MATLAB Programming Contest Blog
May 8th, 2008
Actual Test Suites Added to File Exchange Submission
Sad to see the queue closed? Have one more idea to try out? Is there some analysis you’d like to perform? Download the updated File Exchange submission and try it yourself. Be sure to share any interesting results on the newsgroup.
12:57 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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May 7th, 2008
Stefan Rach is Our Contest Winner
Stefan Rach is the Grand Prize winner for the Wiring Contest. Like usual, we had a flood of entries here at the end, but when the smoke queue cleared, his entry was on top of the pile. This is the second contest prize that he’s won.
Wrapping up another contest, we’re happy to see all the great feedback coming in on the newsgroup thread. Please keep it coming.
9:34 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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May 6th, 2008
Cyclist wins 1000 node challenge
Congratulations to The Cyclist, aka:TC but also known as Tim, who submitted entry USS at 17:59:36 to win the 1000 node challenge. This is a really great win, finally besting David Jones who, until now, was in line for the first clean sweep every in the history of our MATLAB Contest. Nice job Tim!
The Post-Swap Past-the-Post Prize is still waiting for someone to break the first entry to break 13000…
8:48 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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5 Comments »
1000 Node Challenge
The Post-Swap Past-the-Post Prize remains open. In parallel, we’re also opening a 1000 Node Challenge for the best-scoring entry submitted before 6PM Eastern that is shorter than 1000 nodes. We’ll be adding a section to the statistics to make it easier to track these entries.
1:21 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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2 Comments »
May 5th, 2008
Test Suite Swap Completed, Post-Swap Past-the-Post Prize Announced
We’re back online after completing the mid-contest test suite swap. To make the swap score-neutral, we’re subtracting 3.1131 seconds from the time, and 10559 from the results for all future entries. The new test suite is similar statistically to the first one, so these fudge factors are a measure of the “overfitting” in the current best entry. There should be lots of new slack to shake out, so we’ll award a Post-Swap Past-the-Post Prize to the first entry to break 13000. Good Luck!
3:38 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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No Comments »
Queue offline
Please ignore the strangeness. We’ll be back soon!
2:39 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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1 Comment »
Sunday Push Won by David Jones
Unstoppable contest force David Jones won the Big Push by making the greatest cumulative improvement to the top score on Sunday. SY was close behind him, submitting an entry that would have put him in first place one second after the midnight deadline. Ouch! Sunday also saw significant contributions from Jan Langer, YC, Fel, and MikeR.
2:23 am |
Posted in Wiring |
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1 Comment »
May 4th, 2008
The David Jones Takes the Leap, Sunday Push Underway
The David Jones domination continues. Yesterday he added the Leap challenge to his trophy shelf by making the largest single improvement in score, despite strong competition from Yi Cao and Jim.
The Sunday Push goes to the contestant who makes the biggest cumulative improvement to the score on Sunday. Halfway through today’s Sunday Push, David is in the lead, but Jan and Yi are close behind. This mid-contest challenge ends at midnight. Will he stay in the lead? You can follow the action by checking out the “Sunday” section under “Contributions in Daylight” in the statistics.
1:06 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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No Comments »
May 2nd, 2008
Saturday Leap
The queue seems quiet now - perhaps folks are off enjoying a Friday evening away from computers or maybe getting some rest before our traditional Saturday Leap begins in a couple of hours. This challenge runs from midnight until midnight Saturday. The winner is the entry that makes the biggest improvement in score. Good luck!
10:21 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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No Comments »
David Jones Wins Early Bird
David owns this contest. In an unprecedented third consecutive mid-contest win, David Jones has captured the Early Bird prize. Very impressive!
7:56 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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Follow the Leader on Twitter
As we approach the 5PM deadline for the Early Bird prize, the lead has already changed four times with submissions from four different people since we entered Daylight. When a new entry takes the top spot, I wanna hear about it.
