tkh’s blog

Topcoder coding competition

Last night we had a coding competition at school sponsored by topcoder.com. I was able to solve the first problem in 15 minutes, but it took me so long to solve the second problem. The second problem is to find the largest triangle from a set of colored points in 3D space. The triangle must be formed by vertices with the same color or with different colors. The algorithm to find the triangle is very simple because you just need to have three nested for loop in x, y, and z components. To me the problem was finding a formula to find the area of a triangle. I tried using Heron’s formula, but the one I remembered was wrong. I didn’t know I can look up websites during the competition, so I didn’t. Unfortunately the formula was wrong and that was the only flaw in my program. I ended up being the fourth place in the competition. The first place gets an iPod, the second one gets an mp3 player, and the third one gets $50 credit to the university’s account. I was pissed off so much. If I had gotten the formula right, I would have been able to be the third place at least.

In this morning, I got an email from the student who is a liaison for the competition. He said that the person got the second place is not eligible because he is an alum. So I became the third place. I’m still not staisfied with my score, but at least I get a prize.