ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest

The University of Idaho Computer Science Department hosted one of the Pacific Northwest Regional sites of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) on Saturday Nov 7.

Fourteen three-person teams from several of the Spokane and Palouse area colleges and universities came to the Moscow campus, and a total of 80 teams participated electronically from as far away as Hawaii. All sites in the region are linked together via the internet, with the main contest judging done on computers by judges located on the Idaho campus.

Students worked in teams writing programs to solve eleven problems with a Star Wars theme. Each problem was color-coded. When a team solved a problem, they raised a helium-filled balloon of that color, so anyone could tell at a glance how the teams were doing.

Of the three Idaho teams, one came in 3rd for the Moscow site and 20th in the overall competition.

Thanks to Professor Bob Rinker, who organized the contest, and to the IT staff, Larry Hughes and Trevor Davenport, who worked long hours making the computer labs competition-ready. Professor Clint Jeffery served as a judge, and several students volunteered their Saturday to help the event run smoothly as well.

The ICPC is a worldwide competition, with competitors from six continents competing to go to the world finals, to be held in China next February. The competition is organized by the Association for Computing Machinery and sponsored by the IBM Corporation.