ACM Programming Contest at Lethbridge

I am currently the coach for the Lethbridge teams. If you are a student and wish to participate, please contact me.

I have been involved with the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest for many years now. I have been a contestant, a judge, a problem designer, a system administrator, and a local organizer (sometimes having multiple roles at the same time).

Local Programming Club

Problem Solving Session: Wednesday 4:00pm-5:30pm (C630)
Practice Session: Saturday 1:00pm-3:00pm (D519)

• University of Lethbridge Teams and Results:
  • 2011
  • 2010
  • 2009
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • 2006
  • 2005
  • 2004
  • 2003
• University of Lethbridge Programming Contest mailing list
• Local statistics on Universidad de Valladolid archive. Please send me your user ID if you have one.
• Problem Classification on Spanish Archive
• A list of common mistakes by new contestants

Contests

• ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest
• Alberta Collegiate Programming Contest
• Rex Forsyth's Programming Seminar
• Waterloo Programming Contests
• University of Alberta Programming Contests
• TopCoder: Compete for prize money!
• Internet Problem Solving Contest
• International Olympiad in Informatics (high school competition)
• USA Computing Olympiad (high school competition)

Problem Sets and Online Judges

You can find many past problems from the following sites for practice. Many of them even has online judging that can give you instant feedback.

• UVa Online Judge
• Timus Online Judge
• Sphere Online Judge
• The ACM ICPC Problem Set Archive

Books

Here is a list of books that I have found useful for programming contests.

• Programming Challenges by Steven S. Skiena and Miguel A. Revilla. It is a book about programming contests, different types of problems, algorithms, as well as a collection of previous problems.
• Problems on Algorithms by Ian Parberry. It has a lot of problems that are typical in programming contests. You can now download it for free.
• Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Cliff Stein. It is a standard reference on algorithms. Sometimes you can even find the contest problem you are trying to solve in there (with or without solutions/hints).

Other Resources

Some of the links below give opinions on how to do better in programming contests. I don't necessarily agree with everything they say, but it's good to read them anyway.

• ACM Programming Contest Tutorial Site
• Common Mistakes in Online and Real-time Contests
• Teamwork in Programming Contests: 3 * 1 = 4
• rec.puzzles archive. Has many "classic" problems that are often used in programming contests.

Software

The PC²+E environment was developed for the East Central North American regional contest (2000-2002). It is no longer maintained. If you wish to find out more, please e-mail me.

History

When I was still eligible to compete, I participated in The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. I participated in teams representing the University of Alberta. Here are the results:

• In 1995, I teamed up with Adam Beacham and Joseph Modayil at the ACM Regional Contest in the Mountain Region, finishing 3rd overall.
• In 1996, I teamed up with Joseph Modayil and Denis Papp at the ACM Regional Contest and finished 4th overall.
• In 1997, I teamed up with Adam Beacham and Alan Skelley and finished 1st in the region. We advanced to the World Finals at Atlanta.
• At the World Finals in 1998, we finished 8th overall.

Now that I am no longer eligible to participate, I am still actively involved with the programming contest:

• 2003: Contributed two problems for the Rocky Mountain regional.
• 2002: judge and system administrator for the ECNA regional.
• 2001: judge and system administrator for the ECNA regional.
• 2000: judge for the ECNA regional, steering committee member, unofficial system guy.
• 1999: chief judge for the ECNA regional.
• 1998: one of the judges for the East Central North America (ECNA) regional contest.