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"Great Job Andy and kudos to the
small army of people supporting the event!"
-- Leslie E. Wong, NMU President
"Good job, Andy. The Programming
Contest has become a great tradition, and your hard work and
inspiration is very evident in the outcome."
-- Terrance L. Seethoff, Dean for
the College of Arts & Sciences
The Department has held a
programming contest every year since 2000; it consistently
draws computer science students from all over the Upper
Peninsula and beyond. The problems are written and
adjudicated by Dr. Andrew
(Andy) A. Poe.
Pictured at left is Dr. Andy Poe who
organizes the NMU Invitational Programming Contest. He
also writes the problems and solutions for the contest. |
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Fifty-four students on twenty teams from five universities
competed at this event. The second and third place teams
were "Team Mik" and "MTU"); DROP TABLE teams;-- from
Michigan Technological University. "Nullzilla" and "Team Mik"
were the only teams to correctly solve all six problems.
Michigan Technological University
had the highest aggregate school score; Northern Michigan
University took second place.
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According to Dr.
Poe, "This
was the best run contest we've ever had. There were a
couple of minor glitches, but nothing severe."
The schools that participated were Northern Michigan
University (9 teams), Michigan Technological University (5
teams), Lake Superior State University (2 teams), Algoma
University College (2 teams), and The University of
Michigan--Flint (2 teams), a total of twenty teams.
Of the NMU teams: NULLZILLA (Ben DePew, Brian Krent, Scott
Raiford) took first place; THE MORMONS (Amy Elliott, Cory
Perry, Scottie Smith) took eighth; DONT PANIC (Michael
Campfield, Paul Erickson, Evan O'Jack) took tenth; CHAIN WAS
SHUT WITHOUT THE EDGE (Torrey Dupras, Mario Wenig, Kyle
Wiering) took eleventh; TEAM VENTURE (Jaclyn Beck, Dave
Lyon) took twelfth; GLITTER (Josh Cook, Miranda Larocque,
Sean Schoenherr) took fifteenth; EAGLE SYSTEMS (Allen Eagle)
took seventeenth; CALL ME KING (Brent Jones, Zach Koskovich,
Bryan Splitberger) took eighteenth; AND IN LAST PLACE IS
(Jason Eggleston, Nathan Wiering, Chris Wells) took
nineteenth.
An interesting statistic: NMU's NULLZILLA team did take
first place. However, MTU's five teams took second, third,
fourth, fifth, and sixth" This gave MTU a higher aggregate
score allowing MTU to emerge into first place in the school
ranking. NMU took second.
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Dr. Poe has
done this contest nine times now. Historically, the
turnaround time has been about twenty minutes between
submission and scoring of an assignment. The submissions
build up and generally level off at twenty minutes. Last
year was a record setter, with a sixty-minute turnaround
time. This year was also a record setter, with a maximum
five-minute turnaround time. For the most part, though, the
turnaround time was two or three minutes. This was really
amazing; we like this record better!
The downsides were minor. There was a minor glitch in the
laptop image, but it was a minor glitch. Most teams fixed
it themselves, and a tech support runner was sent around to
help the others.
Everything else was absolutely smooth. The ACM turned out
in force to help |
with setup and cleanup. There have been years when
it's been two students and Dr. Poe taking care of this duty!
But not this time! Everything got set up early, so
that lunch started on time, and the contest started on time!
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(This is the first time we've been able to start on time.
We usually start about fifteen minutes late.) The proper
amount of food was ordered; we had some left over, but not
much. Brian Krent's design of the souvenir T-shirt was
probably the best we've ever had. Dr. Poe thought that
perhaps the problems were too easy this year, but the scores
indicated that they were probably the right level.
As always, if something of this nature is going to succeed,
it's going to be the result of the effort of many people.
Within the department, Rob Kipka acted as runner, Jailan
Zalmai helped make our guests comfortable, John Kiltinen
(retired) handled printing requests, and alumnus Mike
Kowalczyk
handled tech support. Dave Buhl and his daughters and their
friends did a lot of running for the contest. Sue Laforais
did an incredible amount of
clerical work in the days before the contest, running off
problems and solutions, negotiating rooms, and all of this.
Dawn Wilder helped with key requisitions and money.
The people (mostly students) who did the running (meaning they ran
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around Jamrich passing messages between teams and judges) were so
numerous I can't list them all. Some of them were our students.
Some were friends. Some were friends of friends. A lot of them
didn't sign up until today to run, so we don't even have a complete
tally, but there were a lot of them! Notably, Melinda
Stockman, James Ives, Chris Ohman, Mike Kowalczyk (alumnus) and his wife, and
a number of others we didn't even recognize. The contest was
infinitely smooth partially as a result of their efforts. |
And, of course, without financial support from the Department, the
Dean's Office, and the Provost's Office, we wouldn't be able to run
this event, the largest annual programming contest in the U.P.
(We're wondering, if this is the largest annual collegiate academic
competition at NMU or the U.P.? We honestly don't know. The
Science Olympiad is larger, for example, but that's not a collegiate
competition.)
The contest problems, solutions, and results can all be found at
http://euclid.nmu.edu/~apoe/NMUCONTEST9 .
Thanks to everyone who helped make this event an incredible success!
--Andrew A. (Andy) Poe, Assoc. Prof. |
