On Friday November 20, 2009 ACM will be traveling to a local 4th grade class to teach them about what Computer Science is.

We will be meeting at UM-D at 9:30, probably around the ACM office, and be leaving for the school at 11:30. We will be back at UM-D approximately 2 hours later.

If you are interested in participating in this shoot Luke Duncan an email at L@lukejduncan.com.

Thanks!

Brad

Two teams participated in the ACM Programming Competition on Saturday October 31, 2009. Our team Bits Don’t Byte solved two problems and placed 6th at the site and won backpacks with ACM logos on them.

Our team Water Who had the best team name and also solved two problems.

The teams placed 31st and 43rd in our region out of 113 teams.

Check out pictures from the site here!

Brad

The RPC is the first round of team-based programming contests for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC). This year, our RPC will happen on October 31 at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus. Each year we send two teams of three people to compete for a chance at glory* - and that’s where you come in!

We are holding programming practices every Friday at noon in CIS 139. Each week we pick a different programming problem and attempt to solve it. Usually by the time we have a basic algorithm figured out our minds start to get a little fuzzy, so we refocus them with the help of some FREE PIZZA.

If YOU want to see about joining a team, test your wits, or just hang out and eat pizza, stop by Friday at noon in CIS 139!

*To get an idea of how our teams have done in the past, visit our RPC results page.

Below, Denis discusses his first experience at a Top Coder competition. 

“So .. wow ! 

I have a multitude of feelings about this contest (TopCoder), and I’ve only started competing 2 hours ago !

First, some background — I’ve been involved with ACM regional contests since 2004! Now, I see that all the time I’ve spend practicing for ACM is trumped by doing TopCoder contests! For ACM I used to solve problems from previous ACM’s contests, but TopCoder times you and lets you really butt heads with your peers and lets you do so better than ACM contest — at TopCoder you can see other contestants’ code!! (after the contest is over, of course!) 

I feel that had I practiced with TopCoder, besides getting better on TopCoder, I’d do better on ACM and other contests in general! 

Seeing other contestant’s code is AWESOME !! This was always a mystery for me at ACM contests. I managed to peek at Waterloo’s code at an ACM contest and it was the top of the tops for me. TopCoder makes looking at other contestant’s code routine.

So, my impressions of the contest at TC (TopCoder) as coming from ACM regionals background:
* First, I was afraid, very afraid to compete. Ok, I was not afraid, I was hesitant. Luke, thanks for pulling me out and having me compete. Here’s a task for you: kidnap people and have them compete at TopCoder as their way to get back home. I was hesitant because I did not want to break my ACM regional mode, but I am happy it’s broken now!
* Being used to ACM contests, I did not know how to submit problems for TC contest. Turns out you need to write a class and use exact methods provided to you. Also, there should be no main() function when you submit. This is just a contest set up slightly differently than ACM. ”

Tony worked and compiled the 250 point problem.  Since he didn’t officially compete he wasn’t ranked.

Luke submitted the 250 point problem, compiled the second problem, and successfully challenged 1 problem.  Unfortunately Luke’s first problem didn’t pass the system testing.  Luke finished 15th out of 20 in his division 1 competition room.

The big lesson learned today was to read the problem statement carefully.  The 250-point problem was easy, if you read it correctly.  The problem is as follows:

Once upon a time, there was a kingdom where math was always a big problem. When the post of the royal treasurer needed to be filled, applicants were presented with the following problem:  “We have two arrays of integers, A and B. A and B each contain exactly N elements. Let’s define a function S over A and B:

S = A0*B0 + … + AN-1*BN-1

Rearrange the numbers in A in such a way that the value of S is as small as possible. You are not allowed to rearrange the numbers in B.”  The problem writers need a program to check the correctness of the applicants’ answers. Given vector <int>s A and B, return the smallest possible value for S.

Note the statement: “You are not allowed to rearrange the numbers in B.”  This DOES NOT mean that the algorithm cannot rearrange the numbers in B.  It simply means that the citizens whom the law applies to cannot.  Understanding that is the difference between spending 20 minutes and spending 2 minutes on the problem.

