Slides from Fedor Tsarev, ACM ICPC World Champion 2008, at the IPMA Young Crew Finland Summer Seminar in June 2013

1. Becoming a World
Champion in Programming:
Keep Calm and Compete
Fedor Tsarev
ACM ICPC World Champion 2008
IPMA Young Crew Finland Summer
Seminar
June 8, 2013

2. 2
About myself
• PhD, head of the Bioinformatics
and Machine Learning
Laboratory
• ACM ICPC World Champion 2008
• St. Petersburg Youth Award 2007
• Head of the commission for IT in
the St. Petersburg Youth Board
• Project manager at Information
Technologies and Programming
Faculty

3. Workshop Structure
• World Championship in Programming – 10
minutes
• Problem Solving – 25 minutes
• Discussion – 10 minutes
3

4. WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP IN
PROGRAMMING
4

5. Association for Computing Machinery International
Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC)
5
3 students 1 computer
5 hours 8-13 problems

6. Association for Computing Machinery International
Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC)
• Held since 1979, sponsored by IBM
• Over 10000 teams – 2200 universities – 85 countries
• Multi-tiered competition:
– 260 Quarterfinals
– 30 Semifinals
– World Finals (120 teams)
• Medals are given to top 12 teams – 4 gold medals, 4
silver medals and 4 bronze medals
• 5 semifinals and 2 finals per student at most
• World Finals 2013 will be hosted by University ITMO
6

7. Problem Example
• Contest lasts for 5
hours
• Problem set: 10-12
problems
• Problem “Coffee
Central” from ACM
ICPC World Finals
2011
• Coffee shops are
located at some of
the intersections
7

8. Problem Example
• A person is willing to
walk at most d blocks
for the morning coffee
• Example: d = 2
• Write the program to
find the location from
which you can reach
the maximal number of
coffee shops for the
morning coffee
8

9. Problem Example
• Solution for the
example – from best
location you can
reach 3 coffee shops
9

10. Russian Teams on World Finals
• World champions:
–2000 – St Petersburg SU
–2001 – St Petersburg SU
–2004 – University ITMO
–2006 – Saratov SU
–2008 – University ITMO
–2009 – University ITMO
–2012 – University ITMO
10

11. 2004, Prague, Czech Republic
• University ITMO – 1-st place
• MIT – 5-th place
• Caltech – 7-th place
• Harvard – 9-th place

12. World champions 2004 and President of Russia
Vladimir Putin
12

13. 2008, Banff, Canada
• University ITMO – 1-st
place
• MIT – 2-nd place
• Tsinghua (China) – 6-th
place
• Stanford – 7-th place
• All 11 Russian teams are
among top 30 teams of
the world

14. World champions 2008 and St. Petersburg
governor Valentina Matvienko
14

15. 2009, Stockholm, Sweden
• University ITMO – 1-st
place
• Tsinghua – 2-nd place
• Oxford – 5-th place
• MIT – 7-th place
• Carnegie Mellon – 8-th
place

16. World Champions 2009 with President of Russia
Dmitry Medvedev
16

17. 2012, Warsaw, Poland
• University ITMO – 1-st
place
• Harvard – 7-th place
• University of Tokyo –
11-th place
17

18. World Champions 2012 and President
of Russia Vladimir Putin
18

19. Secrets of Success
• Be passionate about becoming number 1
in the world
• Good team
• Do not listen to others
• Have fun
19

20. Good Team
• Dmitry Paraschenko (now Software Engineer at
Google Zurich)
• Dmitry Abdrashitov (now freelancer programmer)
• Not the best individual ratings, but performance
significantly increases while in team
20
Year 1Year 0 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
DA
DP
FT

21. Do not listen to others
• Set appropriate goals
– 1st year – become the World Champion
– 2nd year – advance to Semifinal
– 3rd year – top 15 in Semifinal
– 4th year – advance to World Final
– 5th year – become a World Champion
• Do not listen even to your coach
– “Your team has no future because you are too
old” (Andrey Stankevich, 2005)
21

22. Have Fun
• Interacting with other people is fun
– Inside your team
– Between teams
• Problem solving is fun
– I hope you will get a feeling of it
22

23. PROBLEM SOLVING
23

24. Problem Solving
• 25 minutes
• 5 problems
• To ask for clarification use the “Clarification
Request” form
• To submit the answer use the “Answer
Submission” form
• 15 “Answer Submission” forms per team
24

25. DISCUSSION
25

26. fedor.tsarev@gmail.com
St. Petersburg National Research University of IT,
Mechanics and Optics
Computer Technologies Department
Russia, St. Petersburg, Kronverksky pr. 49
Thank you!