Bangladesh going to ACM ICPC World Finals
Posted by muntasirkhan on January 2, 2009
Finally, something worth posting about. Just heard a few days ago that three teams from Bangladesh are going to the ACM ICPC World Finals, the most prestigious programming competition for university students.
Every year only the best programming teams from universities around the world qualify to participate in this event. So it is considered a great honour to qualify to compete there. Usually only one Bangladeshi team (from BUET) gets to go to the world final. Last year, another team from East West University qualified. This year there are three teams – BUET, DU and NSU.
The BUET team qualified after getting a wild card on becoming the runners up (Fudan Univ. were the champions) at our own Dhaka site hosted by NSU. The DU came 3rd (university-wise) and went on to become 2nd at the Kanpur site and getting the wild card there. The NSU team, consisting of my former teammates Samee Zahur and Md. Mustafijur Rahman as well as Ameer Hamza, could not perform to their fullest potential in the Dhaka Regional coming 4th university-wise and 6th overall, but went on to being 5th at Kuala Lumpur and got a wild card.
It might seem a little strange that being 4th in Dhaka did not get them a wild card while being 5th in Kuala Lumpur did. Actually, the number of wild cards varies from site to site and is determined by the number and quality of teams and the quality of the contest (problemset as well as other factors). The actual calculated point values are published, but to be honest the whole thing is quite beyond me so I will not try to explain it. The Kuala Lumpur site had lots of really strong teams like Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (former World Champs) and NTU. However, the NSU team managed to hold their own there, solving 6 problems out of 10 while the champions solved 7. And I’m sure the fact that NSU is the host of this year’s Dhaka Regional, and has been hosting the regionals for many years, helped to ease the Asia Contests Director’s decision in its favour.
The fact that there are three teams from Bangladesh is a great honour, considering most countries are lucky to get even one team. India, with a much greater population and more developed CS/Math education and lots of very good coders got two teams. Only countries as strong as Russia and China ever get more than three teams, as far as I know.
But I must confess that I am happier for my university than my country. I was happy when two teams qualified last year. But I couldn’t help feeling frustrated that we missed out. Our team got 4th position, just behind the EWU team who beat us in penalty points and went to the world finals. And the year before, the main NSU team missed out after getting 3rd place. Furthermore, both Mustafij and Samee will be leaving NSU soon, this was their last Regional, and there are no viable replacements lined up so far. Those two are among the brightest people I know, and it will not be easy to put together a comparably strong team at NSU. So, this was pretty much going to be NSU’s last chance for a long time.
The news was very welcome indeed. Though I doubt a lot of people at NSU know of this. We always thought NSU deserved getting a team to the World Finals for quite a few years. And having three teams going from Bangladesh makes it even better. Right now I am looking forward to the Finals, hoping they will put up a good fight.
PS: An unofficial list of all teams going can be found at Dr. Hwang’s blog
PPS: I dwelt more on the NSU team because of my own involvement. Both the other teams are very strong. The DU team managed a second place at Kanpur despite the most apallingly unfair conditions. The BUET team also has three very good coders. Coders from both teams, as well as Samee and Mustafij from NSU, competed in the Google Code Jam Regional Onsites last year.
PPPS: An unofficial version of this year’s ranklist at the ACM Dhaka Regional can be found here.
