Delivery-Date: Tue Apr 14 20:00:06 2009
Message-Id: <200904150310.n3F3Aweu031577@bourbon.usc.edu>
To: cs551@merlot.usc.edu, cs530@merlot.usc.edu, cs558@merlot.usc.edu
Subject: FWD: USC Programming Contest
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:10:58 -0700
From: Bill Cheng <william@bourbon.usc.edu>

Hi everyone,

I'm forwarding the following announcement from Prof. Koenig
regarding the USC Programming Contest.

Please note that participation in this contect is completely
voluntary and not required for our class!  :-)  Therefore,
participation in this event will not be considered a reasonable
execuse for students not to submit an assignment on time!

If you decide to participate, I hope you will have a
great time!
--
Bill Cheng // bill.cheng@usc.edu <URL:http://merlot.usc.edu/william/usc/>


  -----Original Message-----
  Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:39:05 -0700 (PDT)
  From: skoenig <skoenig@usc.edu>
  To: csfaculty-l@listproc.usc.edu
  Cc: skoenig <skoenig@usc.edu>
  Subject: USC Programming Contest

  Colleagues,
  
  could you help us again by distributing the annoucement below to all
  undergraduate and graduate CS students? It would help especially if you could
  motivate interested undergraduate students to participate. Our top performers
  often start early and get better and better while participating in a couple of
  USC Programming Competitions...
  
  Many thanks!
  
  Cheers,
  Sven
  
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  USC Programming Contest
  
  Saturday, April 25, 2009 in RTH 105/115
  practice (1-2pm) and contest (2-6pm)
  contest.usc.edu
  
  organized by David Kempe, Sven Koenig, Suya You and Upsilon Pi Epsilon
  
  Have fun!
  Extend your resume!
  Show how smart you are!
  Impress your friends!
  Win cash and other prizes!
  Represent USC at the ACM Programming Contest!
  
  Do you like to solve problems like the following ones?
  
     To pay your friends a dollar, you can give them, for example,
     four quarters, or five dimes and ten nickels. Write a program
     that calculates how many different combinations of coins there
     are that make up a given amount of money (say, 20 dollars) from
     pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.
  
     You are given the description of a lake as a polygon, as well
     as your own position in a boat somewhere on the lake. When you
     throw a rock in the water, the waves travel away from the
     impact point at a speed of 1 meter per second. Write a program
     to calculate the earliest time at which a wave will hit the
     shore.
  
     You are given the names of n people, who are to be divided into
     k alphabetical segments, for instance, to stand in line for
     registration at USC. An "alphabetical segment" consists of all
     people whose last name starts with a letter between two given
     endpoints (for example, D-H). Write a program that finds a
     division into k alphabetical segments such that each person is
     in exactly one segment, and the number of people in the largest
     segment is minimized.
  
  Participate in the USC Programming Contest! The contest is open
  to all undergraduate and graduate USC students, regardless of
  major, as long as they were born in 1986 or later.
  
  We use the USC Programming Contests to pick students that we
  train for the ACM Regional Programming Contest. Students from USC
  placed 2nd in the ACM Regional Programming Contest in Fall 2006!
  
  Find out more by visiting the contest webpage
  
  contest.usc.edu
  
  If you would like to keep updated about the contest, please sign
  up for our mailing list at
  
  groups.yahoo.com/group/usc-programmingcontest
  
  Please contact Prof. David Kempe (dkempe AT usc.edu) with any
  questions and to register for the contest. The registration 
  deadline is April 22, 2009.