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2007 ACM Contest Winners Announced
prostoalex writes "2007 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is over with Warsaw University (Poland) winning it this year and solving all of the problems. The runner-up, Tsinghua University (China), finished with 7 problems solved, while St. Petersburg University of IT, Mechanics and Optics (Russia) and MIT (USA) are tied up for the third place with 6 problems solved. There were 6000 teams initially in the running, and in the final round of the competition only 88 remained."
I don't see Polish or Chinese software being pirated. It's always those lousy Americans'.
I'm surprised that no Indian universities achieved a higher ranking. They place much emphasis on competing in these sorts of programming challenges.
On one hand, it is essential to be able to quickly come up with creative solutions for a wide variety of problems. But it is also essential to focus on the other aspects of software development, including maintainability and quality. From my experience, those who come out of Indian universities have the problem solving skills, but they lack the full spectrum of skills necessary to produce software. The high degree of emphasis only on problem solving, contest-style skills may be the reason for this.
They forgot about Poland!
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Two points:
:)
1) Harvard is not one of the top computer science universities in the United States. It is a good university nonetheless. And money can't buy better credentials
2) I think that alot of schools make half-assed attempts at the ACM contest. Meaning, maybe they get a handful of kids together to work on some practice problems a couple of times, maybe even once a week over a semester. When I went to CMU that's how it was, more or less. My friend was on the ACM team that went to nationals but didn't make it to internationals. I know what his course load was like that semester. I know that the ACM contest must have been pretty low on the priority queue.
There are some universities that I expect want the notariety of winning the ACM badly enough that the students who participate do little else besides prepare for the ACM. I would not expect Harvard to be one of those schools. What do they have to prove? They're Harvard for chrissakes!
I've never been to Warsaw, but I did spend some time at Tsinghua University last year. The people that attend Tsinghua are quite literally the best and brightest that China can produce, and that's saying something. The entrance requirements are brutally difficult, and the students I dealt with were some of the smartest people I've ever met. I'm not surprised that Tsinghua students can go toe-to-toe with the best American students and win.
These contest results become even more impressive when you consider that Tsinghua, like many developing Universities, currently has one hand tied behind its back. Tsinghua's School of Software is only a few years old, and has very limited resources. The library is small, the facilities are lacking, and the dorms are absolutely atrocious to live in (much less study). Much of the learning material that these kids are using is in English, not their native language. The fact that they're internationally competitive in any way is astounding.
A lot of us in the American educational system have a kind of bigotry when looking at foreign universities. This is particularly true in the Computer Science field. We see these kind of results and say "Well, these foreign students may be good at these programming challenges, but what can they do in the real world?" There may be a grain of truth there, but not for long. What happens in twenty years, when the great Universities of China, India, Poland, etc. have had some time to develop their C.S. and engineering programs? As an American, I want to believe that my country produces the best engineers and programmers in the world, but I think we're going to have some very stiff competition in the future.
This
The summary is incorrect. They solved 8, which was more than any other team, but left two problems unattempted. If you look at the packet you can easily see why.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I was part of the team that placed 2nd in the southern california regional, and seeing how badly some of these teams did [harvard, UNC] is very disheartening, because our region only had enough schools competing to send 1 team. It is tough to know that the only team that closely beat us in the regional contest placed 12th in the world, and yet the US is still sending teams who can't solve more than 1 or 2 problems and crack the top 50.
Maybe the ACM should open up more spots based on how the regions perform at the World Finals and less on the number of schools that compete if they really want to send the best teams.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry /2007-03-13-google-poland_N.htm
Why Google put a research lab in Poland
KRAKOW, POLAND -- When Artur Hibner graduates from college this year, he won't have to worry about getting well-paid work in his field right here in Krakow, Poland's thriving former royal seat.
For years, Western technology firms have come to Eastern Europe to lure away talented computer-science graduates like Mr. Hibner, who attends AGH University of Science and Technology. But now, the region's universities are producing so many top programmers that many firms are changing tack - and setting up shop at the source.
