Race Details

Date: Friday, April 12, 2024
Time: Race starts promptly at 4:30pm
Race-Day Registration: 4:00-4:20pm
Location: CMU Track
 

Awards

Every runner will receive a Random Distance Run T-SHIRT (planned to be handed out at the race day this year.) Additional prizes will be awarded to the top male and female finishers, the top student-advisor pair, the random finisher (the person who finishes in the position specified by the two dice rolls), and each person who correctly predicts the two dice rolls.

 

Registration

To register for the race, fill out this form . The registration fee of $15 will be used to cover the cost of the race t-shirts, water, & prizes. Members from the CMU School of Computer Science and their friends are invited to participate. We are going to cap registrations at 90, so you might not be able to register on the race day. To guarantee a spot, register now!

 

How long will the race be?

Nobody knows! All we can say is that it will be somewhere between 1/2 mile and 3 miles (between 2 and 12 laps of the track). The exact number of laps will be specified by the sum of two ENORMOUS FUZZY DICE rolls - one occurring just before the start of the race, and one just before the first runner finishes the number of laps specified by the first dice roll. 

 

Is there any history to the race?

Why yes! The Random Structures and Algorithms conference has held a Random Distance Run at its gatherings since 1983, with Paul Erdös rolling the dice at the first race. It was started at CMU by Adam Wierman and Rob Reeder in 2003. It was organized by Gaurav Veda from 2007-2010. Over the years, the RDR has been written about in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Tartan and even filmed for a special on cmuTV.

 

Has anyone done a statistical analysis?

Jonathan Clark, on his own initiative, produced graphs to help you in your own interpretation of the randomness. You have the data, and even a visualization, come up with your own conclusions! Oh, and please join us as we take our yearly sample from this delightful distribution in the hope that our sample mean (currently 1.70mi, for those of you keeping score at home) will reach the golden expected value of 1.75mi!

 

That's a cool idea, but I'm not a runner...

Then come help us out!  If you are interested in helping on this years race, we will definitely need volunteers.  If you are interested, please sign up in this Google Form. Volunteers will get a free T-shirt as well!

 

RDR Winners

Year

Randomness
Provider
Male Winner Female Winner Student/Advisor Winner Race Length
2024 Minchen Li Arthur Dzieniszewski
(11:39)
Clara Na
(16:26)
Siyuan Chen & Phil Gibbons 2.25 miles
2023 Elaine Shi Tolson Bell
(3:34)
Clara Na
(4:45)
Ashwin Khadke & Hartmut Geyer 0.75 miles
2022 Matt O'Toole Jeff Bigham
(9:10)
Nicole Feng
(10:15)
Jason Wu & Jeff Bigham 1.75 miles
2019 Danny Sleator Jack Kosaian
(11:43)
Isabella Fons
(15:14)
- 2.25 miles
2018 Jim McCann Arthur Dzieniszewski
(7:30)
Yufei Ye
(10:44)
Ziv Bar-Joseph & Amir Alavi 1.50 miles
2017 Keenan Crane Jeff Bigham
(6:33)
Serena Wang
(9:42)
Collin Eubanks & Rupert Croft 1.25 miles
2016 Bernhard Haeupler Ivan Ruchkin
(7:57)
Roykrong Sukkerd
(11:03)
Anhong Guo & Jeff Bigham 1.5 miles
2015 Mahadev Satyanarayanan Paul Welle
(10:39)
Evelyn Yarzebinski
(18:02)
Hao Wang & Carl Kingsford 2
miles
2014 Andy Pavlo Paul Welle
(10:21)
Jamie Morgenstern
(12:19)
Walter Lasecki & Jeff Bigham 2
miles
2013 Ariel Procaccia Ivan Ruchkin
(7:55)
Jamie Morgenstern
(9:00)
Jen King, Shervin Javdani & Siddhartha Srinivasa 1.5
miles
2012 Kayvon Fatahalian James Faeder (3:37) Jamie Morgenstern
(4:12)
Saket Navlakha, Hai-Son Le & Ziv Bar-Joseph 0.75 miles
2011 Anupam Gupta Stephen Rose (2:21) Jamie Morgenstern
(2:39)
Ben Blum & Dave Andersen 0.5 miles
2010 Scott Fahlman Karl Naden
(11:19)
Jamie Morgenstern
(13:00)
Karl Naden & Jonathan Aldrich 2
miles
2009 Lenore Blum Chris Salvarani
(15:59)
Catherine Sidey
(20:02)
Zelealem Yilma & Oleg Pikhurko 2.75
miles
2008 Peter Lee Jake Krohn
(9:56)
Diane Mattingly
(13:11)
Jason Enrst & Ziv Bar-Joseph 1.75
miles
2007 Jeannette Wing Dario Donatelli
(6:06)
Sandra Ma
(8:26)
Dan Wendlandt & Adrian Perrig 1.25
miles
2006 Randy Bryant Arjunan Rajeswaran
(15:16)
Jacqueline MacDonald
(18:10)
Dan Wendlandt & Dave Anderson 2.75
miles
2005 Frank Pfenning Jake Krohn
(12:47)
Mary Koes
(16:15)
Jonathon McCune & Adrian Perrig 2.25
miles
2004 Steven Rudich Steve Back
(10:54)
Amy Betz
(14:53)
Jonathon McCune & Adrian Perrig 2
 miles
2003 Manuel Blum Ethan Coffey
(7:28)
Kelly Chin
(8:49)
Nidhi Kalra & Tony Stent 1.5
 miles


RDR Scrapbook

 


RDR T-shirts