On Saturday morning last November 9th, students competing in the North Central Regional of the 27th annual ACM International Programming Contest arrived at the EE/CS Building. They were members of teams representing Saint John's University, Saint Cloud State University, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. The top three teams in the regional contest join the winners from other regional contests conducted all over the world to compete in the World Finals, held this year in Beverly Hills, California, March 22-25. The North Central Region runs a distributed contest with twelve sites, and this year the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities was one of the sites.
The morning activities included registration getting familiar with the local computer systems and contest rules and procedures. The actual contest started at 12:30. For five hours the contestants worked on the eight problems they had been given, ranging from the straightforward to very difficult. Problems are designed to look difficult even when they are not, so good analysis skills are needed to detect the level of difficulty. It is rare to have all eight problems solved in a contest.
After toiling for five hours the contestants gathered to discuss problems and have dinner. Regional standings were announced and site winners given awards. The Blue team from the University was the site winner as well as the regional winner. The University Yellow team placed 19th, and the St. Johns Johnnies and the University Green team both placed in the 30's among 156 teams competing in the region.
For the sixth year, IBM has sponsored the ACM programming contest. During that time participation has nearly tripled to over 100,000 students from over 1,100 universities on six continents competed in the contest. The IBM sponsorship provided contest t-shirts, lots of food - brunch, snacks during the contest, and dinner, as well as some other expenses. The CS&E Department contributed staff support, especially systems staff to set up the computers and provide the facilities for the contest. Office support was also invaluable. The local ACM Student Chapter provided a lot of workers to help with the contest, the use of their room for the judging, and some funds for some contest supplies. Since Unisys supports the ACM Chapter, they also supported the contest.
Members of the teaching faculty were also involved in the contest. Bobbie Othmer was in charge of the arrangements, as well as the coach for the four University teams, Charles Swanson was head judge, and Carl Sturtivant was a judge.
-Bobbie Othmer