Wednesday, June 06, 2012

$25K "Algorithm" contest from Google and Nasa

So I first read the title and thought "oh, not another 25K Marathon in which even fifth place barely makes 200 bucks. But it seems it is something different.

The NASA Tournament Lab is excited to announce to the TopCoder community a special weekend algorithm contest to be held Thursday, June 21 to Sunday, June 24, 2012 featuring a $25,000+ prize purse. This unrated contest will challenge the TopCoder community members to generate solutions to an interesting algorithmic problem. We strongly encourage all members interested in SRMs as well as Marathon Match events to participate. Google and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory are supporting this challenge and look forward to interacting with TopCoder community members about their organizations through special chat rooms on Wednesday June 20, 2012. Engineers and scientists from Google and NASA JPL will be available to answer any questions you may have about these leading organizations. Please save the dates! Registration begins on the June 13, 2012 at 13:00 UTC -4 and ends on the June 19, 2012 at 13:00 UTC -4. More details will be available soon as well as a registration reminder.
  • interested in "SRMs and Marathon Match events" - So I am not sure if it is a Marathon.
  • Weekend contest - If it is a Marathon will be a very unusual one with 4 days long.

I am looking forward to more info. Even if it was a Marathon, 4 days sounds like the perfect length. I hope the 25K prize purse translates into a decent chance to translate effort into prize, though.

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