Introduction
Ad HOC Coding Challenge
Welcome to the 'Ad HOC' Coding Challenge, a unique contest designed for those who thrive on solving complex, real-world problems through coding. This event is a collaborative effort between the Honors Academy, Gewis, and the 'Heuristic Algorithms' course at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).
About the Challenge:
In 'Ad HOC', you'll tackle a problem, based on a real-world problem. This type of problem is similar to those discussed in the 'Heuristic Algorithms' course, so the algorithms treated there are quite useful. These challenges are inherently complex, making it nearly impossible to find an efficient and exact solution. Therefore, your goal is to develop an approximate solution that is as close to optimal as possible, while at the same time being able to finish execution before the end of the contest. Success in this challenge depends on creatively exploiting the structure of the datasets or applying heuristic algorithms.
Competition Format:
The problem given during the competition is computational in nature. For each input instance (dataset), the teams will be required to submit a solution (in the form of text file with some output of a computation for example). These solutions will then be verified and graded using a cost function described in the problem statement. Better solutions will have a lower cost, so the closer your solution is to the optimal, the lower the score (all teams start with some arbitrarily high score).
Teams will compete to devise the most effective solutions to the provided datasets. The team that delivers the best results, will be awarded the final prize.
We will provide a skeleton project in Java, that will help you get started with the competition. You are free to use any programming language you like, but you will have to implement the input/output functions yourself.
You are also free to use any publicly available software, tools, IDEs, programming languages, and libraries.
Event Schedule:
Details of the event schedule are available under the 'Schedule' tab.
How to Participate:
Register your team for the competition using the form provided below. Join us for a day of problem-solving, teamwork, creativity and the chance to claim exciting rewards!
