News

Helvetic Coding Contest 2012

Make sure you get one of the 100 tickets to compete and have fun at Switzerland's greates coding contest at EPFL on March 17th! Registration is open and here's the recipe to success.

Reading under the Christmas tree

A recent contest problem, analyzed in the Flash Informatique

Bronze medals for our teams in Madrid

Yesterday, the hard training paid off: The two EPFL teams won bronze medals at the ACM ICPC Southwestern European Regional Contest, ranking 9th (Johannes Wüthrich, Mihai Moraru, Przemyslaw Pietrzkiewicz) and 11th (Cheng Zhong, Le Hung Tran, Cristian Talau). Official results

Seminar 4

The exercise for seminar 4 is available now. You should have received login credentials by e-mail (otherwise, register to our news-mail first). Note that a VPN connection is necessary to access the server from outside EPFL.

Location : BC08

Time : 27/10/2011 - 18h15

PolyProg team at 24h-IEEEXtreme

Congratulations to the PolyProg team (Anton Dimitrov, Andrei Giurgiu, Christian Kauth) to their 19th place out of more than 1'000 teams (semiofficial result)!

EPFL delegation to SWERC

Kudos to all 38 contestants who acted in our thrilling joint EPFL/ETHZ selection contest. At the end of the day, there could be only 6 students to represent the colours of EPFL at the regional finals of the ACM ICPC in Madrid on November 19-20.

The 6 candidates are (ordered by their rank in the contest): Cheng Zhong, Tran Le Hung, Talau Cristian, Johannes Wuthrich, Mihai Moraru and Przemyslaw Pietrzkiewicz. As back-ups qualified Robin Steiger and Octavian Ganea.

The selection committee will announce the final constellation of the 2 EPFL teams (with 3 contestants each) after next week's training camp at ETHZ.

Last but not least, we'd like to emphasize the exceptional performance of Andrei Giurgiu, who finished as best EPFL student and 2nd overall! Results and pictures of the event are available.

SWERC selection contest - 15/10/2011

Selection of the 6 students who will represent EPFL at the ACM ICPC regional finals in Madrid November 19-20. Our contest is open to everybody but only SWERC-eligible students may qualify for Madrid. Register now.

09h30 - Meeting time

09h45 - Rules and last minute announcements

10h00 - Contest begins

15h00 - Contest ends

15h30 - Results & Analysis

16h00 - Aperitif

Get a good last training at our weekly seminar in BC07, 18h15 this Thursday!

Seminar slides

You may look up the slides of our first seminar on our moodle. To submit your codes from home, you need to connect via VPN.

Next contests ...

08/10/2011 - XXV Colombian Programming Contest a good training

15/10/2011 - Selection Contest Subscribe for a trip to Madrid

16/10/2011 - Asia Shanghai regionals a good training

17-22/10/2011 - ETHZ training camp train for your medal in Madrid

22/10/2011 - IEEEXtreme 24h - Find your team-mates

06/11/2011 - Asia Phuket regionals a good training

PolyProg welcomes you to the campus...

Our first events for this season:

Welcome Contest : A 3-hour contest on October 1st, 2pm, INF1 (level: beginner & advanced). Results.

General Assembly : Within 1h, you'll know what hides behind the name PolyProg and might get part of it if you wish so! October 4th, CM106, 18h15.

First seminar : Did you enjoy our campus-traversal quiz? How did you solve it? In this first seminar we'll show you how to get the computer solve it for you! If you know already about this algorithm, we'll have a more tricky related problem for you :). BC07-08, October 6th, 18h15-20h.

And finally a photo of our booth at the Welcome Day:

Online contest season opens...

There are 3 keys to success in programming competitions: Training, training and training ;) Get ready for SWERC by testing your shape on UVa, starting Saturday 17th, 10h-15h

CodeCup 2012 has started...

Code your AI that plays quantum tic-tac-toe against opponents from all around the world - from September till January.

Summer challenge

To keep your grey matter in shape throughout summer, we challenge you with a problem from IOI 2011 (proposed by our president).

You can find the other tasks and their solutions here.

Summer time!

The PolyProg committee wishes good luck with the remaining exams and a decent summer! See you at the associations welcome stands on September 16th!

Google Code Jam Qualification - May 7th

The contest's qualification round takes place this Saturday. We highly encourage you to take part in this competition, be it for winning or just for fun! :) http://code.google.com/codejam/

Spring Contest Results

Congratulation to the top 3 of the PolyProg Spring Contest: Titus, Peter and Utkarsh!

Funeasy Contest

Christian and Peter are preparing a tiny and easy 2h contest (3 problems) for this Thursday, 18:15 - 20:30 in BC07/08. Make sure to come! No subscription is needed, just flock in as you please.

IO's for seminar playing with graphs

You can get the zip at http://stuff.titus-c.ch/IOs.zip

Playing with Graphs [April 14th]

Seminar : BC07/08 - April 14th, 18h15-20h00

"From brute-force to elegance" seminar [April 7th]

PolyProg launches its series of spring seminars this April 7th. At this 1st seminar we teach you how to properly brute-force and then tune your code tremendously via fantastic tricks!

There will be some theory, and a lot of practice! By implementing the codes yourselves during the seminar, you get the best of it!

The overall goal of this seminar series is to prepare you for the selection contest (early October) to SWERC 2011 in Madrid, for which we hope to get some fresh blood into the team. We'll continue then with advanced seminars for proper preparation of SWERC in October and November.

hc2 diplomas

Congratulations to all 83 coders in the 30 teams !!

