Only 6 of top 40 in ACM's programming contest from North America

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

------- Original message -------
From: Tim Finin  <finin () cs umbc edu>
Sent: 8/4/'05,  19:34

 From Educause...

   Coding contest shows U.S. students falling behind
   http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5659116.html

   At this year's Association for Computing Machinery
   International Collegiate Programming Contest, the University of
   Illinois's tie for 17th place was the best result for any
   U.S. team, representing the worst performance for
   U.S. institutions in the 29 years of the competition. Many
   observers believe the result is indicative of a variety of
   factors that have resulted in a striking shift in technological
   preeminence away from U.S. schools and companies. As recently
   as 1997, the United States came out on top, when a team from
   Harvey Mudd College won the competition. David Patterson,
   president of the Association for Computing Machinery and a
   computer science professor at the University of California,
   Berkeley, noted, "The U.S.used to dominate these kinds of
   programming Olympics."Others pointed out that applications from
   outside the United States to computer science and other
   technology programs at U.S. graduate schools have dropped
   lately.ZDNet, 7 April 2005

Only the top 40 teams were ranked with, Waterloo placing 4th, UBC
and Illinois tied at 17th, and Caltech, Duke and MIT tied at 29th.
See http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Finals/Standings.html.

My intuition is that the outcome is due more to the enhanced
opportunities and lowered cost of becoming proficient in Computer
Science in the rest of the world than a decline of US Computer
Science.  Of course, whatever the reason, we will have to work
harder to maintain our leading role in Computer Science.  I guess
Tom Friedman would identify this as the flattening of the
Computer Science world.

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