Programming Team Earns Second Place Finish At Rocky Mountain Regional

trevor.kenney — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:55:22 +0000

A 12-person group is split into four groups of three, and has to solve nine complex computer programming problems in a very short time. All the while, they are competing against more than 50 other teams from across North America as part of the Rocky Mountain region of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest.

How did the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge group fare? Very well. Of the four teams in the competition from the U of L, one group took second place and three other teams landed in the middle third of the results – 23rd, 25th, and 29th place overall.

"Students have to apply what they learn in different courses, and some problems require knowledge of techniques or algorithms that are not taught in any course," says team advisor
Dr. Howard Cheng (mathematics and computer science). "These are taught during our regular practice sessions, where the teams spend several hours per week training for this contest."

The competition draws students from large and small colleges and universities throughout Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Eastern Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Mexico. The group received funding from the Faculty of Arts and Science as well as Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures to support the costs for participation.

Cheng says the contest requires logical thinking skills and precise implementation of their ideas.

"If their solution is incorrect for even one test case, it is considered wrong," he says.

The groups had limited time to complete a series of nine problems, which ranged from supposedly simple, to very complex.

"We had to figure out how to write code based on where the letter 't' appeared in a series of words," says Keilan Scholten, a third year mathematics and computer science student. "It seems simple, but we wound up using more than an hour and a half of our time allotment. The first six of our problems were done in just over two hours."

Among the problems, the group successfully created a ranking of teams for a soccer league, figured out the maximum number of climbers a piece of climbing rope can support and worked out a way to determine if packages of certain dimensions were the right size to be mailed.

Team group members included: (Team A) Darcy Best, Keilan Scholten, Hugh Ramp; (Team B) Jeremy Andrijancic, Johnny Boldt, Kim Wikkerink; (Team C) Mark Fischer, Mark Hunter, Fern Leavens; (Team D) Falcon Momot, Jason Racine and Fei Wang. Best (fourth year), Ramp (second year) and Scholten (third year) also finished third in the Alberta Collegiate Programming Contest, held in mid-October as a warm-up to the regional contest.

For a look at the full issue of the November Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Cheng’s group posts best-ever regional result

trevor.kenney — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:24:15 +0000

Dr. Howard Cheng would like nothing better than to beat the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta at the Rocky Mountain Regional Programming Contest. With the group of students he has now, that's a distinct possibility.

Cheng and three groups of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students took part in the Rocky Mountain Regional in October. Two of the groups managed top-seven finishes in the computer programming competition, a best-ever result for the U of L and a harbinger of things to come.

"This is the best group we've had in a while and the strongest students still have a couple more years to go so we hope to only do better in the future," says Cheng.

The group of Darcy Best, Keilan Scholten and Michael Van Ryn led the way with a sixth-place standing, followed by another U of L team consisting of Falcon Momot, David Sessford and Corey Van Tighem, who placed seventh. The trio of Nathan House, Allysa Lumley and Marc Moreau finished 23rd overall in a field off 55 colleges and universities from throughout the Rocky Mountain region of both Canada and the United States.

The top five teams in the annual competition featured a pair of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta entries (first and fifth) as well as the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Saskatchewan (third). ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona grabbed the other two spots but only U of A is headed to the world finals. Cheng has been there once, ironically as a U of A student in 1998, and would relish the opportunity to go back as a coach.

The competitions feature teams of three students trying to solve a series of problems with real-world applications. They are given one computer and turned loose to design programs that will address the problems. Once they think they've found a solution, judges enter data into their created program to determine whether or not it works. If it does not, they are simply told the program is incorrect and can then try and fix it for a resubmission.

"Ultimately, the only way to practice for this is just doing lots and lots of problems, so that's what we do to prepare," Cheng says.

The majority of students he works with are from math and computer science disciplines. Both Best and Scholten are studying math and Van Ryn is in computer science, but Cheng says all manner of students can take part.
"The practice sessions we did here, without them I would have had no idea of what was going on. They help you get used to the approach you should take when looking at a programming problem," says Scholten, a second-year math student.

"The problem solving skills I get out of this will help me anywhere I want to go. Whether I'm trying to do a mathematical proof or work on something in a job later on, the skills I acquire here will definitely come in handy."

Cheng says the contests force students to take theory into practice.

"In a course you are taught a specific algorithm or method to solve problems in an isolated setting, you learn the theory but not necessarily all the ways to apply that theory," he says. "These problems force you to grab your knowledge and figure out what technique best suits the problem and then how to make it applicable, and occasionally you'll have to come up with something you've never seen before."

Students interested in joining Cheng's programming contest teams can contact him at howard.cheng@uleth.ca

UNews - Rocky Mountain region

Programming Team Earns Second Place Finish At Rocky Mountain Regional

Related Topics

Cheng’s group posts best-ever regional result

Related Topics