Students prepare brains for battle

When in doubt, start with the easiest problem.

That’s the method senior Ellen Gawryla plans… When in doubt, start with the easiest problem.

That’s the method senior Ellen Gawryla plans to use Saturday at the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest in Youngstown, Pa.

“Some of the challenge is in determining which ones are easy and working on those problems first to save time,” Gawryla said. “It is so frustrating when you come out of the competition without solving any of the problems.”

Six Pitt undergrads with a passion for computer programming will compete against about 300 other students in the ACM-ICPC regional competition this weekend. The champions will advance to the contest’s World Finals in Warsaw, Poland, which are set for May 2012. The final international winner receives various awards and prizes, including the “World’s Smartest Trophy.”

At the competitions, about 100 teams work for five hours on eight or nine problems that include graphs, optimization problems and real-world challenges that the team members must translate into computer programs. The students will design framework for software programs using programming languages such as C, C++ and Java to solve problems like how to optimize air-traffic patterns.

The teammates work together to come up with an algorithm, or a step-by-step process, to solve the problems and then figure out a way to code the algorithm so the computer can provide output.

John Ramirez, a Pitt computer science professor and the team’s coach, said that the six Pitt students are split into two teams, the Pitt blue team and the Pitt gold team. Ramirez sent out an email to computer science students to find participants. He said the University can send as many teams to the regional competition as it wants.

Gawryla, a computer science major and Pitt blue team member, said this is the third time she will participate in the contest.

“I got started in my sophomore year when my friends and I would start random coding projects for fun, but we never finished them,” she said. “We got excited when we found out about local programming competitions because we could actually finish something.”

Ramirez said that the teams prepare for the contest by working on problems from previous competitions. He noted that each problem requires a different strategy.

“Sometimes the three competitors will work on one problem together, or each will work on a separate problem,” he said.

Pitt blue team member Altay Hunter, a senior majoring in computer engineering, said that the problems are generally mathematical.

“One of the more challenging problems involved is finding the solution to a three-dimensional puzzle,” Altay said. “Three-dimensional problems tend to be more complicated in general due to the additional interactions to keep track of.”

Gawryla said that the problems vary in their level of difficulty.

Mary Letera, a junior majoring in computer science, said that for most participants, programming is their passion.

“If you’re asking what one needs to enjoy the competition, that could be anything from a strong sense of competitiveness to just a great sense of humor,” said Letera, a member of the Pitt gold team. “I think it’s a given that anyone who is participating is going to really like programming.”

Kyra Lee, a junior computer engineering major and another member of the Pitt gold team, said that competitors must be logical.

“You have to be able to break a problem down into not only what needs to happen, but how it can happen efficiently,” Lee said.

This will be Hunter, Letera and Lee’s first experience with the competition. They all found out about the competition through Ramirez’s email.

“I’m curious to see what it’s like,” Lee said. “We’ve done practicing, but since this is a timed event, it’s a whole different kind of animal.”