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2007 ACM Contest Winners Announced

Posted by Zonk on Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:32 PM
from the they-are-the-winner dept.
Programming IT Technology
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."
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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)."
[+] 2006 ACM Programming Contest Complete 180 comments
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."
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  • No Indian universities achieved a top ranking? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      let's bring in nationalism in a CS competetion because you're a short sighted non thinking nerd
    • I'm not...the emphasis is one thing: list of nice wishes and expectations of Indian professors. The talent + strong theoretical mathematical background are another.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bob54321 (911744)

      I'm surprised that no Indian universities achieved a higher ranking. They place much emphasis on competing in these sorts of programming challenges.

      Could it be that that there are no clear cut top universities for learning to program in India - i.e. they are all reasonable? If that was the case, the programming talent would get spread out and the universities would not progress as far as those who manage to attract all the programming talent in a country. Just a speculation...

      Also, what portion of t

      • > Could it be that that there are no clear cut top universities for learning to program in India - i.e. they are all reasonable?

        I dont think this is the case. IIT is generally regarded as one of the best engineering univerisities in the world. Everyone who wants to be an engineer/scientist in India applies there. If anything, the best engineering undergrads in India are more concentrated than the best engineering undergrads in the US.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Curious. I've only heard Indians claim that.
          It's probably wishful thinking. I know a couple of profs at IIT Mumbay and there's no way they
          could be teaching at a top-tier american university.

          You don't happen to be Indian, do you ?
      • Really, this competition comes down the amount a team practices for the competition itself. Software development has really very little to do with the competition. There are three people on a team, and only one person sits at the computer at a time (at least in the regional competition, but I think the global is similar). It is a competition to see who can find a solution to a particular problem the fastest. As long as you are decent CS student who has studied algorithms, you will have the basics to do this

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Hawkxor (693408)
          In MIT's case, they didn't really practice too much - but since the team basically consisted of USA IOI members from previous years (and they clearly practiced for that), they still perform well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nick1000 (914998)
      I am at the CS dept. in one of the highest ranked Indian universities in this years' ACM ICPC (I won't disclose which, but I am sure the same scenario exists at all institutes here).

      Contrary to what you are saying, our institute places absolutely no emphasis on such programming challenges. Unlike some Russian univs (I don't know about US ones) we have no regular coaches. Nor do we have any year long "focussed" practice either.

      We just attend the regular courses and if we feel like it, we try our skills a

      • This was the way it was at my school too. When we went to the competition, we had to beg a professor to "coach" us, since you can't legally enter the contest without one. Even then, we ended up doing a good chunk of the paperwork that the coach would normally fill out. There was no "development abstraction layer" for us.

        However, he did take time out of his schedule to come chill with us in San Antonio at the finals. The school also did offer to fly us out, but another entity took care of that angle. I
  • In Soviet Russia, Third Place Wins You!

  • Why MIT lost (Score:5, Funny)

    by Simon Garlick (104721) on Monday March 19 2007, @12:09AM (#18398721)
    They forgot about Poland!
  • The PDF of the problem sets are up, but no mention of when/where the input data and solutions will be posted. Are these currently available?
     
    • It seems that nowadays, no "official" solutions are posted. (sorry if I am wrong) Solutions usually come from universities who managed to solve them. Well, it would be better that way since we would have something to practice on. :D

      Would the slashdot community come up with the solutions and post it here? :D

      *Timer starts now*

  • Go Tsinghua! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by megaduck (250895) <dvarvel@@@hotmail...com> on Monday March 19 2007, @01:27AM (#18398921) Journal
    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.

    • Re:Go Tsinghua! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rakishi (759894) on Monday March 19 2007, @01:56AM (#18399015)
      The thing is that Poland has had time to develop their CS programs which is why they're so good, the soviets did not exactly skimp out on such things (you have lines for bread but free good education). They may actually be going downhill more than anything now, for various reasons. I've heard complaints from former students (ie: students back during the soviet years) of the CS program degrading now.

      That's for example why you have so many hackers in the former soviet bloc, there is an infrastructure to educate people but for a good time (after the USSR collapsed) there were no jobs for them.

      Poland is an industrialized/technological nation but simply has a horrid government and crappy economy (later is partially a result of the former).

      Still as I understand it Warsaw University is one of the places to go to school in Poland and its free if you get in. Granted the entrance requirements/system is arsine (for many reasons) but that applies to all Polish public universities. I guess I'd call it SATs on crack and while they do catch a lot of the good students they also don't catch a lot of them.
        • See I've actually talked to people who need to deal with the Polish system. Let me put it this way, a single type by someone entering your record in the central office and your college chances are fucked. Likewise everything is based on a single metric that is in some ways arbitrary.
        • * The university started winning almost every year in the recent years. It didn't do as well before - in the 80's and early 90's the CS program sucked big time due to lack of equipment, knowledge etc, so the imminent 'downfall' isn't really what's happening or will be. True, the education has gotten less strict, but the universities keep their standards.

