As someone has pointed out, very similar problems and a lot of solutions 
are at mathworks site. Therefore I am making the competition more 
difficult. The changed problem set is below (only rules and scoring is 
changed)


While you are contemplating the results of your projects allocations, 
you may like to try this MATLAB contest. It is optional but recommended 
for people who like programming. Entries should reach ketanr@ by 22nd 
May 2400 hrs.(Penalty of 10 point per hour you are late, bonus of 10 
point per hour you are early, according to my system clock).


**********************On Popular Demand*********************
Problems : Worth 5000 points . The best entry will get a chocolate from me.

1. (worth 2000) Through two distinct points, there is a unique straight 
line, through every three distinct points there is a unique parabola 
(2nd degree polynomial). Through any n+1 distinct points there is a 
unique nth degree polynomial. Write a program which takes two 
(n+1)-length vectors as input (the x and y coordinates that is) and 
plots a graph that shows the input points by '+' and the nth degree 
polynomial drawn over it. The program should also output the 
coefficients of the nth degree polynomial. Make the code readable.
Bonus (worth 100) make your function operate like interp1 function, that 
is something like
function Y = interpp(x,y,X)
where x and y contain the x and y coordinates of the points. Y is the 
vector of values of the polynomial calculated at points contained in 
vector X.

2. (worth 100) Given vectors a and b of non-negative integers, create a 
vector c that contains b(1) copies of a(1), b(2) copies of a(2), and so 
on. Assume no two elements of a are identical. As an additional 
condition, no two identical values can appear next to each other in the 
answer c. So when

a = [ 1  2  3 ]
b = [ 2  1  3 ]

an answer (of many that are possible), is

c = [ 3    1     3     2     3    1]

Bonus (worth 1400) Do the above problem in less than 60 characters 
(characters including +,-,=,[ etc but not including space, semicolon, 
tab and enter).

3. (worth 100) Given the variable a, find the longest palindromic 
subsequence b. a is char array row vector of lower case letters. So when

a = 'xgafagyy';

you should return

b = 'gafag';

In case there is more than one palindrome of equal length, find the 
palindrome that occurs last in a.

Bonus (worth 1300) Do the above problem in less than 60 characters 
(characters including +,-,=,[ etc but not including space, semicolon, 
tab and enter).