2002 ACM East Central North America Regionals

Or how I let my team of 2 (counting myself) to a stunningly good defeat!

So one day, the local acm programming contest was comming up, and a prof offered an extention on an assignment (for the entire class) if someone in the class won. Well, I didn't need the extention, but I was bored, so I entered.

Well, I won handily (I finished all the problems, only one other person finished even one of them). And off to regionals I went (with the only undergrad willing to go to). So first off, as you might know, the team size is 3, and we obviously were 2.

The final standings at regionals, put us at 19th place (out of around 100), the top place of any team finishing 3 out of the 8 problems (so close to 4, another 15 minutes....). Now you have to realize that in this region we were competing against CMU, Toronto, Waterloo, U Mich and such (most of which sent 2 or three teams). So it was a very competative group (those teams being made up of the students from good schools who had actually practiced, amoungst other things). If you go by school, there were about 12 unique schools placing above us.

So that is the story, such as it is, of how a 19 place seemed not too bad. As a foot note, next year, when I wasn't on the team (and the team had 3 people), they placed 51st.