Team makes mark in programming contest

We're all familiar with the name "Thoroughbreds" when it comes to Skidmore's intercollegiate teams, but how about Greedy Choice, Skidmore Big Theta, and Infinite Recursion? These are the names of three Skidmore teams that recently competed against other colleges and universities in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Northeast programming competitions, with Infinite Recursion making it to the regional finals, placing fifth, behind MIT, Brown, Harvard, and McGill.

	From left: Nick Moran '08, Hao Yang '09, advisor Michael Eckmann, and Gary Lau '09

Skidmore's involvement began when Assistant Professor of Computer Science Michael Eckmann, who was familiar with the ACM competition from his grad school days at Lehigh, sent out an e-mail to Skidmore's math and computer science students alerting them to the opportunity. "I got an overwhelming response, and Skidmore was able to field three teams," said Eckmann, who served as advisor and coach. The team lineups were Greedy Choice: Oliver Layton '09, Ari Morse '09, and Jason Wu '10; Skidmore Big Theta: Andrei Margea '10 and Bill Stitson '09; and Infinite Recursion: Gary Lau '09, Nick Moran '08, and Hao Yang '09.

The Skidmore teams went off to the ACM Boston Preliminary Contest at Brown on October 13, 2007. Participants were given six programming problems and were asked to solve as many as they could in a five-hour period. All the teams were crammed into one large lecture hall, and each team was given access to one computer. The winning team, from Brown, solved all six problems, while the second-place team, from Fitchburg, solved five problems. Infinite Recursion was able to solve three, qualifying it for the regional competition.

The regional contest, which included schools for northeastern U.S. and Canada, took place at Rochester Institute of Technology on November 10. This time, participants were given eight problems to solve within five hours. Each team was placed in a locked room with a computer, whiteboard, paper, and any reference books they chose to bring along. Answers were submitted via e-mail to an anonymous group of judges, who would respond by e-mail as to whether an answer was correct. Infinite Recursion solved three of the problems, taking fifth place.

"This is quite an accomplishment for Skidmore, a small liberal arts college, in its first year in the competition. Now we plan to participate annually in the ACM contest," said Eckmann.

For a sample of the problems from the preliminary round, go to www.seas.harvard.edu/hc3/bospre/.