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2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

icpc.baylor.edu

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Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#41

Post by pkd »

kolbe wrote: post #33
pkd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Com…

So, like the olympics, the important member organizations put a reasonable enough amount of effort into it to ensure they're represented well? Like, I really should be looking at UCF as a college that produces some of the best programmers in the US?

The members that perform well are those who have the organisations which care. It doesn't necessarily translate to a great CS program at the university. Sometimes teams are also carried by one or two brilliant competitive programmers that crop up from somewhere and then disappear in four years time.

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#42

Post by imaginenore »

kolbe wrote: post #26

Can 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.

ACM is the Olympics of programming competitions. It's insanely hard to get into the finals, and winning it means your team is packed with geniuses.

To prepare for it they generally practice either on UVA online judge (1800 problems) or Topcoder.

To see how insanely challenging it is, try to solve even 90 problems out of the first 100:

https://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge...

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#43

Post by dxbydt »

s_dev wrote: post #4

Why 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.

http://www.russianschool.com/location/dublin

From the site: "compare RSM's average math SAT score of 774 (out of 800) to California's average math SAT score of 516."

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#44

Post by sagatsnee »

In the US, the smarter students don't generally waste their time with these programming competitions. Grades, research, and extra credit would matter more towards a student's academic success. These contests generally appeal more to "hobbyists" or those who have nothing better to do with their time, and so you get biased results.

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#45

Post by 33a »

bsder wrote: post #40
s_dev wrote: post #4

Why 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.

> Why are Russians so historically good at these competitions? Memorization of algorithms. In addition, programming competitions always seems to have an overabundance of Computational Geometry problems which are really hard if you have never seen them before but relatively straightforward if you know the correct algorithm off the top of your head. I prefer to see the "head-to-head" competitions over some competitive…

That's not really true. The selection of computational geometry problems on the ICPC tends to be limited because testing and implementing numerical algorithms is really difficult in a competition environment. When you do see geometry algorithms they tend to be "trick" problems or else don't use any really deep or hard results.

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#46

Post by ignoramous »

LiweiZ wrote: post #18
HeavenFox wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Totally got what you mean as a Chinese. I wish we had more truly skilled explorers than overwhelming number of ladder climbers.

The Chinese will get there, if they haven't already. They have got top universities, the economy rivals Japan and Germany and soon the US; the tech powress is on display with giants like JW, Baidu, Ali Baba, Tencent making mockery of the competition. Not to leave out the hardware sector-- Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Xiaomi and countless other companies gaining market share from their US counterparts world wide...

Are an overwhelming number of Chinese ladder climbers? I don't think so.

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#47

Post by pdoege »

kolbe wrote: post #33
pkd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Com…

So, like the olympics, the important member organizations put a reasonable enough amount of effort into it to ensure they're represented well? Like, I really should be looking at UCF as a college that produces some of the best programmers in the US?

If you attend UCF, join the programming team, and make it to regionals your peers will be some of the best programmers in the US and you will be able to rely on those connections for the rest of your career. Just attending UCF guarantees little.

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#48

Post by LiweiZ »

ignoramous wrote: post #46
LiweiZ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally got what you mean as a Chinese. I wish we had more truly skilled explorers than overwhelming number of ladder climbers.

The Chinese will get there, if they haven't already. They have got top universities, the economy rivals Japan and Germany and soon the US; the tech powress is on display with giants like JW, Baidu, Ali Baba, Tencent making mockery of the competition. Not to leave out the hardware sector-- Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Xiaomi and countless other companies gaining market share from their US counterparts world wide... Are an over…

Posting nice sales numbers does not equal to organic strength. On the other hand, numbers alone do not provide insights.

I know many Chinese are feeling strong with just numbers since we did not have that kind of numbers for a long time. But we are still playing games invented by other explorers mainly in our backyard.

We are so used to playing existing ones that numbers became the only thing matters. What is invention? Never thought of it.

Sure, current Chinese elites can enjoy high life while having a decent way out. A nation not wanting to face its true weakness and strength is going nowhere.

Re: 2016 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Scoreboard

#49

Post by farhanhubble »

virtuabhi wrote: post #7
s_dev wrote: post #4

Why 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.…

Absolutely true! Competitive programming is shear waste of time. While it's necessary to know basic algorithms that get used in day to day work, there is no point memorizing all the algorithms. Sadly, most technical interviews pay a lot of importance to this kind of memorization. For solving real world problems one needs to research and find the right solutions as and when the need arises. This is what real learning is all about.
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