Title: ACM-ICPC Programming Training Camp
Dear Students,
The Department of Computer Science at Texas State University plans to offer the ACM-ICPC
Programming Training Camp to improve the programming capability of our students. Since the
1990s, ACM-ICPC has become a world-wide programming contest. Every year more than ten
thousand students and more than one thousand universities participate in local contests,
preliminary contests and regional contests all over the world. The contest problems are close to
real job interview questions, and the contest winners have a high likelihood to receive job and
internship offers from top companies.
The training camp will use previous ACM-ICPC programming competition problem sets and
provide students a unique opportunity of systematic programming training. A programming
contestant’s knowledge system can be summarized as: “Algorithms + Data Structures =
Programs”. Therefore, the training camp will be based on the outlines of data structure and
algorithm. Programming contest problems and their analyses and solutions will be used to
significantly improve your programming skills.
To ensure the quality of training, all participating students are required to commit 6 days each
week (at least 8 hours per day) for two weeks during Aug. 10 – Aug.21. Each training day will
include a two to three hour lecture during the morning. A five-hour mock programming contest,
based on the lecture, will be held in the afternoon. Ad hoc social events will be organized in the
evening.
The tentative training topics for the camp are:
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Fundamental Programming Skills (simple computing, recursion, backtracking)
Lists (applications of arrays, stacks and queues, sorting, and searching)
Trees (tree traversal, union-find set, applications of binary trees, application of classical
trees)
Graphs (graph traversal (BFS, DFS), the minimum spanning tree, the shortest path
algorithm, bipartite graphs, network flow)
Greedy Algorithms
Dynamic Programming
Simulation
Dr. Yonghui Wu will be the primary instructor of this training workshop. Dr. Ziliang Zong as well
as other computer science faculty will actively participate. Dr. Wu is currently an associate
professor of computer science at Fudan University and a visiting scholar at Stony Brook
University. Dr. Wu was the coach of the Fudan University Programming Contest team from
2001 to 2011 and the acting chair of the ICPC Asia Programming Contest 1st Training
Committee. Under his guidance, Fudan University has qualified for the ACM ICPC World Finals
every year and won three medals (bronze medal in 2002, silver medal in 2005, and bronze
medal in 2010) in the ACM ICPC World Finals. Since 2013, Dr. Wu conducts and oversees
training camps in Oman, Taiwan, and the U.S.A; and he has published a series of books on
programming contest training including: “Data structure Experiment: for Collegiate Programming
Contest and Education”, “Algorithm Design Experiment: for Collegiate Programming Contest
and Education”, and “Strategies Solving Problems: for Collegiate Programming Contest and
Education”.
A prerequisite for meeting the minimum requirement for this training camp is passing the data
structure class with a grade of at least C. Additionally, please note that we take the time
commitment very seriously (quitting in the middle of the camp once you are accepted is not
acceptable). Furthermore, all of the students who are accepted to the camp are expected to
attend the Texas State programming competition this Fall.
If you are interested and qualified, please send email to Dr. Ted Lehr (t_l81@txstate.edu) with
the following information before July 24:
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Your grade in CS1428, CS2308 and CS3358 (for undergraduate students).
Your student ID, email address, and cell phone number.
First year graduate students can also apply. You are qualified if you passed the comprehensive
exam (the programming test) or CS 5301, CS 5329 or CS 5351 with a B or higher grade.
The Texas State ACM Programming Competition Committee will review the qualifications of all
applicants and accept applicants until the camp is full. Upon acceptance, you will receive a
formal notification.
On behalf of the Texas State ACM Programming Competition Committee, we highly encourage
you to take this great opportunity to learn advanced programming topics and improve your
programming skills. We look forward to build a strong Bobcat programming team by August
2015!
Texas State ACM-ICPC Programming Competition Committee