Twitter provides the solution. Whenever the lead changes, we post to contestleaders. There are lots of ways to subscribe to this channel on Twitter, including RSS, IM, and SMS. After creating a free account, I configured it to send me a text message whenever there was an update. Now I can stop hitting reload and get back to work on R2008b, knowing that I’ll be notified immediately.
3:51 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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No Comments »
David Jones Stays on Top through Twilight, Early Bird Special Announced
David Jones, winner of Darkness, maintained his lead through Twilight as well. David is a contest veteran, and you can read about his previous wins in the Hall of Fame, but this is the first time he’s conquered either of these contest phases.
He had lots of competition, too. Just behind him were Alfonso Nieto-Castanon, Nick Howe, Steve Hoelzer, Jan Langer, Mike Bindschadler, Claus Still, Gerbert Myburgh, Fabio Carnevale, Andreas, and many others. See the listing of the top 25 in the statistics.
We’re now in Daylight and everyone’s code in visible. To get things rolling, we’ll award an Early Bird Special to the best-scoring entry submitted before 5PM Eastern. Good luck!
12:51 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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No Comments »
May 1st, 2008
Sneak peek: leading solvers at work
We’re still deep in Twilight here at Contest Headquarters, but I was able to get Lucio to release a few pictures of how the lead entries are doing. David Jones is all over the lead so far. Here are three entries of his at various points of development.
By the way, this puzzle is NOT from the actual test suite.
This solver is from last night at around 10 PM. Total score for this board: 858.
Next is a solver from around 2 AM, presumably before David went to sleep. Or maybe he just stepped away from the computer, grabbed a coffee, and started working off line for a while. Notice this entry is starting to make use of bridges, whereas the example above did not. Total score: 612.
He was up again the next morning before noon and submitted this winning entry in time to secure the coveted “Prince of Darkness” prize. Fewer bridges, more connectivity, and a better score (487). Nice work David!
Can you see any way to improve this score by hand?
6:30 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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5 Comments »
David Jones wins Wiring Darkness Challenge
The first phase of the Wiring contest has passed. At noontime today, we finished Darkness and have now entered Twilight. This phase runs until noon Friday.
Things were off and running as soon as the challenge was posted. Entries were posted continually through the noon deadline, with David Jones, a MATLAB Contest veteran, in the lead. Congratulations once again to David!
Here were the top 10 in Darkness:
1 David Jones
2 Nick Howe
3 Claus Still
4 Steve Hoelzer
5 nathan q
6 Alfonso Nieto-Castanon
7 Fabio Carnevale
8 Schwabenpower
9 Michael
10 DreadNox
Keep up the great work all!
Helen
2:41 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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No Comments »
April 30th, 2008
Let the games begin - The Wiring Game, that is!
The Spring 2008 contest officially starts now.
The contest is “Wiring” and as you will see in Ned’s contest rules this topic was suggested by a contest fan, Edward Meyer. (Thanks Edward!)
If you are a veteran of our contests, you will probably jump right to the rules. If this is your first contest, other good reads are About the contest and the FAQ. To be truly inspired, take a look at our Hall of Fame to read about the winners of past contests.
Post any questions or comments you may have to the Newsgroup thread.
See you online!
Helen
12:44 pm |
Posted in Wiring |
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4 Comments »
April 29th, 2008
It’s almost time….
Just a reminder that tomorrow is the big day when we launch our next contest. Stay tuned here. If you haven’t played in previous contests, check back here at noon eastern time for the contest details and to find out what you need in order to play.
See you soon!
5:00 pm |
Posted in Announcements |
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4 Comments »
March 11th, 2008
Spring 2008 Contest date announcement
I’ve been getting emails from contest fans all over the world who want to know - “When is the next contest going to start?”
The Contest team is hard at work planning activities for our Spring contest. We have chosen a date.
 Make sure to mark these dates on your calendars. We’ll see you then.Helen
10:18 am |
Posted in Announcements |
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25 Comments »
November 14th, 2007
Markus is Our Contest Winner!