You can fetch your diploma from ELB241 in case you missed the award ceremony.

HC2 team-up seminar (24/02/2011)

Are you tempted to participate in the Helvetic Coding Contest on March 12th, but have no team yet? Then this seminar is the place to be! Discuss with other interested participants and build your team before the early-registration deadline of February 25th. Precious tips and tricks await you during this 45'-session in CE103 at 18h15.

HC2 registration fees

PolyProg will pay the 5CHF registration fee for its members (i.e. all students having purchased a membership card for 2010-2011).

HC2 posters out there!

You may or may not have seen them already, here is how they look:

Gather your friends and register!

Helvetic Coding Contest, 2011 edition

For the second time, PolyProg is going to organize the Helvetic Coding Contest. Check out the website and make sure to participate!

CodeCup outcome!

CodeCup 2011 is over and PolyProg congratulates its three participating members (12th, 25th and 35th) on their initiative!

Last seminar before Christmas

Taste PolyProg's delicious Christmas cake (for free!) during a talk on "Fair parting" and "Alpha-beta pruning". Get into Christmas mood with us in CE 103, Thursday, 16th from 18h15 to 20h00.

SWERC this weekend... and thereafter?

This weekend, as you might know, the first part of the PolyProg year will conclude with our participation in the SWERC.
But what will happen next? Well, no need to worry, we have something to play around with for all of you: We are going to participate in CodeCup 2011!
For that we will be working on an artificial intelligence for a game.
Curious? Then come to our seminar on the 25th of November at 18:15 in BC07/08!

Room change for next seminar

The seminar will be held thursday at 18:15 in CE103.

Selection Contest Outcome

As a result of yesterdays PolyProg selection contest, the following two teams qualified to represent the EPFL in this year's SWERC in Madrid:

Expect Pwnage From Lausanne
Robert R. Enderlein
Titus Cieslewski
Slobodan Mitrovic

Edgy Programmers From Lausanne
Pierluca Borsò
Jean-Paul Wenger
Robin Steiger

The selection committee compliments all 5 teams on their achievements in this tough contest.

Advanced seminars

We will organize for ALL of you a series of advanced seminars where you will be shown how really difficult problems can be solved. The first of them will take place next Thursday 18h15 (room indication will follow) and will handle the problems of the selection contest (read through them on our moodle in advance, as we will just cover the solutions.

Definitive Selection Contest Modalities

The Contest will be held this Saturday, October 30th at 12:30-18:00 in INF2.

Problems for the coming seminar

The seminar will be held in BC07/08 on Thursday at 18:15, as usual. The problems to be treated are:
C,G and I from http://neerc.ifmo.ru/trains/zurich/20101019.pdf
I from http://neerc.ifmo.ru/trains/zurich/20101021.pdf

Selection Contest Modalities

This years Selection Contest will be held this Saturday, October 30th at 12:30-18:00. We don't know yet in which room, but we will let you know as soon as possible. As usual, there will be food and drinks available. Register on the following doodle:
https://epfl.doodle.com/zgb2m2fsqbwzwndw
To see the problems of last years selection contest, view the section "Training".

Training week at ETH Zurich

The SWERC participants from the ETH in Zurich have invited us to join their training week from october 18th to october 23rd; there will be daily training contests and seminars held by a former ACM ICPC World champion and a Russian ACM coach. Make sure not to miss this opportunity!
Sign up here until Wednesday evening:
http://www.doodle.com/3c2sm7pft55uiabn

The next seminar...

... will be held again in BC07/08, Thursday at 18:15. This time, we will have a look at dynamic programming: When does it make sense to memorize intermediate steps and what is the best way to do this? We will have a look at some algorithms that implement this concept...
Consider the following problem:
http://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&Itemid=8&category=26&page=show_problem&problem=2415

And here, some pictures from last time:

Join Online Contests!

Whether you are preparing for SWERC or not - join online contests, just as Christian suggested in our first seminar! They are fun, you can practice cooperation in your team or just ameliorate your skills if you compete alone.
http://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&Itemid=12

PolyProg on Moodle

As some of you probably already know, there is a moodle page to support the seminars. Get the link and the enrolment key on the Events -> Seminars page.

Our next event: This year's first seminar!

What exactly is a graph and how can one represent it in a program? What are good searching strategies and how do you find the shortest path from vertex A to vertex B? We will have a look at those and other questions in our next seminar, which will take place this Thursday at 18:15 in BC 07/08.

Welcome Contest problems

The welcome contest problems are available (and still submittable) at:
http://www.spoj.pl/problems/MESS/
http://www.spoj.pl/problems/ONTIME/
http://www.spoj.pl/problems/PANCAKES/

Congratulations to the contest winner, Robert!
Here, some pictures:

General Assembly Time & Location

The general assembly of tomorrow, 29th of September will take place at 18:15 in CO 123.

Welcome contest schedule

The welcome contest, which will be held in BC 07/08 on Tuesday, September 28th, will have the following schedule:

Polyprog at the association booths

During the association booths, we were delighted to introduce some people to Polyprog; thanks for coming everyone!

Website upgrade complete!

The promised website upgrade is now complete! Welcome to our new website! In case you find some bugs, please contact our webmaster.

Website upgrade in progress

We are currently working on a big website upgrade - make sure to check back on September 9th!