Training%20of%20the%20Carnegie%20Mellon%20Teams

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Training of theCarnegie Mellon Teams
Greg KesdenEugene FinkDanny Sleator
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Resources and constraints

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

The challenge is to improve the performance
within these resources.
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Coaches
Greg Kesden (since 1999)Leader and programmer
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Historic performance
Regional CompetitionsEast Central North America
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• Top competitors
• Waterloo
• Purdue
• Toronto

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Place
5
6
10
04
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06
07
08
Year
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Programming competition club

• Weekly practices3 hours, 2060 students

• Weekly theory sessions2 hours, 48 students

• Optional homeworks

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Practices

• ACM-style competitions(individual and in teams)

• Emphasis on hands-on problem solving little
  theory

• Open to everyone optional course credit with
  only good grades

• Free pizza

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Theory sessions

• Analysis of hard problems and review of advanced
  algorithms

• Brainstorming discussions with follow-up
  implementation at home

• Open only to the best students

• No pizza

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Two-semester training
Fall
Basic training Everyone
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Fall Basic training

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

• Identification of new talent- Questionnaires-
  Individual competitions

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

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Spring Two tracks
International teamAdvanced training

• Five-hour practices with international problems
• Intensive theoretical discussions
• Homework coding for hard problems

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Training materials
www.cs.cmu.edu/eugene/teach