Training of theCarnegie Mellon Teams

Greg KesdenEugene Fink

Danny Sleator

• Excellent talent pool- One of the best undergraduate programs in the United States

Resources and constraints

The challenge is to improve the performance within these resources.

• Limited funding- Travel to the competition- Weekly pizza

• Limited training time- 200 hours/year for the international team- 100 hours/year for the other students

Coaches

Greg Kesden (since 1999):Leader and programmer

Eugene Fink (since 2004):Bookkeeper and theoretician

Danny Sleator (since 2008):Real theoretician

Per

cent

ile

05 06 07 08Year

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

World Finals

Historic performance

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1

456

10

23

Year

Pla

ce

Regional CompetitionsEast Central North America

Top competitors:• Waterloo• Purdue• Toronto

• Weekly practices:3 hours, 20–60 students

Programming competition club

• Weekly theory sessions:2 hours, 4–8 students

• Optional homeworks

04 05 06 07 08

10

Year

20

30

40Number of

students

• ACM-style competitions(individual and in teams)

Practices

• Emphasis on hands-on problem solving; little theory

• Open to everyone; optional course credit with only good grades

• Free pizza

• Analysis of hard problems and review of advanced algorithms

Theory sessions

• Brainstorming discussions with follow-up implementation at home

• Open only to the best students

• No pizza

Two-semester training

Basic training:Everyone

Advanced training:International team

Fun programming:Other students

• Competition-skill training- Problem selection- Programming on paper- Work in teams- Low resubmission rate

Fall: Basic training

• Identification of new talent- Questionnaires- Individual competitions

• Selection of two teams- Choice of the best students- Experiments with different team compositions

International team:Advanced training

Spring: Two tracks

• Five-hour practices with international problems

• Intensive theoretical discussions

• Homework coding for hard problems

Other students:Fun programming• Three-hour practices

with regional problems• Less attention to

optional homeworks• Focus on pizza

Training materials