
2011 Judges Report
This is the seventh year that the Standard Bank IT Challenge has been held; principally for Universities in South Africa. The Challenge aims to show both programming ability and teamwork with limited resources.
Teams were made up of four members, one of whom acted as Team Manager. To ensure teams reflected the student population, and the create opportunities for more students, teams needed to include members from both genders and at least one member from a historically disadvantaged background. Each team was supplied with one PC only and access to a single printer.
Participating Universities were:
• Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
• North-West University
• Rhodes University
• Stellenbosch University
• University of Cape Town
• University of KwaZulu-Natal
• University of Limpopo
• University of Pretoria
• University of the Western Cape
• University of the Witwatersrand
• Walter Sisulu University
The heats were used to select the nine universities that would be invited to the finals. In addition, participating universities used the heats to select one team to represent the university: The teams competed at their own universities under supervision of a proctor from Standard Bank.
This year the Challenge again supported three programming languages: Java, C++ and Python.
The Challenge was judged by four judges: Dr Bruce Merry, Dr Carl Hultquist, Max Rabkin and Peter Waker. Peter Waker is a Fellow of the Computer Society of South Africa and acted as Chief Judge. Dr Bruce Merry, Dr Carl Hultquist and Max Rabkin set the problems.
Final Round: 11 May
The final round was held at the Standard Bank Global Leadership Centre in Morningside. Teams from the 9 highest scoring universities were invited to attend:
• Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
• North-West University
• Rhodes University
• Stellenbosch University
• University of Cape Town
• University of KwaZulu-Natal
• University of Pretoria
• University of the Western Cape
• University of the Witwatersrand
Two teams from Standard Bank also took part, although they did not compete for the prizes. These were:
• SBCIB – made up of local Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Banking employees
• SBPBB – made up of employees from the Standard Bank Personal and Business Banking unit
Participants were given 7 problems to solve: 1, 2a, 2b, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Problem 6 was an “interactive” problem.
All the problems except 2b were given at the start of the 6-hour competition. Problem 2b was issued as soon as a team had submitted 2a successfully.
Teams gained a point for each correct solution when tested against test data. The time to complete a successful outcome on a question was recorded.
A breakdown of the submissions problem by problem shows the following:
Result | 1 | 2a | 2b | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Total |
CORRECT ANSWERS | 11 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 32 | |
WRONG ANSWERS | 1 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 28 |
TIME EXCEEDED | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
ABNORMAL TERMINATION | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
FORMAT ERROR | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
TOTAL | 13 | 23 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 10 | 12 | 69 |
Languages:
Five of the teams used Java, four used Python and two used C++.
A breakdown of the submission by language used shows that of the C++ submissions, 53% were correct, while 42% of the Java submissions and 46% of the Python submissions were correct:
Result | C++ | Java | Python | Total |
CORRECT ANSWERS | 8 | 12 | 12 | 32 |
WRONG ANSWERS | 7 | 13 | 8 | 28 |
TIME EXCEEDED | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
ABNORMAL TERMINATION | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
FORMAT ERROR | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
TOTAL | 15 | 28 | 26 | 69 |
Results
• There were 69 submitted solutions of which 32 were correct – slightly higher proportionally than last year’s 41 out of 90.
• No team managed to solve all the problems.
• Every team managed to solve at least one problem – an improvement over 2010.
• Four teams were not able to submit valid solutions to the interactive question.
• Teams completed the interactive question in the following order:
1. University of Pretoria
2. University of Cape Town
3. Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Bank
4. University of KwaZulu-Natal
5. Rhodes University
6. North-West University
Winners:
The winning teams were:
First: University of Cape Town
Second: Stellenbosch University
Third: North-West University
Both the UCT and SU managed to solve 5 problems, but UCT did so in less time. North-West University managed to solve 4 problems. None of the other teams managed to solve more than three of the problems in the allocated time.