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Battle of the Brains
By Jadell Forman 90
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The four South Central Region contest sites, connected via Internet, were Louisiana State University, Abilene Christian University, Baylor University, and Oklahoma East Central University in Ada, where ORU attended, given its proximity.
ORU computer science professor and team coach Dr. Dave Eland breaks down the Oct. 18 results: "The top ORU team ranked first in the undergraduate division at our site, first in the undergraduate division among all schools from Oklahoma, and second in the undergraduate division for the entire region. They were fifth overall (out of 21 teams) at our site, fourth overall (out of 16 teams) among all schools in Oklahoma, and 13th overall (out of 68 teams) for the entire region. This is an excellent result for this year. In this contest, ORU is going up against the major universities in the region (Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana)." All regional results can be viewed by state, site, level, etc.
For the students representing ORU--Antony Akshay, Alexander Galvez, David Kobilnyk, Jeyan Oorjitham, Jonathan Paugh and Jeremiah Quitto--the value of this experience starts when they enter the competition facility, says Eland. "They have the opportunity to see what the community of their peers looks like."
This competition is the largest of its kind, giving an elite status to collegians who place. "Having this 'feather in their cap' will increase their stature in the eyes of those they meet." According to Eland, this achievement transfers to their witness. "Whenever you increase your stature, you increase the strength of the platform from which you attempt to share your faith."
Additionally, all these feathered caps make a statement about the strength and status of an ORU education and the university's standing in the academic community, says Eland. "This result demonstrates that ORU does not have to make any apologies or excuses for the quality of students that we produce."
The competition sponsored by IBM includes university students from 83 countries on six continents. Via the contest problem set, organizers expose students to technologies being adopted by innovative businesses and organizations.
This year, competitors received nine programming problems to solve--the amount typically solved in a semester, except the contest allowed only 5 hours. ORU's top team solved two problems (the regional winners solved seven). David Kobilnyk (Class of 2010) describes one: "The problem...required the duplication of a stream text editor with some rather unusual rules. Certain letters had special meanings such as to delete all of the previous text, or to swap all preceding letters, et cetera. So, to write anything you'd have to be very careful. It was rather simple to solve but somewhat tedious, and it was easy to overlook a detail and end up with a bug."
The contestants face "real world" problems that require creativity, teamwork and resourcefulness. Kobilnyk explains, "A team works on the problem set together. Only one computer is given for a team." These tight constraints demand collaboration. "One of the problems which we solved, I was responsible for writing the code for. But it was Alex who suggested that that particular problem would be an easy one." Easy?!
Kobilnyk says his ORU course instructors prepared him for this kind of problem-solving. "Dr. [Ken] Preston has stressed the importance of planning before writing code. Dr. Eland has additionally emphasized the design of algorithms to solve particular problems, outside of any specific programming language, often giving students such assignments. I incorporated these components into the challenge. While someone else was using the computer, I began to first formulate a thorough understanding of the problem. Then I began to jot down ideas about solving the problem. Next came successively more detailed algorithms." Lastly came the coding, which according to Kobilnyk, "is the least significant portion of programming."
In addition to the opportunity to tackle problems and meet peers, Kobilnyk noted the career-building aspect of the contest. "The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest...gives us an opportunity to demonstrate competence and thereby to gain greater exposure with possible employers. For example, IBM specifically accepted internship/co-op employment applications from participants; I applied for the summer internship."
And Eland hopes he gets in. "It is hard to predict exactly who IBM will select for their internships, but Davy is certainly an excellent candidate. Hopefully, they will recognize the magnitude of his accomplishments at the contest, and this will help influence them toward accepting him into their program."
The ACM contest will culminate in April '09 in Stockholm, Sweden, where 100 teams will compete in the finals. For a complete schedule of regional contests worldwide, visit http://icpc.baylor.edu/.
