Blum Jeremy J
Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, Harrisburg, PA USA.
Discov Educ. 2023;2(1):11. doi: 10.1007/s44217-023-00034-1. Epub 2023 Mar 21.
A wide range of benefits have been posited from participation in competitive programming contests. However, an analysis of participation in north American regional contests in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) shows that participation in these contests is sharply declining, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, prior to the pandemic, while the number of teams participating in regional contests was increasing, the number of institutions sending teams to these contests was declining. We find several statistically significant correlations that may underscore structural reasons for this trend. Consistent participation in contests and the number of teams per institution sent to a contest both are correlated with likely participation in future contests. On the other end of the spectrum, institutions sending a team to a contest for the first time in 3 years were much less likely to return in the next year. For this category of teams, if a team is unable to solve any problems in the contest, the institution is significantly less likely to send a team in the next year. Many of these contests have very challenging problem sets, and consequently, have many teams that fail to solve any problems. This result suggests that structuring the problem sets to increase the likelihood that most teams successfully complete problems would broaden participation in these contests.
参与竞争性编程竞赛被认为有诸多好处。然而，对北美地区国际大学生程序设计竞赛（ICPC）参赛情况的分析表明，这些竞赛的参赛人数正在急剧下降，这与新冠疫情同时发生。此外，在疫情之前，虽然参加地区竞赛的队伍数量在增加，但派出队伍参加这些竞赛的机构数量却在下降。我们发现了几个具有统计学意义的相关性，这些相关性可能突出了这一趋势的结构性原因。持续参与竞赛以及每个机构派往竞赛的队伍数量都与未来可能参与竞赛的情况相关。另一方面，在三年内首次派出队伍参加竞赛的机构，次年再次参赛的可能性要小得多。对于这类队伍，如果一支队伍在竞赛中未能解决任何问题，该机构次年派出队伍的可能性就会显著降低。许多这类竞赛的问题集极具挑战性，因此有许多队伍未能解决任何问题。这一结果表明，调整问题集的结构，以增加大多数队伍成功解决问题的可能性，将扩大这些竞赛的参与度。
