Archive for May, 2015

Competition Day

Wednesday, May 20th, 2015

All times are in Morocco, 5 hours ahead of Pennsylvania.

10:00AM- the ICPCLIVE.COM video stream is online.

10:22AM- the teams are entering the competition area.

10:30AM- Messiah College is on the floor, and taking their seats. They are at the close end of the central aisle, on the left.

Marcus, Nathan, and Zachary take their seats for the contest.

Marcus, Nathan, and Zachary take their seats for the contest.

10:46AM- they are making announcements. The contest will start in less than 15 minutes.

11:00AM- the competition has started. It will run for five hours. We will know if/when they solve any of the 13 problems, since this is posted to the scoreboard. But the team is not allowed to communicate with anyone, so we will otherwise not know how they’re doing.

Check out the problem set the teams are working on. There are thirteen problems; each correct solution is worth one point. Ties between teams are determined by how quickly the problems are solved.

11:30AM- Messiah College team has solved a problem, and earned a spot on the scoreboard. Problem A, regarded as a very easy problem, was the right problem to work on first!

12:30PM- Think you can code? Try your hand at these problems at home! online.acmicpc.org

2:25PM- Messiah College team solves a second problem! Problems A and D have been solved by Messiah. Current standing is 113th of 128 teams.

4:00PM- Contest ended. Messiah College team solved two problems (earning two balloons). Final ranking to be revealed sometime in the next few hours.

4:30PM- Oops, one of our balloons has escaped us, and is now resting on the ceiling of the contest arena! Hope that doesn’t count against us ;-).

6:00PM- Final result for Messiah College: 117th place (out of 128 teams).

6:45PM- Final results (top twelve):

  1. St. Petersburg National Research University
  2. Moscow State University
  3. University of Tokyo
  4. Tsinghua University
  5. Peking University
  6. UC Berkeley (USA champion)
  7. University of Zagreb
  8. Charles University in Prague
  9. Shanghai Jiao Tong University
  10. MIT (USA runner-up)
  11. Korea University
  12. University of Warsaw

6:50PM- They just revealed that St. Petersburg NRU solved all thirteen problems during the contest. This is the first time this feat has ever been accomplished at a world finals.

Link to the problem set:
http://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/problems/icpc2015.pdf

Pictures and info about the team:
2015 Team

World Finals – Day Two

Tuesday, May 19th, 2015

Tuesday was the Dress Rehearsal. It was basically a practice contest, but it was important in the sense that it gave everyone an idea of what to expect tomorrow, where they needed to go, and what they were or were not allowed to take with them into the contest arena.

The dress rehearsal was a 2-hour contest featuring problems that were used in previous world finals contests. So the score didn’t matter. Messiah College got one problem correct, and the team wished they had more time to work on some of the other problems. But the point was to get used to the environment and work out any technical problems. It seemed to go smoothly.

The Messiah team is retiring early tonight to be well rested for the contest tomorrow. Follow along live at icpclive.com tomorrow morning, starting around 5:30 AM Pennsylvania time. Also, check out icpcnews.com for photos and videos of the event being captured by the contest organizers.

Live stream – time correction

Tuesday, May 19th, 2015

The live stream, available at ICPCLIVE.COM, will begin tomorrow morning at 5:00am Pennsylvania time (10:00am in Morocco). The contest itself will start sometime around 5:30am. This is a correction from what this website had previously claimed.

World Finals – Day One

Monday, May 18th, 2015

The team safely arrived in Marrakech on Sunday. Exhausted, from the lengthy, overnight flight and the three hour layover in Casablanca. One piece of luggage unfortunately did not make it, for unknown reasons, but the airline was able to locate the missing suitcase and we got it at the hotel by the next morning. To top it off, there is a five hour timezone change to adjust to as well.

Monday started with a series of technology presentations by IBM, the contest sponsor. IBM is the sole contest sponsor, and that means they spend a lot of money, so it seems to be their prerogative to sell IBM as a cool place to work to these students from all over the world. The presentations were interesting, but it was more than two hours without a break, so it was tiring. After lunch the team had some free time so we availed ourselves of the boardgames in the hotel lounge. We played (and lost) a game of Pandemic.

Next came the ICPC Opening Ceremonies. In the opening ceremonies they announce that the World Finals is officially begun, but only after a long series of honorary awards and introductions by dignitaries.

Here the team sits at the Open Ceremonies.

Here the team sits at the Open Ceremonies.

After the Opening Ceremonies, they bussed everyone (700+ people) to the Chez Ali restaurant and entertainment complex where they fed us and entertained us with a rodeo-like show. There was music, horseback riding, dancing, and fireworks.

World Finals 2015 is starting

Saturday, May 16th, 2015

The 2015 world finals activities are starting today! Welcome to Morocco.
IMG_20150516_151322
But our team members are graduating today! First things first: stay in Pennsylvania one more day to walk at graduation, then climb into a van and drive straight to the airport for an overnight flight to Morocco.

Join us over the next few days as Messiah College’s superstar programming team is pitted against the best of the best programming teams throughout the world. See the team’s schedule to see what’s going on when, and watch the team blog (this site) for updates! And, if you don’t mind disrupting your sleep, watch the competition live on the Internet early Wednesday morning!