Computer programming group off to Russia

trevor.kenney — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:14:52 +0000

The recent winners of a spot in a prestigious international computer science and mathematics challenge competition are going to have to brush up on their Russian – and quickly.

A team of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge computer science and physics students, coached by Dr. Howard Cheng, placed second of 49 teams from western Canada and the northwestern United States at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Rocky Mountain competition at the end of October.

The team's success landed three members (Hugh Ramp, Chris Martin and Darcy Best) of the U of L group on the elite roster of competitors at the ICPC World Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 30 to July 4, 2013. It is the first time the U of L has qualified students for the world finals.

Front row (l to r) Hugh Ramp, fourth-year physics, Dr. Howard Cheng, team coach; Back row (l to r) Chris Martin, third-year computer science, Darcy Best, second-year mathematics.

"The team also won a warm-up event two weeks before the regional contest (the Alberta Collegiate Programming Contest) where we took the top spot in the province, and the students have put in a tremendous amount of training into this effort," says Cheng.

The events leading up to, and including, the St. Petersburg events are a gruelling series of problem-solving boot camps, competitions and drills designed to enhance the students' ability to work as a team under relentless pressure, the watchful eyes of the world's best judges and extremely strict working conditions.

"They trained for hours on weekends as well as a few evenings just before the regional contest. This is in addition to the years of practices they have had, including taking a course (CPSC 3200) that teaches many of the topics they had to know for this contest. Top IT employers such as IBM and Google value these contests and commonly test applicants with programming contest puzzles during interviews, so there is definitely a career-related aspect to knowing how these types of puzzles work."

St. Petersburg National Research ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO) hosts the ICPC World Finals. Only 115 of the top teams in the world make it to the final competition.

"This is an outstanding achievement for our students and their coaching and mentoring group," says Dr. Chris Nicol, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. "Howard has done an excellent job of building up the team's strength and developing its real-world experience in mathematics and computer science through these competitions. They have been consistently successful at regional competitions, and that success is now paying off. We wish them well in their future efforts at the world finals in Russia this summer."

At the ACM Rocky Mountain Regional Contest at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta in October, U of L teams placed second, 12th, 28th, and 34th of 49 groups.

The full U of L contingent features: Darcy Best, Chris Martin, Hugh Ramp, Rio Lowry, Chris Thomas, Kim Wikkerink, Mark Hunter, Ian Stewart, Fei Wang, Camara Lerner, Jason Racine and Vince Weiler.

This story first appeared in the December 2012 issue of the Legend. For a look at the entire issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

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.

UNews - Jason Racine

Computer programming group off to Russia

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Programming Team Earns Second Place Finish At Rocky Mountain Regional

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