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U of Waterloo doing well at programming contest

May 4, 2009

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The programming team at University of Waterloo is now in the world finals of the Association for Computer Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest, and it magaged to rapidly solve one of the eleven problems contestants were challenged with, in a new record-breaking ten minutes.

The ACM International Computer Programming Competition drew the one-hundred best programming teams from universities from all over the globe.

So far, 103 teams from universities were locked in the library of Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology for 5 hours under tight supervision, and were handed eleven complex programming issues and told to create software to solve them.

Canada was also represented by the University of British Columbia, Montreal's McGill University and the University of Alberta. Waterloo led the field for the first hour-and-a-half of the competition, submitting five solutions in a row without incurring penalty time for an incorrect solution.

“This is very unusual,” said team member Konstantin Lopryev.

However, Lopryev himself, Malcolm Sharpe and Andy Kong literally hit a wall just after that. They rapidly slid to third spot, then eighth, as they were leapfrogged by teams that managed to crack a sixth question before them.

But a last-minute solution to a 6th problem managed to salvage the tenth place for the team – good enough this year for a share of the bronze medal.

The programming contest was submitted to a board of judges, and even conference organizers didn't know what they were until the day of the competition. ICPC executive director Bill Poucher said there was a wide range of difficulty in the questions.

Upon seeing them for the first time, his reaction ranged from, “any kid could solve this problem, as long as he's had three years of (university) mathematics and computer science (!)” to, “that (problem) is a real corker... If any team can solve that one, they'll probably be seeing me on the stage.”

The ITMO team defended its 2008 world championship by solving no less than 8 questions. While three other teams shared the gold medal – Tsingshua University of Beijing (identified by Waterloo assistant coach Richard Peng as “the scariest team in the competition”), ITMO’s crosstown rivals St. Petersburg State University, and Saratov State University – ITMO was awarded the championship because the team posted a better time.

Saratov State University is also in Russia.

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Source: The University of Waterloo.