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"You've
taken this to the next level and from what I heard, lots of
fun, lots of learning. The Mining Journal article was nice! Year 11
will be even better. Thanks for the work you do! Thanks to
everyone else involved too!"
- Les Wong, NMU President
"Thanks for this report, Andy.
I especially appreciated reading something about
how this started. I have
been there as a volunteer for about four years, but was not
familiar in such detail with how the competition started in
the first place. Having seen the competition close up
for several years now, I can vouch for the fact that Andy
and Randy do Northern proud. Your efforts are
appreciated".
- John Kiltinen, Retired Faculty
We had sixty-three students on
twenty-four teams representing five universities. This is
not a record: we had sixty-eight students in 2007.
However, it was still an amazing turnout! In addition, to
Northern Michigan University, the competing schools were
Algoma University College, Lake Superior State University,
Michigan Technological University, and, in their first
appearance here, The College of St. Scholastica, in Duluth,
Minnesota.
The only real problem is due to an
error (either ours or theirs, I don't know): we didn't have
any vegetarian options for lunch, so we sent a student out
to correct this oversight. (Considering the contest is five
hours long, it's important that everyone get lunch!) That
and a late-arriving school delayed our contest start by
fifteen minutes, but we usually have a slight delay anyway.
The problems appeared to be of
proper difficulty, maybe slightly too hard, but not overly
so. The top four teams solved four of them. Only one team
failed to solve any of them. Every problem was solved by at
least one team.
The problems, solutions, and contest
results can be found online at
http://euclid.nmu.edu/~apoe/NMUCONTEST10 . But here are
the highlights:
Michigan Tech's Internet Janitor
came in first. St. Scholastica's Three Blind Mice took
second place, and Michigan Tech's Voltron came in third.
Michigan Technological University
had the first place aggregate score; Northern Michigan
University came in second.
NMU student participation was as
follows, twenty-six students in all:
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Team HHDDVVDDBVD (fifth place):
Paul D. Erickson, Sebastian N. Frye, Esther M. Su
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Superbrain (sixth place): Jason D.
Eggleston, Cory R. Perry, Nathan T. Wiering
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Chain Was Shut Without The Edge
(seventh place): Torrey R. Dupras, Mario Wenig, Kyle A. Wiering
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Adorkable (ninth place): Joshua M.
Cook, Matt Knox, Miranda L. Larocque
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Forget It (tenth place): Brent M.
Jones, Zachary M. Koskovich
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These Cats Can't Dance (twelfth
place): Timothy P. Cattell, Amy R.Elliott, Andy Fodale
-
Venture (sixteenth place): Jaclyn
R. Beck, Axel T. Cisluycis, David E. Lyon, Brian
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Brraaaiiiiinnnnnnnns (seventeenth
place): Allen J. Eagle, Brian J. Krent, Darren M. St Amour
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Team Snu Snu (eighteenth place):
Andrew R. Hawker, David A. Ohman, Jeff Scanlon
It is interesting to note that not
all of these students are Computer Science/Network Computing
majors. Some of them come from Chemistry, Physics,
Mathematics, and other disciplines. One (Axel Cisluycis) is
a very talented high school student taking college courses
part-time.
We had a good batch of runners. For
those of you not in the loop, the runners carry solution
attempts and other messages between the competitors and the
judges. A good batch of runners makes all the difference,
and we had a good solid batch. Scotlyn H. Smith was the
head runner whose most important run was a trip to Subway to
get vegetarian food! Other runners were Jaclyn A. Calamaro,
Danielle R. Commins, Matthew S. Gregory, Jeanine B. LeBrell,
Grace E. Makley, Joe Manier, Kevin A. Mentch, Thomas C.
Moran, and, from the faculty, Randy R. Appleton with his son
Gabe, Michael R. Kowalczyk, and Qinghong Zhang.
Faculty from other universities,
such as Evan Schemm from LSSU and Gerry Davies from Algoma
also helped run when things were getting very exciting.
In addition to competing and
running, our student ACM group, including many of the people
named above, organized the bulk of the affair, stayed late
on Friday putting up posters and doing last-minute shopping,
came early on Saturday to set up, and stayed late on
Saturday to clean up.
Most notable are the ACM President
Brian J. Krent, who designed the T-shirts and organized the
food and trophies and Vice President Cory R. Perry who stayed late Friday night
imaging the laptops.
Instructor Michael R. Kowalczyk
handled tech support during the contest, and hosted a
practice session with the students before the contest. I am
uncomfortable practicing with the students, since I'm the
one writing the problems. Those of you who remember Mike
from when he was a student here may recall that his team
came in first place in the 2001 contest, so he's the obvious
choice to work with the students. (Me, I've run contests
for years, but I've never actually ever competed in one!)
Dia, Mike's wife, was the official
timekeeper, logging the official submission time of each
solution attempt and organizing them so that I could grade
them in a timely fashion.
Retired Professor John O. Kiltinen
handled all print requests and maintained the official list
of standings.
Assistant Professor Qinghong Zhang
handled laptop distribution and collection.
Associate Professor Randy R.
Appleton supervised the runners and handled the odious but
necessary job of public relations. (We might have made TV
6!)
Head and Professor G. Jailan Zalmai
was on hand, as he always is, to ensure that all the
visiting faculty members were comfortable and
well-attended. Dean and Professor Terrance L. Seethoff
attended the event as well, and it is ALWAYS good to have
administrative support at these events!
Senior Secretary II Susan M.
Laforais was principally responsible for the administrative
details of the event, photocopying, artwork, phone calls,
room reservations, follow ups, etc. Principal Secretary
Dawn L. Wilder was principally responsible for handling the
finances.
And, speaking of which, we could not
host this contest without administrative support from Dean
Seethoff and from Provost & VPAA Susan J. Koch.
And, while I possess many
personality quirks, needless humility isn't one of them,
and, with that in mind, I, Associate Professor Andrew A. Poe, was the author of the problems,
the contest adjudicator, and principal organizer of the
event. I have pumped a fair bit of myself into this event
for the last decade, and gosh darn it, it shows!
That being said, this event has
grown a fair bit since its early days, and it takes a lot of
people to make it a success. I hope I remembered to mention
them all, but there were so many that I probably did not.
The first ten years are just a
beginning. Here's looking forward to year 11!
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