NMU did well at the ACM North Central North America Regional Programming Contest on Saturday 8 November 2014 on the campus of Lake Superior State University (Chippewa Co, MI). This is the 16th consecutive year that NMU has participated in the ACM International Regional Programming Contest.
The world is divided into seven broad areas. We are in the North America area, which consists of the United States and Canada. (The other nations residing on the North American continent are part of the Latin America area.) The North America area is divided into eleven regions. We are in the North Central North America region which consists of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, the Upper Peninsula (but not the Lower Peninsula) of Michigan, western Ontario, Manitoba, and, presumably, Nunavut.
A programming contest is held for each region, and each of these contests are held simultaneously at various sites within the region. Our contest was held at seventeen sites throughout the region. We competed at the LSSU site. Traditionally, the competition begins with a qualifying contest at the home university. However, this year, we were told we could submit five teams and, since only four teams expressed interest in coming, a qualifier was not necessary.
There were 23 teams registered at the LSSU site, representing the following four schools:
- Lake Superior State University (LSSU)
- Michigan Technological University (MTU)
- Northern Michigan University (NMU)
- Algoma University
Within the entire region, there were 290 teams registered representing a veritable plethora of schools (about 67) across the region! The contest consists of nine programming problems to be solved in a five-hour period. The winning team is the one that solves the most problems, with ties broken in favor of the teams that solved them more quickly after factoring in penalties for incorrect submissions.
| NMU Team Results | |||
| Team | # Correct Problems | Region Rank | Site Rank |
| Sakura Meikyuu Larry J. Flint Matthew P. Menze Dean M. Savard |
3 | 76th | 3rd |
| The NMU Exceptions Micah J. Argeropoulos Benjamin H. Harris Matthew E. Trefilek |
2 | 151st | 15th |
| Easier Than High School Gabriel V. Appleton Jesse T. Cecchini Dallas A. Johnson |
1 | 157th | 16th |
| Site Team Results | |||
| Team | # Correct Problems |
Site Rank |
Region Rank |
| Razzmataz MTU |
3 | 1st | 54th |
| Sakura Meikyuu NMU |
3 | 3rd | 76th |
| Will Code For Food LSSU |
2 | 7th | 120th |
| Bits Please Algoma University |
2 | 9th | 132nd |
| The NMU Exceptions NMU |
2 | 15th | 151st |
| Easier Than High School NMU |
1 | 16th | 157th |
REGION WINNER
Do You Even PSPACE?
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Nine problems correct
There were two other teams that correctly answered all nine problems:
- Run Length Encoding from Iowa State University (second in region; nine problems correct).
- Benchwarmers from University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (third in region; nine problems correct).
The regional winner will head to the World Finals, held this year in Morocco, and possibly Run Length Encoding or Benchwarmers will draw a wild card to that event as well.
The LSSU site was relatively low performing compared to the region overall. No one at the LSSU site correctly solved more than three--and NMU produced one of the teams that solved three--but there were three teams across the region that solved nine, one that solved eight, four that solved seven, six that solved six, fifteen that solved five, and twenty-three that solved four. Additionally, the winning team solved its ninth problem with an hour and a half to go in the contest! This suggests that perhaps the problems were easier than they were in previous years. This is the second time that LSSU has used an electronic submission and grading system. In the past, they have used human runners to take submissions to the judges just as we do at our event. However, to accomplish this, LSSU had to set up a private network, which meant that there were Ethernet cables and routers all over the place and which also meant that they couldn't host as many teams as they have in the past. The contest, however, was run very smoothly. This was Assistant Professor Christopher Smith's first time as event chair, and he did a fantastic job! Associate Professor Evan Schemm graded all the problems.
The NCNA contest was organized by Charles Riedesel, Assistant Professor of Practice, University of Nebraska - Lincoln (Lancaster Co, NE), and the Executive Director of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is William B. Poucher, Professor of Computer Science, Baylor University (McLennan Co, TX).