AlgoBOWL: A Competition-Based Group Project for Algorithms Courses

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Dinesh P. Mehta, Jack Rosenthal

Published: 2019, Last Modified: 06 Aug 2024ITiCSE 2019EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: We describe a competition-based group project that has been in use in the Algorithms course at our institution each semester since 2012. The class is given an NP-hard optimization problem; each student group is asked to create a heuristic algorithm for the problem. The heuristic is run on a set of inputs (with each group supplying one input) and groups are ranked based on their aggregate performance within a specified time period. This paper describes our experience with this approach, including challenges, and our recent efforts to address these through a web application used to facilitate the competition.