Utrecht math students qualify for Programming World Cup
By coming in third at the Northwestern Europe Regional Contest
For the first time, a team of students from Utrecht University has qualified for the ‘Programming World Cup’, the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. Harry Smit, Timon Knigge and Ragnar Groot Koerkamp earned a place at the Northwestern Europe Regional Contest by coming in third, beating out 92 other teams. In May, they will travel to Thailand, where they will compete for the international contest title against 126 teams from around the world.
Harry, second-year Master’s student in Mathematical Sciences, met third-year Bachelor’s in Mathematics and Physics student Ragnar during a Math Olympiad when they were only 13. Since then, they have often enjoyed competing in these kinds of contests. Over the past few years, they have joined a number of teams to regularly compete in programming contests. “We both like algorithms, but we don’t win at the mathematics contests”, says Harry with a grin. “And these kinds of programming contests are a good mix of programming and challenging mathematical assignments”, adds Ragnar.
Training
Since the Utrecht Programming Championships in October, they have formed the team ‘Curiously Recurring’ together with third-year Bachelor’s of Mathematics and Computer Science student Timon, with the ambition of scoring well at the Northwestern Europe Regional Contest. They trained every week to prepare. “There are lots of sites with big problems, because the elimination rounds are held all over the world. Some regions are really strong, like Russia. So you can find some good practice problems there”, explains Ragnar.
Machine
In the meantime, the team has become a well-oiled machine. Harry supervises the programming work, but he isn’t allowed to touch the keyboard. Timon or Ragnar begin by entering their standard template, while the other two begin reading the problems in reverse order from one another. They have learned that the easiest problem can usually be implemented while the others are still working on the template. Only if no one has an idea of what to do next do they stop for a team huddle.
Emotions
They don’t want to admit that it is stressful to try to solve 11 problems in five hours, while the judges are keeping score of how many problems the other teams have turned in. “But when you turn in a problem and have to wait to see if the code produces the correct result, then yes, sometimes emotions can come to the surface.” In Linköping, Sweden, they managed to turn in nine correct answers out of 11, just one less than the winning team from Finland. A team from Nijmegen won fourth place, which also qualifies them for the International Contest.
Non-existent
The stronger the region, the more teams from that region go on to the International Contest, and Northwestern Europe is not one of the strongest regions. So Curiously Recurring has modest expectations for their performance in Thailand. “Our chance of winning is non-existent”, says Harry dryly. “The best imaginable result would be to finish in the top 50th percentile.”
More information about the contest in Linköping and the full report can be found at http://2015.nwerc.eu. More information about the International Contest and these kind of contests in general is available at https://icpc.baylor.edu/.