2011 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 Dr Alex Potanin Wellington Site Director South Pacific: International: Check my post on your course’s forum for more information! The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) and ANZAC League 2011

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 International Collegiate Programming Competition “The oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world” Aside programming, tests problem-solving, team-work, design/decomposition and testing/debugging Sponsored by IBM with ACM support If you want to be the best at solving problems (key skill!) – this is the contest for you! 1

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 International Collegiate Programming Competition Continued superlinear growth in participation –2010: 24,915 contestants, 2070 universities, 88 countries Considered extremely prestigious internationally: –Cities commit millions of dollars to host world finals –Russian university changed name partly due to success –Polish coach received equivalent to knighthood –IBM broadcasts world finals live on television 2

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 Why Get Involved? On the one hand, it is an outlet for top students But not just for the best students: competition is structured to cater for all ability levels Raises competency and hence industry reputation => easier to find a job! Regional winners invited to week-long world finals (fully paid with ECS paying your tickets) Significant cash prizes if you win the finals ($10,000 USD in 2010) Top 2 teams in the South Pacific region are guaranteed a spot in the World Finals! 3

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 Getting Involved ANZAC League 2011 has 6 rounds running in March – August preparing you for the September finals: –Round 1: March 19 th –Round 2: April 2 nd –Round 3: May 7 th –Round 4: July 30 th –Round 5: August 13 th –Round 6: August 27 th For ANZAC rounds, ECS picks up the bill for a (modest) meal either before or after the 5 hour contest There is no fee to participate in the ANZAC League 4

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 Competition Format Competition runs in parallel at a number of different “sites” across the South Pacific region Runs 5 hours Ten or more problems of (vastly) varying difficulty Teams of 3 students Teams share a single PC Available languages: C, C++, C#, and Java Anyone can take part in ANZAC League, but to take part in the South Pacific Regional in 2011 you need to: 1.have began post-secondary studies in 2007 or later 2.have been born in 1988 or later 5

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 Competition Format Submissions assessed only on correctness Feedback about a submission is limited: essentially yes, no, run-time error, or time-limit exceeded Judges’ secret test data is relentlessly strict Incorrect submissions are assigned a time penalty (if the problem is later solved correctly) The winner is the team that solves the most problems in the least cumulative time Teams have access to a scoreboard and (optionally) visual cues (balloons) to ascertain relative progress 6

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest and ANZAC League 2011 At the 2010 ACM-ICPC World Finals…