MATLAB Programming Contest Blog

April 13th, 2006

Contest Winner

Congratulations to utr, aka thecyclist, aka Tim Vaughan, for winning the Blockbuster programming contest. This is the third consecutive MATLAB contest he’s won! This track record certainly debunks any sentiment that winning the grand prize is mostly luck. You can read his thoughts on the Ants and on the Sudoku contests in his previous entries in the Hall of Fame.

An honorable mention goes to Hannes Naudé & Cobus Potgieter, upon whose entry Tim’s contest-winning tweak was based. We also congratulate Alan Chalker, David Jones, srach, and Mihi, who all submitted entries that took the top spot in the last three hours. If there is someone else’s innovation you’d like to point out, even your own, please leave a comment.

By Matthew Simoneau

10:20 UTC | Posted in Blockbuster | Permalink |

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6 Responses to “Contest Winner”

  1. Markus replied on April 13th, 2006 at 10:58 UTC :

    As I have written before, I would like to see an unobfuscated, maybe documented version of the winning code. It seems to me that there is a different clustering routine in it than the one that allowed me to win two phases. But my eyes fail after looking at the encrypted code for longer than a minute, so I can’t figure out.

  2. David Jones replied on April 13th, 2006 at 11:28 UTC :

    Congratulations to Tim Vaughan for a glorious victory.
    He must have been watching the queue like a hawk to see the major advances by Hannes & Cobus waiting there, and then submit a tweaked version 5 minutes later, just 9 minutes before the deadline.

    I think Hannes&Cobus and Mihi had a good strategy to hold back their improved submissions until just before the deadline. Apparently, they didn’t cut it close enough, since Tim still had time to tweak and resubmit.

    Even imcu&oktay had time to tweak Tim’s winning submission from the queue and resubmit with 2.5 minutes left, but it wasn’t enough to take the prize (thought it came in second).

    I think it was about 2 hours after the 5pm deadline that one of my submissions came to the front of the queue and took the lead, though I knew there was no reason to celebrate, because by that time, I already realized there were superior entries in the queue.

    It was fun to participate in such a hotly contested competition.
    I am looking forward to the next one.

    – David Jones

  3. Stijn Helsen replied on April 13th, 2006 at 15:51 UTC :

    I’ve written it already somewhere. Using the unobfiscator submitted in Matlab file exchange place, with one of the Chuck Norris submissions (and then the Matlab Smart Indent) made it (in my opinion) very readable. Of course no additional comments are added!(except the list of replacement variables).

  4. Léo replied on April 21st, 2006 at 11:05 UTC :

    When could we expect the Final analysis, if any ?

  5. Peder replied on October 30th, 2006 at 17:43 UTC :

    Any update on this?

  6. amir replied on December 2nd, 2006 at 14:33 UTC :

    hi
    it seems that while everybody’s program include more than 10,000 char alireza kashanoipour wrtie a program in about 4000 char it would be noticeable and great.
    I wish luck for him for and admire him for this optimized program.

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The MATLAB Programming Contest is a semi-annual competition where contestants submit MATLAB code to try to solve a challenge. For more information, see the overview.

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