The SBITC is a competition for teams of undergraduate and honours students now in its tenth year. The teams receive a number of problems and have to write the programs to solve the problems.  They do not know the data that will be used to test their programs and incur heavy penalties for submitting incorrect answers.

Introduction

The SBITC is a competition for teams of undergraduate and honours students now in its tenth year. The teams receive a number of problems and have to write the programs to solve the problems.  They do not know the data that will be used to test their programs and incur heavy penalties for submitting incorrect answers.

The Heats are run at universities and the Finals take place at the Standard Bank headquarters in Gauteng.

This year the team of judges was more representative of different years than ever. All four judges had taken part in the Challenge before.  Schalk-Willem Kruger was the backbone of the team from the North-West University for many years while Graham Manuell is a past member of the UCT team.  Dr Bruce Merry and Jaco Cronje had been participants in the very first SBITC.

For 2015 the rules were changed so that teams of up to three no longer needed to include a participant of both genders. Teams of four still needed to have members from both genders.

Heats

 Eleven universities entered. Some universities entered a large number of teams, not all of them actually took part.

Results

Finals

Introduction

To give lecturers and students less time away from campus (at the request of lecturers!) the contestants were flown in on Sunday 23 August. The competition itself took part on Monday 24 August with the Awards Function the same evening.

Competition

For the second time the Finals were held at the new “green” Standard Bank HQ in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

The all glass and stainless steel building has marvelous views over the Johannesburg suburbs, and yet created an atmosphere conductive to high-tech thinking.

One of the problems created by shifting the venue was that the judges’ room was at the end of a semi-circle of competitors’ rooms, necessitating a long walk – or run – for the furthest team. The rooms were therefore allocated by means of a double-blind random draw.  Despite this, two teams found themselves in the same position as in 2014 – far from the judges. By happy coincidence the team that was the furthest from the judges was the team that won – for the second year running.

It is extremely encouraging that no less than three Standard Bank staff teams took part. This increase can be attributed to staff member Melany Barnes who participated in past Challenges.

The Standard Bank staff teams were: Standard Bank Blue, Standard Bank White and Standard Bank Mobile

It has become a tradition to introduce a surprise for every Final. For 2015 there were two surprises. The first surprise was that the first team to solve problem 3 would get a time bonus of one hour.  The second surprise was that there were two questions (1 and 6) where participants had to solve part A before getting part B.

Awards Function

The theme for 2015 was “Chicago in the thirties”. For most the evening ended at eleven. For some. a bit later.

Results

First Place University of Cape Town, Team:  This was Easier, Team members:  Kyle Levin, Ashraf Moolla and Robert Spencer

Questions answered:  6 out of 9 questions, with a bonus for winning the interactive game.

Prizes:  R170,000 for the Computer Science Department sponsored by CIB IT

A Venue 11 PR0 tablet 5130 for each of the students; sponsored by DELL

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Second Place University of the Witwatersrand, Team: ASync Coms Kru, Team members: Craig Bester, David Kroukamp and Paul Osei

Questions answered:  5 out of 9 questions

 Prizes:   R20,000 for the Computer Science Department sponsored by CIB IT

A Venue 8 tablet 3830 for each of the students; sponsored by DELL

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Third Place Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Team: Ipsum Lorem, Team members:     James de Klerk, Michael McQuirk, Gonisha Sadanand and Simon Urban

Questions answered: 4 out of 9 questions

Prizes:      R10,000 for the Computer Science Department sponsored by CIB IT

A Professional P2414H monitor for each of the students; sponsored by DELL

Runners-up (in alphabetical order)

North West University Team

Rhodes University Team

Standard Bank Blue Team

Standard Bank Mobile Team

Standard Bank White Team

Stellenbosch University Team

University of KwaZulu-Natal Team

University of Pretoria Team

University of the Western Cape Team

The number 2, 3, 4 and 5 teams all solved 4 problems. When this happens the winning team is chosen on time. The timing is complicated because there is a penalty every time a team submits an incorrect solution.

Is there any significance in the fact that the top two teams had only three members each?

Complete Results

Some facts and stats

Nine university teams and three Standard Bank teams participated in the finals. A total of 94 submissions were made.

Languages

Different teams used different languages as their primary language (primary language: the team made most of their submissions in that language):

Three teams used more than one language.

Number of submissions per language:

No submission was made in Python 3.x.

A breakdown of the submission by language used shows that of the Python submissions, 13% were correct, while 28% of the Java submissions and 100% of the C++ submissions were correct.

Submission Results

 Breakdown of the submission results by problem:

* The teams were allowed to resubmit their solution for the interactive problem.

Number of teams that solved each problem:

• No team managed to solve all the problems.
• Every team managed to solve at least one problem.
• One team managed to solve problem 1a in 8 minutes.

Questions

For questions from the Finals see Past Papers.

2016

 Provisional Dates:            

Heats  Saturday 14 May

Finals  Monday 29 August