Six Ohio University students will hole up in small rooms this weekend with their brains, one computer and hundreds of inputs and outputs — and they’re looking forward to it.
Two OU teams, comprising three students each, will compete against more than 40 other teams in this year’s “Battle of the Brains” regional computer-programming competition at Youngstown State University.
“(Battle of the Brains) is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world,” a news release states.
Last year, one of the two OU teams was named No. 1 over 35 other teams at the Youngstown State competition.
“We won the site last year,” said coach Chad Mourning, a graduate student pursuing an electrical engineering and computer science Ph.D. “I’d like to see us win the site again. I think we can do that; that’s my goal.”
The Association for Computing Machinery’s Annual International Collegiate Programming Contest extends across about 90 countries. This year, more than 8,000 teams will compete for 100 spots at the World Finals in Warsaw, Poland, next May.
OU students Kevin Janowiecki, Greg Shipley and Alex White compose the first team, Bobcats. The second, Green n’ White, comprises Nathan Andre, Chris Wagner and Taffie Coler.
This is Mourning’s fourth competition and his first as coach.
“This is our big one,” Mourning said.
Andre, a graduate student studying computer science, will be attending his third competition and said he is eager to compete.
“It’s a lot of fun to go down there and participate,” he said.
During the contest, coaches are put in a separate room while each three-person team collaborates on nine equations within their five-hour time limit. Mourning said the toughest aspect of the contest is deciding who will utilize the one computer available to each team.
These problems aren’t ordinary math equations, Mourning said; they’re time-consuming and ubiquitously mentally challenging cases.
“They have to write an algorithm that takes a general input and produces the correct output,” he said. “They’ll try 100 different inputs, and you’re supposed to get the same 100 outputs that the judges’ solutions come up with.”
Students prepared individually for the competition.
“I’m preparing for everything with all problems I solve,” said Coler, a junior studying computer science. “I usually don’t go for the easy ones.”
Shipley, a sophomore studying computer science, is competing for the first time too.
“I definitely head towards the most difficult one I feel like I will be able to do,” he said.
ks013411@ohiou.edu
