Competitive Learning at Baylor

Programming contests at Baylor

We hold a programming contest each fall and spring semester with free food and prizes. All students are welcome to participate! You don't want to miss this! The next contest will be in the early Spring semester 2009. These contests also serve as preparation for the regional ACM programming contest.

If you want to participate in the next contest, please register for the competition by emailing contest@cs.baylor.edu. Also, please let us know how you heard about the competition.

The competition will use Windows computers, with C, C++ and Java being the allowed languages. The computers will have Visual C++, Metrowerks Codewarrior, Vim, Emacs, and other development environments.

Sponsorship

We are grateful to Trent Voigt, CEO of JetPay.com for generous sponsorship of the Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 programming contest.

Recent contests

September 2, 2008, 6-9:30 PM, Rogers Lab 115
Nick Soltau, Greg McNew, and Tak-Chien Chiam placed first, second, and third. The top prize given away was a Dell PC. More information on the contest can be found here.
January 22, 2008, 6-9:30 PM, Rogers Lab 115
Nick Soltau, Brett Phillips, and Greg McNew placed first, second, and third for their efforts. The prizes included an iPod, iTunes gift certificates, Chili's gift certificates, a Dell PC, movie passes, and more. The contest was sponsored by JetPay.com. More information on the contest can be found here.
August 28, 2007, 6-9:30 PM, Rogers Lab 113
We had a very exciting contest. Mitchell Mebane, Nick Soltau, and Brett Phillips placed first, second, and third for their efforts. The prizes included an iPod, iTunes gift certificates, Chili's gift certificates, a Dell PC, movie passes, and more. The contest was sponsored by JetPay.com. More information on the contest can be found here.
January 30, 2007, 6-9 PM, Rogers Lab 115
We had a great contest, Mitchell Mebane, Brett Phillips, and Bobby Carroll placed first, second, and third for their efforts. The prizes included a $50 gift certificate, a computer, books, t-shirts, and free pizza for all. Here's a list of people who signed up. Orie Achonwa also did a nice writeup of the contest.
August 29, 2006, 6:30 - 9:30 PM, Rogers lab 115
With thanks to Altex of Waco for their sponsorship of the contest grand prize. Nate Roberts and Nick Soltau came in the top two finishers. Please see the contest results here.
March 23, 2005, 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM, Rogers Lab, 112
Big thanks to everyone who came out to compete, to Dr. Sturgill for providing the pizza, and to Matt Aars for helping set up the contest environment.

What is a Programming Contest?

It's a chance to compete with other students writing programs.
At the start of the contest, you get a stack of 6 to 8 problems of varying difficulty. Yout get a few hours to write programs to solve as many of the problems as you can.
The winner is the person who solves the most problems. If two people solve an equal number, the winner is the one that completes their programs first.

What is a Programming Problem Like?

See some sample problems here:

Marvelous Mazes

Competitive learning courses

The computer science department at Baylor is offering three 1-unit courses on competitive learning. Each of the courses is focused on developing problem solving and programming skills on interesting programming problems. The three courses are Competitive Learning levels I, II, and III, with each course building on the previous one. There is no expectation of homework outside of the class meetings.

The courses are being offered again in Fall 2008.

Registration

The prerequisite for level I is Data Structures and Algorithms (CSI 3334). The prerequisite for level II is level I, and the prerequisite for level III is level II. However, if you have not had the prerequisite but you have strong problem solving and/or programming skills, you are still encouraged to talk to the professors about taking the course -- we are willing to make exceptions.

If you would like to take any of these courses you will need to get permission to register from one of the instructors. Please email Dr. Hamerly or Dr. Sturgill to get permission so you may register. The courses may appear closed on the Baylor registration website; this is simply because you need permission to register.

Course details

The courses for Fall 2008 will meet Thursdays, 3:30 - 6:30 PM, in Rogers 113.

Please see this syllabus for more details on the courses. The course number is 4v96, sections 1, 2, and 3.

Course support

If you are participating in the current offering of the competitive learning course, this section is for you.

Here is a partial problem set archive for Fall 2005.

Here are some basic instructions for getting started with PC^2, our contest submission and judging software.

The following links will save you the time of typing in the sample input for this week's problem.

Sample input for the anagram problem.
Sample input for the DNA sorting problem.