Rice team finishes in top 10 in regional Battle of the Brains

Rice team finishes in top 10 in regional Battle of the Brains

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Imagine completing a semester’s worth of computer programming in one afternoon. That’s what six Rice students did when they competed in the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Nov. 3.

Representing Rice were the Rice Blue team of Gregory Malecha, Wiess College senior, Blake Kaplan, Hanszen College senior, and Derek Sessions, Sid Richardson junior; and the Rice Gray team of Taylor Goodhart, Sid Richardson senior, Grant Cathcart, Wiess College sophomore, and Brian Shields, Hanszen College freshman.

The Blue team placed ninth among approximately 70 teams by solving four of the nine problems in a three-way tie broken by times. The Gray team placed 28th, solving two of the nine problems in a many-way tie broken by times. John Greiner, lecturer on computer science, coached the team, with Malecha leading additional training sessions.

Nicknamed the ”Battle of the Brains,” the competition included more than 6,000 university teams in preliminary rounds that last through December. The collegiate teams used programming skills and mental endurance to solve complex, real-world problems under a grueling deadline in the regional competitions. By next spring only 90 teams from 82 countries will be left to compete in the contest’s World Finals April 8-12, 2008 in Alberta, Canada.

The contest fosters creativity, teamwork and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. It is the oldest, largest programming contest in the world.

The contest pitted teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems with a five-hour deadline. Teammates collaborated to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce requirements, design test beds and build software systems that solved the problems under the scrutiny of expert judges. Some of the problems required only precision while others required an understanding of advanced algorithms.

The students were given a problem statement without a requirements document and an example of test data. Each incorrect solution submitted was assessed a time penalty. The winning team solved the most problems in the fewest attempts in the shortest cumulative time.

See the nine questions the students faced and overall scores on the ACM Web site.