I organized these for freshmen at my school. Reading through these comments we had small chance of getting to these levels since other places offered competitive programming courses.
2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
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Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#22Would like to give my congratulations to my school, the 99th place University of British Columbia. The team is composed entirely of first-time World Finals participants!
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#23A new edX course [1] was announced few days ago, which is created by SPb ITMO (which finished 7th this year). [1] https://www.edx.org/course/how-win-coding-competitions-secre...
The course looks really interesting to be frank. I've recommended it to my college's competitive programming team actually! ITMO did not get 1st place this year because the team changed, and I believe tourist graduated. Last year [1] for example they solved all 13 problems, while the 2nd team solved 11; there simply was no competition. 7th is still an excellent result. Let's see what they do next year! [1]: http://a2…
Tourist in ineligible because he has already participated twice, which is the limit.
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#24I did a competitive programming course in undergrad, these problems are really interesting if you're not familiar with it. I highly recommend folks try a few problems and look at the solutions. It can be really eye-opening. However, I really haven't applied much of what I learned doing the problems to "real" work. It's cool to see methods of looking at things differently, but just doesn't translate well to software d…
Speaking as a former ICPC competitor/coach, I think the aspect that most directly translated to professional software development was getting practice at quickly writing and reviewing code for performance and correctness. A bit of background about ICPC, for those who don't know: It's a team competition. You have 3 contestants on a team, but only one computer on which to write, test and submit your code. Most of the w…
That's fair. It's definitely good for training/exercising the syntax parser and debugger in your head without relying on an IDE or compiler errors. And you definitely have to plan ahead to complete the problems in the time allotted. Debugging in my head has always been one of my strong suits so I tend to forget that other people have other strengths first. :)
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#25Why are Russians so historically good at these competitions? China have raw numbers, America has the resources/ecosystems to train and prepare these programmers. Russia seems to have neither and regularly outperform both nations.
There is a math culture among Russians that helps here. The whole phenomenon of Math Circles that are coming up now in the US were a Russian idea that the (now, not so) recent immigrants brought with them. US math education is too much about the mechanics of arithmetic. Russian math education is more about creative problem solving using real math. If you go to a Math Circle, you see that the kinds of problems the kids are working on require the same kind of problem solving skills that you engage when programming.
The difference is evident when you observe the typical sophomore-level discrete math class in US universities. Most of the students have that deer-in-headlights look that shows they are struggling with the basic concepts of logical reasoning and how to write a proof like a grown-up. Kids from what I'll call "enriched" or "non-traditional (in the US)" math education have been doing that stuff since middle school and are a little bored.
(Off-topic asides: 1) If your kid likes math, look for a local Math Circle. They all vary, but hopefully you live near a good one. 2) If your kid is a middle-schooler and really likes math, I highly recommend the MathPath camp -- see mathpath.org.)
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#26Can someone explain the significance of this competition? I've never heard of it before and am just looking for a little understanding of what, if anything, there is to read into the results.
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#27Why are Russians so historically good at these competitions? China have raw numbers, America has the resources/ecosystems to train and prepare these programmers. Russia seems to have neither and regularly outperform both nations.
I believe that it is because of two reasons [massive generalization follows...] (1) emphasis on math and physics (2) stress on discipline and rote learning. US students have (1), Chinese have (2), Russians have both. You would realize that most competitors in these contests end up doing pattern matching with previously solved problems. In addition, they keep a catalogue of most asked questions, common codebase, etc.…
While you are correct in pointing out that these contests only test a relatively narrow subset of the skills needed for good programming, I don't think it would be correct to say it's based on "rote learning". There can be some amount of pattern-matching, but it's not as if you can just read the solutions to 100 problems and expect to do well.
Also, I know for a fact that many (but not all) people who were good at these contests are also good all-around programmers. (In fact, you probably do better at these contests by writing more readable code, even accounting for the time cost. But some people can get by with messy code as well.)
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#28Can someone explain the significance of this competition? I've never heard of it before and am just looking for a little understanding of what, if anything, there is to read into the results.
Competitive Programming is a sport where teams(or individuals in some instances) compete with each other to solve a set of algorithmic questions in the shortest time. This generally happens on a system called the Online Judge which is basically a system for code evaluation.
ACM ICPC is basically the Olympics of Competitive Programming.
The significance can vary from person to person but sometimes Universities and Companies look favourably at good results in such competitions.
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#29Why are Russians so historically good at these competitions? China have raw numbers, America has the resources/ecosystems to train and prepare these programmers. Russia seems to have neither and regularly outperform both nations.
I don't think raw number explains the Chinese performance. India has a comparable population, arguably better positioned to do well in ACM (English-speaking country with a strong IT sector). However you don't see many Indian universities here. On interesting thing to note is the ACM World Final ranking usually doesn't correlate perfectly with perceived ranking of the school, even the ranking of its CS department. Ano…
As a former participant in these types of competitions, I can confirm.
The teams that win are the teams that practice extensively. Universities like St.Petersburg care a lot and have official programs for preparing for the ACM competition. The students care a lot too as the competition is a way for them to distinguish themselves.
US universities, at least the top ones, don't care that much. American students have better things to do, as you said. If you look at a typical US university team, you'd see a lot of Chinese and Eastern European students that have done IOI in high school. Their advisor would be a professor who typically just signs the paperwork.
Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard
#30Can someone explain the significance of this competition? I've never heard of it before and am just looking for a little understanding of what, if anything, there is to read into the results.
People do it for fun and bragging rights.
It looks good on the resume, especially if the person reading the resume has been to that kind of competitions too.