'Battle of the Brains' Boggles Minds
By: Catherine Gravelle, Features Editor
Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
Nine students wracked their brains for five hours trying to solve several computer programming problems.
The Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest was held Saturday, Nov. 3 at Abilene Christian University.
"We didn't get any problems solved, just super close on about five of them," junior Seth Stell said. "The problem with competitions is that they include everything about languages which, unless you're a master or just really like to program, you don't know everything, so it is really hard to solve something if you don't know an easy way to do it."
Although the team did not win the "battle of the brains," Dr. Mark Motl, ASU computer science professor said this year was definitely a learning experience for the members. Motl and Dr. Tim Roden, head of the Computer Science Department, were the faculty sponsors for the event.
The students that comprised the team for the 32nd annual competition were Thomas Behrens, Seth Clayson, Clint Corases, Alan Gemoets, Andrew Mahler, Roxxie Mendoza, Matt Naul, Brendan Price and Seth Stall.
"It was a building year, the team members are young," Motl said.
A majority of the students had never been to the ICPC before, and Motl said that may have been one of the factors that affected their performance.
"It's really hard to study for these things because problems are so different and there are many ways to solve a problem," Stell said.
Stell said that the overall experience was great, but that the problems the competition dealt with were hard, and felt like rocket science.
The competition is set up so that the students are given a collection of problems, and given five hours to solve them. The object is to finish in the shortest time possible.
As far as preparing for the contest, Motl said things were rushed, because the team did not even know if it would be attending the competition until about a month before it happened.
"Many of us went in without much prep work at all," junior A.J. Gemoets said. "We used the knowledge we had from classes we had taken here at the university. Part of that was due to the fact that we were not sure what we were going to be dealing with."
Motl made students aware of old problems from past competitions in order to help the team members get some preparation.
While this year may not have been successful for the team, the members are looking forward to next year, since they are all now familiar with the format of the competition.
"We went in this year not knowing what to expect and did about as well as we could have hoped to do based on that," Gemoets said. "Next year we will know what to do to prepare for this event ahead of time and will have a better idea of how to go about solving the problems given."
The Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest was held Saturday, Nov. 3 at Abilene Christian University.
"We didn't get any problems solved, just super close on about five of them," junior Seth Stell said. "The problem with competitions is that they include everything about languages which, unless you're a master or just really like to program, you don't know everything, so it is really hard to solve something if you don't know an easy way to do it."
Although the team did not win the "battle of the brains," Dr. Mark Motl, ASU computer science professor said this year was definitely a learning experience for the members. Motl and Dr. Tim Roden, head of the Computer Science Department, were the faculty sponsors for the event.
The students that comprised the team for the 32nd annual competition were Thomas Behrens, Seth Clayson, Clint Corases, Alan Gemoets, Andrew Mahler, Roxxie Mendoza, Matt Naul, Brendan Price and Seth Stall.
"It was a building year, the team members are young," Motl said.
A majority of the students had never been to the ICPC before, and Motl said that may have been one of the factors that affected their performance.
"It's really hard to study for these things because problems are so different and there are many ways to solve a problem," Stell said.
Stell said that the overall experience was great, but that the problems the competition dealt with were hard, and felt like rocket science.
The competition is set up so that the students are given a collection of problems, and given five hours to solve them. The object is to finish in the shortest time possible.
As far as preparing for the contest, Motl said things were rushed, because the team did not even know if it would be attending the competition until about a month before it happened.
"Many of us went in without much prep work at all," junior A.J. Gemoets said. "We used the knowledge we had from classes we had taken here at the university. Part of that was due to the fact that we were not sure what we were going to be dealing with."
Motl made students aware of old problems from past competitions in order to help the team members get some preparation.
While this year may not have been successful for the team, the members are looking forward to next year, since they are all now familiar with the format of the competition.
"We went in this year not knowing what to expect and did about as well as we could have hoped to do based on that," Gemoets said. "Next year we will know what to do to prepare for this event ahead of time and will have a better idea of how to go about solving the problems given."
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