programminh

7/30/2019 programminh

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Nurturing Future Programmers

Steven & Felix HalimSchool of Computing,

National University of Singapore


2/17

Training ACM ICPC Teams

in your University

Extracurricular Activity

?

Seniors train juniors

Or students learn on their own

Minimal faculty involvement

Variable results

No incentive other than self glory

Seniors attract few juniors only

Perhaps lack of continuity

Formalized as Module

?

Taught by faculty member(s)

Plus qualified teaching assistants

(e.g. ex-world finalist)

All students know lower bound

knowledge to do well in contests

Clear curriculum

Students get University grades

Attract bigger pool of students

Continuity of programming teams

Top & still eligible studentsusually do not share (all)

secrets to their juniors

I hope most of

us here are inthis category


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CS3233 Format

CS3233

Competitive Programming

Special Class @ National University of Singapore (NUS)

For students with interest in problem solving Small group of ~


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GREEDY

DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING

COMPLETE SEARCH DIVIDE & CONQUER

PLANE SWEEP

GRAPH

MATHEMATICS

BIOINFORMATICS

COMP. GEOMETRY

DATA STRUCTURES LIBRARIES

Suffix Tree/Array

DFS BFS TopoSort Kruskal Bellman Ford Dijkstra Floyd Warshall

Network Flow++ Graph Theory

Backtracking Binary Search

Top-Down/Bottom-Up

Number Theory Big Integer Modulo Arithmetic

String Alignment String Matching

Predicate Tests Convex Hull Closest Pair

Array/Vector/Stack/Queue Map/Set/Priority_Queue

Graph Data Structures Union-Find Disjoint Sets Segment Tree

Space Saving On Tree Speed UpStates Formulation

Hungarian Edmonds etc

Bisection Method

etc

Customize-able for IOI training

by omitting non IOI materials

etc

etc

etc

etc

Tarjans


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CS3233 Competition

Teaching methodology:

Lectures + COMPETITION! Many local contests throughout the 13 weeks in semester


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CS3233 Benefits (1)

Benefits for Students:

Gain more knowledge

At least the lower bound problem solving knowledge

Get sparring partners Training alone is usually not fun

Get an official grade

Not just an Extracurricular Activity

More well prepared for ICPCs (and IOIs) Better ranking


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CS3233 Benefits (2)

Benefits for University:

Can spot/attract juniors with talents

Thus creating wider pool of potential students

Who knows and well versed in contest materials tested in ICPC Coach has good headache

More than just 3 students can compete to be in the 1st team

Higher ranked teams

Better reputation


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CS3233 Challenges

1. Manpower

Instructor?

Teaching assistants?

2. Students

How to attract top students? Unbalanced class?

3. Assessment

How to prepare original + high qualityprogramming contest problems for assessment?

4. Course Materials

Are available ds/algo text books sufficient?

How about programming contest specific books?


10/17

CS3233 Our Way (1)

1. Finding Appropriate Manpower

We (NUS) are simply lucky

We have few ex-world finalists coming to NUS in 2008

But still, regeneration is very important!

Invite guest lecturer for topics that we are not good at

2. Attracting Students

Advertise the module University-wide each AY

Offer them chance to join ICPC

Unbalanced Class

Set contest problems of varying difficulties


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CS3233 Our Way (2)

3. Issues of creating new/original

problems for contests

Create some by yourselves

Rephrase some existing problems Hire appropriate TAs (ex-world finalists)

Set this homework: Be a problem setter


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CS3233 Our Way (3)

4. Course materials issue

There are not many programming

contest textbooks out there

Textbook has difficulty in keeping pacewith novelties and difficulties of

recent ICPC problem sets

Thus, we also train using Internet tools

The next few slides show some examples

In Chinese

2003,2008,2009

2006, mostly from my

old website, outdated

If you know any other books,please let me know

2003

Updated soon?


13/17

Information & Communications Technology (ICT) Tools

UVa Online Judge

ACM ICPC Live Archive

Felixs Hunting UVa Problems Plus Many Other Scripts

Stevens Methods to Solve

Other peoples tools: Marks UVaToolkit

Joses Mooshak (U Porto)

TopCoder,

and many others


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We are writing a book!

Having Said That

We (me & my brother Felix Halim)

are currently writing a book!!

Tentative Title:

Competitive Programming:

Increasing the lower bound knowledge in programming contests

Target audience:

Grey/Green/Blue

coders borrowingthe TopCoder

rating style


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Our Books Vision

Range of ACM ICPC

regional contestants

Range of ACM ICPC

world final contestants

2010

2012 and beyond?

Our (and)

other books

published


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CS3233 Results

Before August 2008 (no CS3233):

Hon Mention ICPC WF @ 2005

Did not qualify for WF 2006

Also did not qualify for WF 2007

Still did not qualify for WF 2008

After August 2008 (CS3233 Re-Started):

Hon Mention @ Stockholm, Sweden ICPC WF 2009

3rd place @ Kanpur Regional 2008

Singapore team for IOI09 @ Plovdiv Bulgaria: 2 silvers and 2 bronzes ? in ICPC World Final @ Harbin, China, 2010 (This Week)

2nd place @ Phuket Regional 2009

Future: ?


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