MATLAB Programming Contest BlogNovember 9th, 2011Alfonso is the Winner!Wow! What a finish. A lot of us thought that Nick was going to do it again. The cyclist even named one of his last entries Can’t beat Nicholas Howe. We knew the end was near, because Magnus S. named one of his last entries Some say that he is soon running out of titles (by the way, you should read the complete list of Magnus’s titles). The minutes ticked by, and sure enough here comes Nick with pf3pushmixfull. It’s a significant improvement, and he’s got a few more right behind. But wait… hold the phone! Could it be? Yes, here comes Alfonso with a killer punch. BAM! lastttry01. Look out! Here comes another. BANG! lasttry02. And the final blow. KAPOW! lasttry03. Alfonso has set a new standard in terms of dominating the end game. Not one, but two of his final entries improved on the previous leader by more than half a percent. Which is, as we say here in New England, wicked hard to do. So hats off and three cheers for Alfonso Nieto-Castañón, our latest champion. And, as always, thanks to everyone who played. The code that wins carries with it a little bit of all of you. See you in six months! 
6 Responses to “Alfonso is the Winner!” |
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Once again, a very nice and entertaining contest. Congratulations to Alfonso and Nicholas for having really nice algorithmic improvements in the end.
Looking at the statistics page, the number of submissions is quite low during daylight (except for the last 15 minutes, of course). Maybe another prize for ‘Most hours lead’ or ‘Most hours lead during daylight’ would be a possibility to encourage more activity in daylight.
Alfonso would have won ‘Most hours lead’ as well this time with 29:16 (hh:mm) ahead of Alex P. (26:41) and Nicholas Howe (20:06).
Sergey Y would have won ‘Most hours lead during daylight’ with 17:18 with Michael Völker second at 15:07 and myself third at 12:36.
Wonderfull Contest!
Congratulations to Alfonso and other best players!
One thing to Matlab Contest GREAT Team:
we have the submissions classification: 1 rank for each submission,
is it possible to have also a player classification?
i.e. 1 rank = 1 player (only the best submission of this player)
Thanks to the contest team. Had a great time and congratulations to all the players. Like always I’ve yet again learned a few new things.
I agree with Magnus and his suggestions. Another one that comes to mind is the ‘highest no. of 1st place’ prize. That would be a carrot many tweakers will seek and can be easily implemented using the All the Leaders stats.
Also like there is a ‘invite your friend’ page for Matlab web seminars, it would be nice to have one for the contest as well.
That’s a nice one as well, Amitabh. The results this time would have been:
Highest No. of 1st places:
1= Alex P. (18)
1= Alfonso Nieto-Castanon (18)
3 Abhisek Ukil (12)
Highest No. of 1st places in daylight;
1 Alex P. (18)
2 Abhisek Ukil (12)
3 Sergey Y. (11)
I have also got the ranking as suggested by Francesco, but it would possibly be a bit long for this comment… 97 unique participants. The top ten are:
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon (Place of the best submission: 1)
Nicholas Howe (6)
Magnus S (8)
Abhisek Ukil (9)
Dimitris Kaliakmanis (10)
Yitzchak (12)
Fel (13)
Michael C. (14)
Alan Chalker (17)
the cyclist (20)
The only Francesco in that ranking comes in at 56th place with the best submission on place 1074.
Does anybody else want to know her/his place in the player ranking?
Thank you Magnus S,
I knew in this other kind of ranking I would have gained some positions… :-)
see you on the next contest
The Vines Contest Hall of Fame is now up! Learn more about the winners here: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/contest/contests/34/winners .