4 students win competition at UW-Parkside, head to International Olypiad in Informatics

Sunday, June 16

An elite pack of programmers from high schools nationwide trained and competed at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha in the USA Computing Olympiad, which ended Monday.

The 15 students were vying for four spots on the U.S. team, which will travel to the International Olympiad in Informatics, a worldwide competition Aug. 18 to 25 in Yong-In, South Korea. The event draws hundreds of students each year from about 80 countries, and next year UW-Parkside will host it.

The four chosen were senior Adam of Connecticut; Alex , a home-schooled student of Texas; sophomore Tiankai of New Hampshire; and senior Jacob of Maryland.

Just making it to the USA Computing Olympiad is impressive, said Rob, head coach for the U.S. team and executive director of the System Administrators Guild.

"As sports go, this is a thrill a minute,"he said. "Some people just have the touch for computers."

In these programming competitions, students are given various problems to solve by designing software on-the-fly in sessions of three to five hours.

"It's kind of intense, but it's fun," said Po-Ru Loh, a junior at James Madison Memorial High School in Madison who trained at UW- Parkside.

Loh became interested in the programming contests by participating in similar math events and enjoys "the challenge and the competition," he said.

15-year-old from Austin, programmed at UW-Parkside last year and came back for more.

"It certainly is easier because I am more experienced and know more techniques," he said. "Problems fit certain patterns, so if you've seen them before, solving them is a lot easier. Of course, some problems are completely different."

Farmer casino

These aren't the average word problems on standardized tests. For example, just for fun, the students had three hours to figure out and write a program for the following mind-bender. It was thought up by Gary Sivek of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Springfield, Va., who was one of the students in the USA Computing Olympiad this year:

"Farmer John is running a casino in the Barn with his top aide Bessie as poker dealer. As usual, the Barn always wins. More unusually, the Barn wins by cheating. Through hidden cameras, Bessie can see not only the hands of the N (1players but can also secretly choose which card from her deck to give them. Even more unusually, the cows often play with non-standard card decks that have more or fewer cards than usual. Each player originally antes one dollar. If among the five cards each is dealt they have a pair, two pair, three of a kind, a straight, a full house, or four of a kind, then they get two dollars back. Bessie wishes to minimize the Barn's loss. Given that she has dealt four cards to each gambler without cheating, she now chooses to cheat and choose the fifth and final card for each one. Help her make a profit."

The rest of the problem gave the data input and output details so the students could write software to solve the challenge.

Don, a UW-Parkside math professor who has coordinated the USA Computing Olympiad since it started 10 years ago, said the volunteers training the students have more than 100 problems like this.

"It's highly motivated, high-achieving students who like to do these kinds of things," he said. "They like the challenge. Unfortunately, there are very few of them."

In the International Olympiad, each nation is represented by four students who compete independently, solving problems like the ones in the USA Computing Olympiad.

Students can use the C, C+ or Pascal programming languages. The teens in the USA Olympiad first proved themselves through Internet contests and a nationwide event run through volunteer teachers at high schools.

"They have been training for this all year," he said. "They have some strategies, so they are not dreaming everything up on the spot."

Winners are determined by an overall score computed by a grading program.

The top half get gold, silver and bronze medals, and some of the highest scoring students get laptops. He said.

'I love solving problems'

During one of the training sessions, the students furrowed their brows, ran their hands through their hair and stared at their computer screens as they worked on problems.

The competition was extreme, but afterward they joked, exchanged ideas on how to perform better and compared success and failures while eating lunch.

"I like solving problems, seeing the challenges," said freshman Eric Price, who was one of seven students from Jefferson High School to compete at UW-Parkside. "I think this will help me learn about programming, but also problem-solving in general."

Piele and other staff members at the USA Computing Olympiad said the students who attend usually pursue careers in engineering, science, math or computers.

"It's seen as kind of a geeky, mechanical thing," he said. "These are the guys who are going to create new ideas because they understand problem-solving at a fundamental level, so they have the tools to do that."

This story was published Tuesday in the Journal Sentinel and is reprinted here for Sunday-only subscribers. To find out more about the USACO team on the Web, go to. For information about the competition. For more information about next year's International Olympiad in Informatics.