          I talked to people who went back in the 70s which probably explains it. Good to hear that its on the rise.

          * You are confusing Poland and the Soviet Republic

    • You are asking what will happen to this chinese university that came 2nd, when it aquires the same level of "development" as the univeristy that a shared 3rd?

      Mmmm, geez, that is a though one.

      They would loose to the next country that spends more time learning then on needless luxuries?

      Your question would only work in a positive way IF the chinese had come say third to MIT. If I, an amateur, drive in Formula 1 and end in 10th place then you might well wonder what I could do if in couple of years time I rac

          • thats the worst analogy ever, your not giving the Chinese the credit they deserve, its the typical macho american response the world expects these days - dont agree with america? your just wrong then. or we didnt win? we werent taking it seriously.

            Huh? Just because it doesn't agree with your worldview doesn't make it false. It's quite true that American universities do not place emphasis on this competition although as I understand the students had practiced for a different competition. I mean we do place e
    • I'm not surprised that Tsinghua students can go toe-to-toe with the best American students and win.
      So much for educational streaming and "teaching to the test".

      What happens in twenty years, when the * have had some time to develop their C.S. and engineering programs?
      We'll be able to discredit some of their teams for the one-dimensionality of going for the single test.

      "Well, these foreign students may be good at these programming challenges, but what can they do in the real world?"
      Nothing unless some tax-eva
      • How about scaling back exclusivity to access some of these fine universities for citizens of all social classes

        Top universities provide very nice undergraduate financial aid packages. While admission will be harder for those without money, for various reasons including available activities during high school and knowing how to fill out the app, there are no massive barriers. Graduate school on the other hand likewise allows for anyone to access it and usually provides some form of financing for students (de
  • 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.

  • But the judging data was screwed up (again) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gvc (167165) on Monday March 19 2007, @07:58AM (#18400387)
    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 [slashdot.org] 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 [win.tue.nl] 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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zippthorne (748122)
      There is a link to the problem set on the page in the summary. I see no limit of 100 or 64 in any aspect of this problem.

      There does a appear to be a limit of 1001 lines *for each test case* however the number of test cases is unspecified.

      And besides, since when do you fail to do input validation in the program itself? I know you're trying to save time in a programming contest environment, but if the program comes back with a run-time error, you should really be putting in input validation. Unless you hav
        • Ok, from my rather limited experience with HS programming contests, there is a bit of a fog over why you've been rejected, but I agree that you wouldn't want to put in input validation for the first submission. It's definitely a waste of time unless the problem specification indicates that they will be testing for that or if you can quickly see what you're doing wrong.

          However if input validation moves you from "run time error" to "incorrect output" then you know specifically that either a) an assumption yo
  • I participated back when I was in school. It was a lot of fun. We did well (4th one year, 2nd the next), so that helped!

    My old school was tied for last this year, but hey at least they were there.
  • I know of official test cases aren't made public, so that the officials can cover up their mistakes. But does anyone else provide test cases they made up after the contest? In my experience, dealing with corner cases you didn't think of is one of the hardest things to get right.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bryan Ischo (893) *
      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 did
      • yea but from glancing at the problems (http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Finals/2007WorldFinal ProblemSet.pdf pdf!), A and H are pretty much cakewalks (this is from a CS student with half a degree who only rarely dabbles with code in his free time).
        • A was "kinda" easy, the rest is ... ... well, let's say that ACM is a classical source of problems that seem easy "at first". From my own experience it also gets harder to solve problems during the in place finals since there are 'other factors', but these guys probably got used to it since they went to a lot of them in order to classify to the finals.

          I am no frigging American, but let's be fair, getting to the finals is hard enough, and Harvard's position is not exactly terrible.

      • Universities that don't engage in challenges or bleeding edge research can quickly lose their reputation. Harvard could only go so far without improvement before it became a place that used to be good.

        I know of one in the UK that was, a few years ago, considered to be among the top 5 for CS. Nowadays it would be hard pressed to appear at any meaningful position at all.

        Why? Because they were 'so good' that they froze things as they were to maintain their level of excellence, causing other universities to cha

        • Universities that don't engage in challenges or bleeding edge research can quickly lose their reputation. Harvard could only go so far without improvement before it became a place that used to be good.

          Oh, definitely, but I don't think that's the case here. Harvard has good computer science researchers, they just doesn't enjoy the scale and prominence of, say, CMU. For example, Michael Rabin, Harry Lewis, and Leslie Valiant are all big names in CS at Harvard, and they also have other well-known researchers

          • I said ten years ago did I not. I added this qualifier because I have no idea how they compare nowadays

            Besides, one of you lot scoffed at my 'puny' but hard won computing resources last year, so I'm probably not well inclined towards you.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by odano (735445)
        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
        • southern cal only gets one team, and North Carolina gets two? (Duke+UNC) (also fwiw, I went to Duke, and i do not by any means think it is a good CS school)

          That's kind of weird--just how do these regional rules work?

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