CU student team takes first (again) in ACM regional programming contest

For the third year in a row, a team from Cornell has taken first place in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Northeast Regional Programming Contest, held this year on Nov. 9 at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, N.Y. The Cornell team now will participate in the ACM World Finals to be held March 28-April 1, 2004, in Prague, Czech Republic.

Cornell also took first place in the regional contest in 1998 and 1999, but slipped to second place in 2000.

Several thousand teams of students compete in similar regional events worldwide, with about 60 regional winners advancing to the international contest. The northeast regional contest brought together 50 teams from colleges in New York, New England and several eastern Canadian provinces. Contestants were given nine problems to solve by writing computer programs. Scoring was based, first, on the number of problems solved within a five-hour time limit and, second, on how quickly the problems were solved.

Simpler problems included simulating a bicycle odometer given the diameter of the wheel and number of revolutions, and a candy-sharing game for children. At the more difficult end were such tasks as plotting a route for a rook on an obstructed chess board and comparing two logical expressions to see if they are equivalent.

Cornell sent two teams. The team known as Cornell 1 solved seven problems, edging out Columbia 1, with six, and New York University, with five. Cornell 2 placed 12th with four problems solved. Cornell 1 was made up of juniors Bill Barksdale and Pet Chean Ang and first year Ph.D. student Xin Qi. Cornell 2 team members were freshman Alex Harn and juniors Dongjae Lim and Bo Wang. Cornell graduate students Martin Pal and Mark Sandler coached the teams.

Cornell's team members are recruited through a local contest. This year, Pal said, the contest produced 12 prospects who eventually were self-selected down to two teams. Students interested in participating next year should contact Pal at mpal@cs.cornell.edu. Participation is open to all students, not only those in computer science.

ACM is an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and applications of information technology. The ACM collegiate programming contest, sponsored by IBM, is in its 28th year. This year's Cornell teams were sponsored by Greenhills Software of Santa Barbara, Calif. Sponsorship covers entry fees, travel and lodging, and pizza for practice sessions.