NDSU’s computer science department will host a regional site for the International Collegiate Programming Contest on Saturday, Nov. 3. The event, sponsored by IBM, is scheduled from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union Arikara room and Great Room.
NDSU is one of several volunteer host sites in the North Central North American region, which extends from Manitoba to Kansas. Participating schools include NDSU, University of North Dakota, Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia.
Schools may register more than one team, but generally have one coach who is a faculty or staff member. Each team can have up to three members. The contest involves a five-hour programming session, in which the teams are given approximately 10 problems to solve in C, C++ or Java.
All of the regional competition sites run concurrently and use the same question set. The top team from each region is invited to the world finals, which is scheduled in St. Petersburg, Russia. Wildcard team seats are available, so potentially more than one team from a region could advance.
Robert Foertsch, systems administrator in NDSU’s computer science department, said the problems are often humorous and always relate to algorithm or problem-solving methods. In a typical contest, solving half of the problems is impressive, but usually the regional winning team solves most or all of them, he said.
This year NDSU is entering seven teams and Anne Denton, computer science associate professor, is the coach.
This is the third year NDSU has hosted a competition site since 2010.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation’s top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.