IBM, Motorola, and Google have all opened research labs here in Krakow in recent years, while Deutsche Telecom, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and other giants have come to Budapest, Prague, Bratislava, and other cities where universities churn out skilled coders.
"They are looking for all kinds of people, from hardware developers to programmers," says Marek Zaionc, head of the computer-science department at Krakow's Jagiellonian University. "We have a lot of good young people in these fields, and we're still a lot less expensive than other parts of Europe."
Eastern Europeans have dominated international programming competitions in recent years, attracting the attention of tech firms. Last year's TopCoder Collegiate Challenge drew 21,000 registrants from around the world, but half of the 48 finalists were from former Soviet bloc nations, including the winner, Petr Mitrichev of Russia, who also won last year's Global Code Jam, a Google-sponsored competition.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Google | Poland | Slovakia | Eastern Europe | Krakow | Bratislava | Jagiellonian University | Kosice
Tomasz Czajka, a 2004 graduate of Warsaw University, became a national celebrity in Poland after winning three TopCoder competitions in 2004-2005, racking up winnings of more than $100,000.
"When we saw these trends, of people from Eastern Europe winning these contests, we decided to take a closer look," says Kannan Pashupathy, Google's head of international engineering operations. "People have a huge interest in software, and there's a much deeper grounding in mathematics in the curriculum in these countries."
The region's universities have long been strong in hard and technical sciences, especially under Soviet rule, which emphasized industrial and military production. Tech firms began taking notice after 2000, when it became clear that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia would be joining the European Union in 2004.
Cultural, geographic, and economic proximity to Western Europe has given the region an advantage over global competitors like India. Salaries in the region are much higher than in India, but still one-third to half of those in Western Europe. Bratislava, Slovakia's capital, is a few minutes' drive from Austria, while Kosice, Krakow, and other cities are a short flight from London, Paris, or Berlin. EU membership makes investing all that much easier for western firms.
Mr. Czajka's celebrated TopCoder victories have made programming particularly attractive to young Poles. "Everyone knows Tomasz Czajka and everyone wants to be like him," says Hibner, who recently won an international math competition. "Last time I was in Warsaw, there was a huge poster of him in the center of the city."
At AGH, the computer-science department now gets seven to eight applicants per spot. "We could easily take many times more students if we had the professors and facilities to handle them," says department chief Krzysztof Zielinski. "We're happy to provide computer engineers for the companies - it is our job - but we need some help from them. Right now, we are alone."
Indeed, computer-science professors from across the region say they fear their departments will be sucked dry by Western firms. The private c
Many teams lost untold time on J because the judge data did not meet the input specification.
ICPC has had this problem before. Four times in my direct experience, most notably ICPC World Finals 2000 at which they refused to acknowledge their error until weeks later.
This year the data for problem J was wrong, so teams got "run time error" instead of "wrong answer;" many spent vast amounts of time trying to find the source of their crash when in fact it was the judges' fault. All submissions were rejudged at the eleventh hour, when it was too late to fix the problem or to move on to another question.
There is really no excuse for this sort of error. Published guidelines make it clear that input checkers should be written for all problems, yet the finals judges don't bother, and the finals organization imposes no standard on them to do so. Furthermore, the organizers refuse to release any information about the test sets, so we have no idea how many screwups have been covered up.
Here is a list of data errors for which I have first-hand knowledge. I'm sure there are many more.
Finals '97 -- Problem C has ambigous output but the
judges rejected some correct solutions
(all but their expected one?) Complaints
were responded to with "no response."
Finals '98 -- Problem D had empty lines in the input,
contrary to the specification.
Finals '00 -- The infamous graph that was not connected,
contrary to the problem spec (Problem F)
Finals '07 -- Problem J was supposed to have maximum size
64, but was 100. Rejudged in the last hour
of contest. Many submissions changed from
run-time or time limit to wrong answer.
I am at a loss to understand why the organizers fail to implement better quality control, and why they refuse to release the data and solutions. Bad calls will happen, but the lack of quality control and the lack of transparency exacerbates the problem considerably. These failures, in my opinion, detracts substantially from the contest.
Gordon Cormack
Coach, Waterloo ACM Team