NSU kicks off regional ACM programming competition

A snap from the last year's contest at BUET

As per the rules, only 80 teams, consisting of 3-members each, were to be selected for the contest through preliminary elimination rounds. But the steering committee of the Dhaka site has decided otherwise.

"Since we have sufficient technical facilities, we decided to extend our invitation to 96 applicant teams to give more people a chance," said Dr. Miftahur Rahman, Associate Director of the Dhaka site ACM-ICPC 2004 and the current chairman of the Computer Science and Engineering(CSE) Department of NSU.

The winning teams will move on to a 4-day World Finals competition at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, beginning on April 3 of next year. Asian sector finalists will include 10 teams from each contest site on the continent and 8 Wildcards, who are to be selected from the 2nd and 3rd ranked teams from these sites.

"Wildcards are usually selected for the innovative problem solving skills," said Dr. Haque.

To date, local Dhaka contests have been extremely competitive. Last years champions, Fudan University, China, ranked 11th in the World finals.

"Trends are showing that with every passing year, local teams are gathering more programming knowledge and returning the next year with extra zeal," said Dr. M. Kaykobad, Associate Director, ACM-ICPC 2004 Dhaka site and a faculty of the CSE Department of BUET. Of this year's Dhaka site teams, four are foreign and the rest are local.

The website online-judge.uva.es, provides the rankings of ACM-ICPC participators from all over the world to date. In the Author's Ranklist, from the top 25 programmers, 2 hailed from Bangladesh. N.M Mosharraf Kabir Chowdhury, who solved 906 problems ranked 18 while Md. Sajjad Hossain, ranked 25, after having solved 850 problems.

In the Countries Ranklist, Bangladesh ranks 2nd with 16.17 problems per author, 50.99 submissions/author, 6482 authors, 104,824 total number of problems and 330504 submissions.

"Bangladesh would have ranked 1st in the Countries Ranklist if all of Europe was not regarded as a nation by itself on the list," said Dr. Kaykobad.

"With proper encouragement from all levels toward the organization and proper conduct of such contests, our nation can actually motivate and thus possess gifted computer programmers in the near future," said Dr. Miftahur Rahman.

The Association for Computer Machinery's (ACM) first ICPC took place in 1970 at the Texas A&M University in the United States and was hosted by the Alpha Chapter of UPE Computer Science Honor Society. In 1977, the contest evolved into a multi-leveled competition with the first finals held at the ACM Computer Science Conference. Headquartered at Baylor University since the 1980s, the contest has gained popularity all over the world with a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the World Finals.

With IBM's partnership in 1997, the number of contest sites have multiplied. Currently, ICPC has over 126 regional sites in 75 countries over six continents.

NSU is hosting this prestigious event after a gap of 4 years.

Last year, the ACM-ICPC Dhaka site contest was held at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology(BUET).

There are altogether 92 local teams and 4 foreign teams. The list of local teams consist of students from reputed institutions like Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology(BUET), Shahjalal University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka University, Khulna University, University of Rajshahi, Independent University of Bangladesh(IUB), Brac University, American International University Bangladesh(AIUB), International Islamic University Chittagong, the host North South University and many others.

The four foreign teams consist of two teams from Indian Institute of Technology(IIT), Bombay, a team from the National University of Singapore(NUS) and last year's champion from the Dhaka site, Fudan University, China.