Once the official Problem Set & Analysis is uploaded to TopCoder a link will be added to the post.

The agenda for this meeting includes:

• Bringing MPCon back to Dearborn
• An ACM Ted conference
• TopCoder competitions
• Starting up an ACM Test Bank
• The need for on-air personalities for a WUMD radio show
• The upcoming programming competition

Whatever YOU want to see the ACM do for you

So we hope to see you there! Email me if you have any questions.

Upcoming Events:

• January 21, tomorrow, join ACM President Anthony Wesley and Treasurer Luke Duncan in a Top Coder competition. (click here for more information)
• February 11th is the date of the ACM’s second Programming Competition (click here for more information). Snacks and instructions start at 5pm in lab CIS 139, with the contest to follow at 6pm.
• Remember, if you plan on submitting a program for the High School Programming Competition, all submissions are due in to Dr. Elenbogen by February 28th.

UMD Programming Competition:
We are ready to put on the competition this evening. Fifteen people have signed up, and eleven of them have responded to the most recent email. Dennis has picked up trophies for first, second, and third places. Currently, the competition is about $30 over budget.

We discussed the next event briefly. This is something that we desire to do each semester; perhaps next semester’s could take place in February. One idea for next year’s prizes, something functional (like flash drives?) instead of trophies?

Game Day:
Game day was a huge success, we added many names to the email list and picked up a few new memberships.This is definitely something we want to repeat next semester near the end as another “study break”. There was some discussion of including a LAN party component or the game club in the next iteration. We should set a date soon and get this on the various event calendars.

Conference:
The notion of a trip to a regional conference for ACM members was discussed. This was something that has not happened in a long time, and there is definite interest in starting this back up. The new officers will have to discuss the specifics, so this will be tabled until the next meeting in January.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service:
On Martin Luther King Day (January 19, 2009), will coordinate in service projects all over the Metro area. ACM is getting together in a group to take part. If you wish to join us, register on the web (http://www.umd.umich.edu/mlk) and choose “Associate for Computing Machinery” for the group name. Remember, no matter how big or small, you can make a difference in a person’s life.

Registration for the Day of Service ends on December 19^th, and space is limited so we encourage you to register as soon as possible.  If you have any questions regarding the Day of Service, you may contact Jon Larson, Student Activities Supervisor, at jonalars@umd.umich.edu or via telephone at 313-593-5667.

Brochures:
The open source brochures seem to be a huge hit, and definitely have been getting passed around. We should create more brochures, so if anyone has ideas, email them to acm@engin.umd.umich.edu or bring them to the next meeting. Additionally, Cardi is going to check into a possible monthly column on the Michigan Journal.

T-Shirts:
Still no ideas on a design, so tabled until the next meeting.

Resume Workshop:
We would like to put on a resume writing workshop. Cardi is going to try to get in contact with his guest speaker and make the necessary arrangements. He will report back to us one way or another.

Next Meeting:
The new officers will have to establish a meeting time for next semester. Tentative date is Monday, January 12 in the afternoon.

Winter 2009 Officers:
Congratulations to the new officers who will serve for the Winter 2009 semester, and thank you to the officers that served this last semester. Great job, guys!

• President: Anthony Wesley
• Vice President: Trevor Tabaka
• Treasurer: Luke Duncan
• Secretary: Jeremy Lance

The ACM wishes everyone a safe and happy break, and looks forward to seeing everyone in January! Feedback should be sent to acm@engin.umd.umich.edu.

Final Report

December 3, 2008

The University of Michigan-Dearborn Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery Programming Contest was held on Wednesday, December 3, 2008.  We had 14 students participate.  The contest was held in the CIS Building on the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus from 5:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

1. Version 8.7 of the PC^2 Contest Control System was used to run the contest.  There were no technical problems and the actual contest went very smooth.  The problems discovered during the practice competition were fixed before the start of the actual contest.

