My Constraint Programming Blog

I am happy and proud to announce the First International Lightning Model and Solve Competition which will be held at CP 2013 (The 19th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, September 16-20, 2013, Uppsala, Sweden).

Here is the description of the Competition:

First International Lightning Model and Solve Competition

Organizers: Peter J. Stuckey and Håkan Kjellerstrand [that's me]

In order to crown the world champion optimizers we are organizing the first "Lightning Model and Solve" competition for teams of up to 3 people.

The competition presents 6 satisfaction and optimization problems, with 3-5 instances each, and each team tries to find good solutions to these problems within 2 hours. The team can use any optimization technology they desire for any problem, including solving problems by hand. Problem data is presented as text files containing numbers. Solutions are submitted as text files.

Solutions are ranked first by quality (for optimization problems) and then by time of submission. Each team scores one point for each instance and each other team for which their solution is better. Any correct solution is better than no submission at all.

The competition entry is for teams of up to 3 people. Each team can make use of ONLY ONE laptop, and cannot make use of any computing resources other than the laptop itself (no connecting to your CLUSTER at home). We recommend a team of 3, smaller teams will be merged unless the number of entrants is small.

The main aim of the competition is to have fun, and earn the eternal glory of the title of "best optimizers in the world".

To take part in the competition, you need to be a registered participant of the CP 2013 conference and of course physically present.

More information will be added closer to the conference.