Regional Contest Cookbook
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Regional Contest Cookbook About ACM ICPC Mission: ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) provides college students with opportunities to interact with students from other universities and to sharpen and demonstrate their problem-solving, programming, and teamwork skills. The contest provides a platform for ACM, industry, and academia to encourage and focus public attention on the next generation of computing professionals as they pursue excellence. About the Contest The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) traces its roots to a competition held at Texas A&M in 1970 hosted by the Alpha Chapter of the UPE Computer Science Honor Society. The idea quickly gained popularity within the United States and Canada as an innovative initiative to challenge the top students in the emerging field of computer science. The contest evolved into a multi-tier competition with the first Finals held at the ACM Computer Science Conference in 1977. Operating under the auspices of ACM and headquartered at Baylor University since 1989, the contest has expanded into a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the ACM-ICPC World Finals. Since IBM became sponsor in 1997, the contest has increased by a factor of eight. Participation has grown to involve several tens of thousands of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines at 1,821 universities from 83 countries on six continents. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. Quite simply, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world. The annual event is comprised of several levels of competition: • Local Contests – Universities choose teams or hold local contests to select one or more teams to represent them at the next level of competition. Selection takes place from a field of over 300,000 students in computing disciplines worldwide. • Regional Contests (September to December 2008) – Last year, participation increased by 10% from 6,099 to 6,700 teams representing 1,821 universities from 83 countries on six continents, not counting numerous teams competing in preliminaries. • World Finals (April 18-22, 2009, Stockholm, Sweden) – One hundred (100) world finalist teams will compete for awards, prizes and bragging rights in Stockholm hosted by KTH – Royal Institute of Technology. These teams represent the best of the finest universities on six continents - the cream of the crop. Battle of the Brains: The contest pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. Judging is relentlessly strict. The students are given a problem statement – not a requirements document. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges’ test data and acceptance criteria. Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. You don’t want to waste your customer’s time when you are dealing with the supreme court of computing. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner. About ACM The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology professionals and students. ACM serves its global membership of 80,000 by delivering cutting edge technical information and transferring ideas from theory to practice. ACM hosts the computing industry’s leading Portal to Computing Literature. With its journals and magazines, special interest groups, conferences, workshops, electronic forums, Career Resource Centre and Professional Development Centre, ACM is a primary resource to the information technology field. For more information, see http://www.acm.org . IBM’s Commitment IBM’s sponsorship commitment to the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is part of a company-wide effort to advance the next generation of computer scientists. For more information about other IBM college initiatives, please visit the IBM/ACM contest Web site and click on the Student Portal button – http://www.ibm.com/university/acmcontest/ and also follow the contest podcast series at http://battleofthebrains.podbean.com/ . About IBM IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM software offers the widest range of e-business infrastructure software for all types of computing platforms, allowing customers to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. The fastest way to get more information about IBM software is through the IBM home page at http://www.software.ibm.com . ICPC 2007 Regionals @ Amritapuri Campus The 32 nd Annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest - Asia Region Amritapuri was held at Amritapuri Campus of Amrita University on 21 - 22 December 2007. Total 48 teams participated in the contest out of 54 selected teams from the Online Contest conducted in November 2007. Right amount of fun, entertainment and practice sessions were arranged for the contestants. Right from 19th of December, pick up from the railway station / airport was arranged for all the teams who had requested for. A student talk on "Preparation for Success in Programming Contests"was given by Prasanna, final year CSE student from National Institute of Technology, Trichy. He is one among the winners team in 2006 regionals. He has attended the 2006 world finals at Tokyo. It was a good interactive session with the contestants on 20 th evening. The inaugural ceremony was conducted by lighting the lamp. A brief inaugural talk was given by Prof. Vallath Nandakumar, who is the Regional Contest Director of Asia Region, Amritapuri contest site. Two live practice sessions were given for the contestants on 21 st December. The judges included people from State University of Buffalo at New York, Ramaiah College, Bangalore, Amrita Technologies, Kochi and also from Amrita University. Contest started on time at 08:00 AM on 22 nd of December and ended at 01:00 PM. There were 7 problems posted and the Taiwan team - Colorful Bee were the first to solve 6 problems in the given time. The “SilasticArmorFriends” team of Chennai Mathematical Institute won the second place by solving same number of problems, but in more time. Boat cruise across Kerala backwaters was also arranged as part of entertainment. A 40 minute cultural programme was performed by the students of Amrita University, Amritapuri Campus on 20th evening. It was followed by a banquet dinner arranged in the garden lawn of the universtiy campus. On the day of the contest, the Kalarippayattu, martial arts was performed by the professional team from the state of Kerala. 2007 ACM ICPC Amritapuri Site Champions Team Name: Colorful Bee Instution: Taiwan University Coach: Pu-Jen Cheng Team members: Peng-Jen Chen, Tien-Jung Chuang, Tien-Ren Chen About Amrita University Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham – is a University, established under section 3 of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act of 1956. Drawing its inspiration, guidance, nourishment, energy, and resources directly from Amma – Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, our Chancellor, AMRITA Vishwa Vidyapeetham has now grown into a dynamic, 5-campus, multi-disciplinary, University with over 15 schools, 100 degree programs, 1500 faculty, and 12,000 students, all united in their mission towards solving the monumental scientific and societal challenges being faced by the world today. Amrita campuses have transformed the cluster of rural villages surrounding them into a vibrant landscape with significant education (starting from primary to higher secondary schools – about 60 schools called Amrita Vidyalayams all over India) and employment, thereby uplifting the entire region. In December of 2006, a six-crore bridge of Alappad to mainland Kerala was commissioned by the Math. Amrita’s nation-wide network of village resource centers launched by India’s President, makes it possible for school children and communities from eight different villages to simultaneously interact over high bandwidth interactive (two-way) audio and video communication with experts from Amrita University and Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences. Several prominent multinational corporations such as Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Cognizant, Oracle, Dhanalakshmi Bank, Infosys, also invested significantly here at AMRITA towards developing information and communication technologies for India's vast rural population. Amrita University, under the direction of its parent organization, Mata Amritanandamayi Math, has also been in the forefront of societal relief and help. After rushing to contribute significantly towards relief and reconstruction in Kerala and Tamil immediately following the Tsunami of December 2004, Amrita hosted a day-long round-table on technologies for disaster warning and management with representatives from ISRO, leading industries such as Fujitsu, and Stanford University. Mata Amritanandamayi Math also became the first organization to hand over fully built best of breed houses, thousands in number, to Tsunami affected