2. The contest started at 18:07:21 and ended at 21:07:22 for a duration of 3 hours.

3. The contest consisted of 5 problems with 9 students solving at least one problem.

4. The maximum number of problems solved was 4 problems.

Final Standings

Rank	Name	A	B	C	D	E	Solved	Penalty
		marble	blue	orange	green	yellow
1	David Lawrenchuk	1/133	2/29	1/39	1/92	2/–	4	313
2	Dmitriy Ansolis		1/24	1/41	1/163		3	228
3	Jason Eaton	1/71	2/129	1/101			3	321
4	Cale Colony		2/19	12/166	4/126		3	611
5	Randy Foster		1/33	2/–			1	33
6	Jeremy White		1/37		3/–		1	37
7	Jon Smereka		4/72	7/–			1	132
8	Chaz Tinskey	1/–	2/134	2/–			1	154
9	Gierad Laput		2/168	1/–		4/–	1	188
10	Anthony Wesley						0	0
10	Brian McClure		3/–				0	0
10	John Papke			5/–			0	0
10	Tom Kowalski		2/–				0	0
10	Tony Tahmouch			1/–			0	0

Number of correct and incorrect solutions by problem

Problem	Total	Correct	Incorrect	% Correct
A. Short on Cheese	3	2	1	66.66%
B. Pass or Feil	22	9	13	40.90%
C. Stuck In Traffic	33	4	29	12.12%
D. Wordy Calculator	9	3	6	33.33%
E. Think Inside The Box	6	0	6	0.00%
TOTALS	73	18	55	24.65%

Problem Sets and Judges’ Solutions

Actual problem set (pdf)

Problem	Actual Input	Expected Output	Judges’ Solution
A	A.in.txt	A.out.txt	C++ Another C++
B	B.in.txt	B.out.txt	C++ Another C++
C	C.in.txt	C.out.txt	C++ Another C++
D	D.in.txt	D.out.txt	C++
E	E.in.txt	E.out.txt	C++ Another C++

Many thanks to Dennis Matveyev, Scott Hoffman, Pablo Garcia, Cardi DeMonaco Jr., Jer Lance, Vince Shaw, Tony Wesley, and Louis McHugh for all of their hard work and effort in making the first programming contest a huge success!

Game Day

The ACM sponsored Game Day was held yesterday (Tuesday, November 18, 2008), in Kochoff Hall in the University Center. More than two hundred people attended the event, which ran from 11:00 a. m. until 5:00 p.m. ACM provided snacks and drinks, and several people brought in consoles and games. We would like to extend many thanks to Cardi DeMonaco, Vince Shaw, Tony Wesley, Trevor Tabaka, Pablo Garcia, and the Game Club for letting us use their systems. We look forward to making this a recurring event.

Recap on Regional Programming Competition

Game Day

The teams from the University of Michigan-Dearborn placed 50^th and 81^st place out of 125 teams in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition held in Ann Arbor on November 1. Congratulations to the team members Garegin Avagyan, Cale Colony, Luke Duncan, Andrew Hagen, Scott Hoffman, Trevor Tabaka, assistant (actual coach in all but title) coach Dennis Matveyev and coach Professor Elenbogen.

Visit acm.ashland.edu for the actual problems from the contest to try on your own.

UMD Programming Competition on December 3

Join us for the fun and for the challenge of a real programming contest conducted at school for our own students. The purpose of this contest is to start up a contest tradition at UMD, to have fun, to experience the challenges that programming contests bring.

We are aiming the contest towards students who’ve taken CIS 150, 200 or above, so the difficulty should be relatively straightforward. Nevertheless it’s a contest, so expect to be challenged!

The contest is on December 3rd in lab CIS 139. Tentative schedule:
5pm – snacks, practice and demonstration sessions, Q&A session
6pm – real contest begins
9pm – contest ends, food is given out
9:30pm – winners are announced.

