THREE students from the School of Computer Engineering (SCE) won a bronze medal in Harbin, China despite not having much time to prepare for the regionals of the Inter Collegiate Programming Competition.
Team KZ-NTU, comprising freshmen from Kazakhstan, solved four out of 10 computing problems in five hours on October 12th. For example, they were tasked with calculating the quickest route possible between two cities using mathematics and algorithms. It is a realistic situation that airline companies handle on a routine basis..
“It was very rushed,” said Mr Kevin Jones, the team’s coach. “What with the short notice, inadequate training and last-minute visas, we were relieved to get to the first practice session on time.”
Tsinghua University won the right to represent the Asia-Pacific region in the world finals in Stockholm next April, solving seven problems out of the 10.
Mr Jones, a lecturer from SCE, accompanied the students on the trip, which was sponsored by host Harbin Engineering University. Team programmer Zhomart Sadykov, 18, said the team did not expect to reach the finals.
“Although it was not as challenging as the three International Olympiads in Informatics that I competed in from 2006 to 2008, our team was not well prepared as we commenced preparations for the contest at a month’s notice,” he said.
Their team was one of 10 international teams competing in a pool of 191, mostly from Chinese universities.
“We started well and were among the top 10 initially, but fell back in the late hours of the contest,” said Asset Daliyev, 18, the team’s mathematician.
They spent their Saturdays at the Software Engineering Lab for a month with post-graduate students, who shared their experiences participating in previous computing competitions.
Coach Mr Jones said they had not expected the competition to bar coaches from being with their team in the competition hall room, which was unusual since this was a custom, yet no reason was given.
But the team is not discouraged by its showing at the competition this year.
Said Sadykov: “We’ll try harder next year, now that we have an idea of the difficulty level and skills required for the ICPC.”
