The MATLAB Programming Contest: Gene Sequencing

Enter the MATLAB Programming Contest and win fabulous prizes! Submit your M-code function to the contest and it will be automatically tested, scored, and ranked against the best efforts of MATLAB users around the world. The contest runs from Monday, March 20 to Friday, March 24 at 5 PM, EST.

This is the third MATLAB online programming contest. The first two remain archived and can be viewed at any time. Take a peek at what happened in previous contests.

Contest 1: The Record Company Contest (1455 entries)

Winner: Taylor Sherman with ScottWinsIfThisDoes
Main, Analysis

Contest 2: The Mars Surveyor Contest (1647 entries)

Winner: Paulo Uribe with NoSoup4U!1
Main, Analysis

A previous contestant says:

I can't tell you how much I enjoy the MATLAB contests. I know it takes time out of your busy schedules to conduct this activity, but I believe it is a great way to promote the product and build user loyalty.
-- Pat Cantey.

The Challenge

You are working on the human genome project, and your team is closing in on the last few base pairs needed to complete the project and go on to certain glory and perhaps a Nobel prize. Researchers on your team have managed to obtain several sets of segments needed to sequence the last remaining gene, but your help is urgently needed to lead the effort. For each set of segments given, you must devise an algorithm to sequence them in the correct order. If you succeed, your name will appear in all biology textbooks from this day forward. If you are too slow, someone else will take your place. Good luck.

How to play

For a complete problem statement and examples, see the Contest Rules. Take a look at the current entries and rankings. Any entry can be viewed, edited, and resubmitted by other contestants. See a loop that can be vectorized? Fix it and submit it again. Look at some entries to get ideas and learn some new MATLAB coding techniques. Submit your own entry through our web site. Your entry will be automatically scored against our test suite and ranked against other entries.

How it works

The MATLAB contest architecture is built around the MATLAB Web Server, a MathWorks product that lets MATLAB programmers develop Web-deployable applications from standard MATLAB components.

Deadline

The contest will close to new submissions at 5:00 PM EST (22:00 GMT) on Friday, March 24. The winner of the contest overall will be determined after all entries remaining in the queue have been processed.

Prizes

The author of the final winning entry in the contest will receive their choice of:

A pair of high-quality blue jeans and a MathWorks jeans shirt
Introduction to Computational Molecular Biology by Joao Carlos Setubal
Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences: Computer Science and Computational Biology by Dan Gusfield

A previous contestant says:

Thanks for the chance to participate in a great contest! It was a lot of fun, and very interesting to see all the different ideas that people came up with!
-- Murray Lowery-Simpson.

Feedback

Please send any comments or questions to the MATLAB Programming Contest.

Contest Announcement E-mail List

Don't miss hearing about the next MATLAB Contest. Sign up for our MATLAB Contest mailing list. Send an e-mail to lists@mathworks.com with subscribe contest-announce in the body.

Contest List

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