CS Programming Teams Bring Brains to ACM Contest
11-12-2013
Writer(s): Jesica Hollinger
Four teams from Purdue University competed in the 38th annual ACM East-Central North America Regional Inter-Collegiate Programming contest in Cincinnati, OH, November 9-11.
Known as the “Battle of the Brains”— IBM sponsors the programming competition where more than 100 teams, represented by 50 plus schools from western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, eastern Ontario, and Indiana. Three additional universities served as hosts for the competition, including Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan; University of Windsor, Ontario, and Youngstown State University, Ohio.
During the contest, teams of three worked together to solve eight to ten programming puzzles, during the five-hour event. Ranking among teams is primarily based on the amount of problems solved correctly, then on how long it takes to solve each problem. A 20-minute penalty on solved problems is added for each submission that fails to pass the test cases from the contest judges. Two Purdue teams placed in the top fifty among the 114 teams who competed, including Team Amber (Jin Hanxin, Yu Si, and Hongyan Wang), who earned Purdue’s highest placement of 26th place among the 114 teams participating, and Team Xenon (Christopher Michael, Rendong Chen, and Yuxi Chen) who placed 32nd. Team Black (Qingyu Zhou, Rohan Bisariya, and Nathaniel Cherry) finished 53rd and Team Gold (Logan Gore, Evan Arnold, and Matthew Tracy) completed with 63rd place.
Purdue Computer Science students attended the competition, as part of a fall course taught by Tim Korb, team coach and assistant department head. In class, students meet and discuss algorithmic and mathematical puzzles whose solutions are expressed in the form of computer programs. The goal is to solve as many problems, as quickly as possible, while avoiding inaccurate submissions.