The contest will be run by the rules of established ACM regional contests with some modifications. That is, there are 5 problems to be solved in a 3 hours period. You can use C, C++ or Java. Problems are judged automatically by comparing the judge’s answers to the answers given by your program. They have to match exactly character by character to be counted as a solution. You will not be judged on the written style of your program or any comments. The only thing that will matter for the contest is if your program gives the right answers and if it works fast enough for all the test cases. The judges want to have everybody solve at least one problem but have nobody solve all 5 problems.

Prizes are: $50 first place, $30 second place and $20 third place. There will also be other non-monetary prizes and honorable mentions. While the contest is serious in its core, we intend to make it a fun event with fun and interesting problems to solve.

If you are interested in attending the event, but do not want to participate in the programming competition, we have many other things you can help with. Please contact Dennis Matveyev at dennismv@umd.umich.edu or Scott Hoffman at sehoffma@umd.umich.edu if you want to help!

Engineering Organizations Council update

Pablo attended the first meeting of the Engineering Organizations Council that was held on November 13. This new council is composed of the officers of the various engineering organizations on campus. The dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science would like better coordination between engineering organizations. The EOC will publish monthly calendars listing all the engineering-related events, as well as provide a TV in the ELB and/or UC for announcements. We will send a representative to the next meeting on December 4.

Elections for next semester

For the winter 2009 semester, Treasurer and Secretary positions will be available. If you are interested in running for one of these positions, please contact Cardi DeMonaco at cdemonac@umd.umich.edu or 586.744.3864 as soon as possible. The deadline for declaring your intention to run is December 1.

We will hold elections for these positions at the next regular meeting on December 3.

New brochures

We have completed the “Free Software Guide for College Students” brochure and passed out copies at the Game Day event. We still have a lot of copies left and will work on distributing them around campus.

We discussed ideas for other brochures, including how to check multiple email accounts with one application, and tips for optimizing your Windows installation. We also discussed the option of creating a Help section on ACM website to go along with the brochures.

T-shirts (see if any new people have ideas)

Since nobody has submitted any ideas for ACM t-shirts, we talked about what would persuade people to buy an ACM t-shirt and whether we should choose quantity over quality or quality over quantity.

Miscellaneous

Pablo reported that the chapter has approximately $1200 in its account, in addition to the $1500 allocated by the SOAC each year.

Dr. Elenbogen announced that ACM will sponsor a contest for UM-D students to submit problems for the CECS High School Programming Competition. First prize $50, second place $25. You can submit problems to Dr. Elenbogen from now until March 1.

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. in the CIS Building conference room.

Greetings, fellow ACM members.  We have a PROGRAMMING CONTEST sponsored by ACM and UPE that will challenge YOU !

JOIN us for the fun and for the challenge of a real programming contest conducted at our own dear school of University of Michigan-Dearborn for our own dear students.  The purpose of this contest is to start up a contest tradition at UMD, to have fun, to experience the challenges that programming contests bring.

We are aiming the contest towards students who’ve taken CIS 150, 200 or above, so the difficulty should be relatively straightforward.  Nevertheless it’s a contest, so expect to be challenged!

The contest is on December 3rd in lab CIS 139.  Tentative schedule:

• 5pm – snacks, practice and demonstration sessions, Q&A session
• 6pm – real contest begins
• 9pm – contest ends, food is given out
• 9:30pm – winners are announced.

The contest will be run by the rules of established ACM regional contests with some modifications.  That is, there are 5 problems to be solved in a 3 hours period.  You can use C, C++ or Java.  Problems are judged automatically by comparing the judge’s answers to the answers given by your program.  They have to match exactly character by character to be counted as a solution.  You will not be judged on the written style of your program or any comments.  The only thing that will matter for the contest is if your program gives the right answers and if it works fast enough for all the test cases.  The judges want to have everybody solve at least one problem but have nobody solve all 5 problems.

Prizes are:  $50 first place, $30 second place and $20 third place.  There will also be other non-monetary prizes and honorable mentions.  While the contest is serious in its core, we intend to make it a fun event with fun and interesting problems to solve.

Let me know if you have any questions about any part of the contest and let me know if you decide to attend — I’d love to have you there!

Contact us at dennismv@umd.umich.edu and let’s get you in!