Not sure what a bit building contest is? Check out my post.

This year we had 28 students competing in a 3 hours contest attempting to solve 10 problems by writing computer software.
Here’s a sampling of the problems.

Miss Pelt – 74 solution attempts; 15 correct

Miss Pelt struggles with a compulsive misspelling habit.  Since she happens to live in the only known Alternate UniverseÔ in which computerized spelling checkers have not yet been invented, you have been called upon to write a program to help her catch her typos before they go public.  Only you can save her self-esteem!

Your program must read in a dictionary of known-correct words.  It must then read in a list of sentences and check each word in each sentence against the dictionary.  Finally, it should print out all the sentences, marking any words that were misspelled (i.e., weren’t in the dictionary).  You may assume that the words in the input sentences are separated by only whitespace and that all comparisons are case-insensitive.

Greedy Gift Givers - 21 solution attempts; 12 correct

This  problem  involves  determining,  for  a  group  of  gift giving friends, how much more each person gives than they receive  (and vice versa for those that view gift giving with cynicism).  In this problem each person sets aside some money for gift giving and divides this money evenly among all those to whom gifts are given.

However, in any group of friends, some people are more giving than others (or at least may have more acquaintances) and some people have more money than others.

Given a group of friends, the money each person  in the  group spends on gifts, and a  (sub)list of  friends to whom each person gives gifts; you are to write a program that  determines how much more (or less) each person in the group gives than they receive.

Leap Year – 82 solution attempts; 23 correct

The ancient race of Gulamatu is very advanced in their year calculation scheme. They understand what leap year is (A year that is divisible by 4 and not divisible by 100 with the exception that years that are divisible by 400 are also leap year.) and they have also similar festival years. One is the Huluculu festival (happens on years divisible by 15) and the Bulukulu festival (Happens on years divisible by 55 provided that is also a leap year). Given a year you will have to state what properties these years have. If the year is not leap year nor festival year, then print the line ‘This is an ordinary year.’ The order of printing (if present) the properties is leapyear–>huluculu–>bulukulu.

Write a program to process years to determine which leap year properties they exhibit.

Here’s the breakdown of computer languages which were used to solve the problems. The numbers represent the correct solutions. Each student selected their language of choice.

• C++ (Windows) – 36
• Python – 30
• Ruby – 19
• C Sharp – 8
• C++ (Linux) – 7
• Java – 4
• Visual Basic – 1

So what’s the benefit of such a contest? Consider the following

Figures released by the US Department of Labor predict that IT jobs will see some of the strongest growth of any profession in the US by 2010. Demand for applications programmers is expected to grow by more than 100 per cent, and overall the IT sector is forecast to expand by over a third.

The contest helps us to encourage young people to consider a career in the bit business. It also helps us as we seek to show case the talent of our students to the bit business world. Finally, it helps my company identify and attract top bit building talent! That makes it very worthwhile.

Today I am involved in an atom-building venture as well as a bit-building venture. While the concrete trucks pour yards and yards of atom-based concrete to lay the foundation for a duplex, 29 of my computer science students, aka bit builders, are working feverishly pouring out computer-based solutions to 10 challenging problems in a 3 hour head-to-head contest. The winner will be the one who is able to successfully solve (i.e. no known bugs) the most problems during the 3 hour contest.

I’ve been running this contest for 20 years. As a result we have 5 teams that compete at an intercollegiate level. We’ve gone from 16th place out of 40 some 10 years ago to usually ranking in the top 4 in the same contests. In some contests we consistently rank #1. So what’s a programming contest like? Consider a big game of chess, but instead of only 2 players, bring 30 to the table. Now, remove the chess board, forcing a game of purely mental chess. That’s what I think of when I think of a programming contest. Why do I call it a bit building contest? I like to contrast for folks the similarities between building with atoms (like a duplex) and building with bits (software). Everything on the computer is digital – music, photos, videos, web pages, software. To make something digital, say a piece of music, you represent the music with numbers, hence the term digital. While computers really only know 2 numbers – 1 and 0. These are called bits – binary digits (we love acronyms in computer science). Software tells the computer how to manipulate all the bits. Hence programming, creating software, is working with bits. So I call it bit building!

It is a purely mental activity involving

• problem solving skills (reading, understanding, assimilating)
• pattern recognition (hey, this problem looks like another one I’ve solved)
• coding (speaking a language the computer understands – C, C++, Java, Python, C#, there are thousands)
• debugging (fixing one’s solution until it generates the correct answers)

It is a skill that very few people care to develop, yet we are in a world that is depending more and more upon software – just consider all the challenges facing Toyota right now with the faulty anti-lock brakes and the sticky gas peddles – both software problems. So in the business world this law of supply and demand kicks in making the value of bit builders increase! One way to foster an interest in something is to turn it into a game or a sport. Hence the bit building contests! Let the games begin.

I also need to mention the sponsors, without which all we could offer to the winner is bragging rights. But with corporate sponsorship comes the opportunity to offer more – cash prizes, books, techie gadgets, etc. So special thanks to these corporate sponsors who help me make this event much more worthwhile!

• Answer in Genesis
• M33 Integration Solutions
• The Worthwhile Company

I appreciate the vision that these organizations have demonstrated by investing in our future bit builders! Thanks for your support!!!

Some of the results of this contest are now posted here.