, or just click on that one right there.

  3. Re:One Question & A Short Rant by jbf · · Score: 5, Informative

    As a member of the second place team in world finals many moons ago, I have to disagree. I think the problems are actually quite simple algorithmically, and that the hard part is quickly writing working code for semicomplicated problems (including input parsing) with only one computer shared three ways.

  4. Actual results by insaneparadox · · Score: 5, Informative

    As noted previously, the mentioned scores were from an hour before the contest's end. My sources give the actual, final medal results as the following:

    1. Saratov State University (Russia) - 6 problems
    2. Jagiellonian University - Krakow (Poland) - 6 problems
    3. Altai State Technical University (Russia) - 5 problems
    4. University of Twente (Netherlands) - 5 problems
    5. Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) - 5 problems
    6. St. Petersburg State University (Russia) - 5 problems
    7. Warsaw University (Poland) - 5 problems
    8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) - 5 problems
    9. Moscow State University (Russia) - 5 problems
    10. Ufa State Technical University (Russia) - 5 problems
    11. University of Alberta (Canada) - 4 problems
    12. University of Waterloo (Canada) - 4 problems

    Four teams each received gold, silver, and bronze (in the above order). For the same number of problems, the order is based on penalty minutes.

    1. Re:Actual results by gvc · · Score: 2, Informative

      Newswires are wrong. I have the printed standings in front of me.

      The top 4 (Saratov, Jagiellonian, Altai, Twente) got gold, the
      next 4 silver, the next 4 bronze.

      Gordon Cormack
      Coach, Waterloo

      P.S. Please do lobby ICPC to be more spectator-friendly.
      Although they seem to care about the profile of the
      contest, they seem indifferent to advertising
      and reporting on-line results. They refused to disclose
      a scoreboard link in advance; the actual contest time
      was not well advertised; even after the start of the
      contest they had "2006 World Champions" as a label
      on last year's results; the *real* scoreboard link
      was posted nearly an hour after the start; the start
      and finish times were never posted; the scoreboard
      was frozen with no indication. Detailed results are
      *never* posted and summary results still aren't there
      more than 15 hours after the awards ceremony.

  5. CSIDC: IEEE Design Competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Some may be interested in the IEEE design competition: http://www.computer.org/csidc, which typically involves designing a hardware/software system constrained within a pre-determined theme. Judging entries includes considering the creativity in addressing the theme, how well the design/development process was planned and executed, does the system work correctly, etc. Submissions are initially judged as paper designs. Those submissions that make the cut have working models judged.

    I believe both contests have their merits.

  6. Re:One Question & A Short Rant by hyfe · · Score: 2, Informative

    The large Dom Knigi on Novy Arbat, (right next to the Norwegian Embassy if you have a tourist guide, I might be mistaking the streetname), had the largest selection of English book I could find. Never checked out computer books though.

    --
    "" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
  7. Re:One Question & A Short Rant by kyb · · Score: 2, Informative
    In all the contests I did, the most difficult thing wasn't actually solving the problems, it was solving the problems so they were right first time, in the fastest time possible, when you only had control of a single computer, keyboard and mouse between 6 of you trying the same thing. No matter how l33t you are, you probably have difficulty writing a reasonably complex program so it's right first time. I know lots of fantastic programmers who couldn't write code that compiles without their IDE, so paper and pencil is going to be a challenge for them. You may have a simple problem, but the real skill is how long it takes you at the keyboard to have a working solution that will solve the pathological cases that you haven't seen yet. If it takes you a long time, you'll hold your other team members up so even if you get your one question perfect it may have been a pyhric victory. Oh yeah, and you can't concentrate either when you're in a mad rush coding at the machine, because people keep coming up to you trying to get control of the computer for their problem, and the slightest sign of weakness, that you're not going to get it done or that you're going to take longer than you thought, and they'll take it off you for their problem.

    If you want to try this at home, take a pencil and few sheets of paper, give yourself 40 minutes. Now give yourself strictly 10 minutes at the keyboard (but try to be done in 5), and submit your first result.

    That's the thing, there is a large resource management aspect to many of these competitions. And don't underestimate the difference between coding at home at your own pace, with the ability to test your code the whole time and coding in a competitive environment at top speed with very limited keyboard time. It's like the difference between composing a little tune in front of your instrument or writing a symphony which you only get to hear once at the public performance.

  8. American Teams Get No Support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    I work for the contest.

    The reason American teams will probably never win is because American universities give their teams little to no support. The coach for Georgia Tech was an alumn that works in Atlanta, because no profs will do it. Any tenure track proffesor at a major CS school in America that takes time to coach a contest will not get tenure.

    Contrast this to the Chinese team that won last year. The Chinese government bought the coach an SUV, in a country where most people don't have cars. Americans just don't care.

    Oh, BTW, it was the 30th annual contest, not the 29th.