Markus is the winner of the Gene Splicing contest. His performance improvement on MikeR’s leading entry pulled him into first place. Congratulations! The other big movers in the final hours of the contest were Fernando and Claus Still.
10:34 pm |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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1 Comment »
Abhisek Ukil Wins Best Result
Abhisek Ukil is the winner of our Best Result Before 5 and a new member to the Hall of Fame. Congratulations!
We’re in the final hours of the contest. The Grand Prize is awarded to the best entry submitted before the contest ends at noon.
Michael Weidman provided some commentary about the connection between the contest puzzle and the real-life problem.
10:01 am |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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No Comments »
November 13th, 2007
Sergey Yurgenson Wins Late Twlight, Best Result By 5 Announced
Congratulations to Sergey Yurgenson for winning the first-ever Late Twilight. His first wins were in the last contest, where he took two contest prizes. In addition, David Jones, DrSeuss, Abhisek Ukil, and nathan q all beat the the previous best score after the twilight test suite swap.
Now that the lights are back on, we’re announcing an award for the entry that gets the best result, irrespective of time, submitted before 5PM. Track the progress and the leader in the “Best Result” section in the statistics.
2:22 pm |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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November 12th, 2007
Back to Twilight
For the next 24 hours, we’re returning to Twilight. We’ve also swapped in a new hidden test suite. This is the first time we’ve tried this and are interested to know what everyone thinks. We’ll award the Late Twilight award when we re-enter Daylight at noon tomorrow.
We like Stijn’s suggestion to continue displaying all the entries submitted before we re-entered Twilight. If we continue having a late twilight, we’ll implement this next time. For now we can at least show you the last, best, non-obfuscated entry.
3:12 pm |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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No Comments »
Jan Langer is our Leap Winner
Contest veteran Jan Langer wins our Saturday Leap, followed by Francois Glineur, and Yi Cao.
In other news, approaching up on our Late Twilight at noon, Gwendolyn Fisch’s work this morning resulted in the biggest improvements to the top score we’ve seen since Daylight.
11:37 am |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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No Comments »
November 9th, 2007
Sergey Yurgenson is Our Early Bird Winner, Saturday Leap Announced
Sergey Yurgenson’s entry was the best one submitted before 5PM, making him our Early Bird winner. He took two of the prizes last contest, and you can read his commentary in the Hall of Fame.
We’re moving our traditional Leap contest to Saturday. The goal of this challenge is to submit the entry that makes the biggest single improvement in score. This challenge starts at midnight and runs for 24 hours. We’ll keep track of the results in our statistics.
6:31 pm |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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2 Comments »
Markus Buehren Wins the Twilight Phase, Early Bird Special Announced
Markus Buehren wins the prize for submitting the best entry in Twilight. This is the third contest in which he’s won a challenge, and you can read about his experiences in the Hall of Fame. Nick Howe, Yi Cao, Abhisek Ukil, and minimumphase complete the top five.
We’re now in Daylight and everyone’s code in visible. To get things rolling, we’ll award an Early Bird Special to the best-scoring entry submitted before 5PM Eastern. Good luck!
1:57 pm |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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No Comments »
November 8th, 2007
The Contest is Twittering
We’re always looking for ways to make the contest more interactive. We’ve started piping information out to two feeds on Twitter. Every few minutes, we’re sending the queue length and how long since we scored our last entry to conteststatus. If a new entry has taken first place, we’ll also notify contestleaders.
In addition to just viewing these feeds on the web, Twitter offers a lot of ways to be updated in real-time. Have the queue status delivered to you every few minutes into your instant messenger. Pull the list of leaders into your Google Desktop. Or even receive a text message when someone bumps your entry out of first place in the middle of the night.
How are you using these feeds? What other feeds would you like to see? Please leave us a comment.
6:37 pm |
Posted in Gene Splicing |
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1 Comment »
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