Math Field Day

[XianForce]

Back in Junior High, I competed in some Math Field Day thing, where there were a number of different contests competed in various different ways.

Well just today I found out, that there will be a Math Field Day that my school is attending, and I'm supposed to prepare a team for it.

The reason I have to prepare a team, is because I started a Programming Club at my school, and there's a programming contest, so they stuck me prepare the team.

My club started as a bunch of friends that wanted to learn to program, so I just threw it together so anyone could come, and we could easily meet at school. So most of them are new to programming, but I have 4 months.

Here's all the information I have at the moment: CSUB Math Field Day

So have any of you done anything similar? I've never heard of, nor done anything like this, so I just want to know what to expect. My club is all C/C++ so far, but Java is similar enough, and I've never used BASIC. From the information, I'm not sure if your just given 4 problems, and one language is assigned to each, or if there are 4 problems and you can choose whatever language to use. I'm hoping it's the latter haha.

But anyways, even if some of you haven't done anything like this, maybe you can tip me off to what you think would be there. So far I'm they are dabbling around with pointers and references, but the people that will actually be competing will start meeting with me more often, so we can get it all done faster.

Well, sorry for the long post (seems long at the moment at least). Thanks in advance for any help. If I was unclear on anything (which considering my short attention span, I wouldn't be surprised), just let me know and I'll attempt to clarify =D.

[Kros]

Math field day or programming contest? I'm a bit confused...

*reads link*

Oh, okay, programming contest.

Well, one, programming contests are stupid. I've read a fantastic article in the past that outlines why this is but, I don't know how to find it right now. But, thats neither here nor there.

From:

BASIC, C, C++, or Java languages

I think its safe to assume that you can pick from the four as to which you'll get to use. If you needed to use all of them, they wouldn't have used 'or' there. 'And' fits better.

At the end of the time, floppy discs containing the solutions will be turned over to the judges

Floppy disks? Really?

Uh, to prepare I'd suggest you and your team start pounding away at the problems found here: http://projecteuler.net/

From what it sounds like, they want elegant solutions to math related problems. That kinda sums up project euler.

I haven't ever done one of these myself but, from what I understand its basically just hacking together a 'elegant' solution as fast as possible (this is delving into why these contests are not good). Is there anything specific you'd like help with?

Hard to give any tips when theres no examples as to what kind of problems they're going to be giving. But, the good news, is if they only expect you to know stuff up to arrays, it shouldn't be that difficult.

[XianForce]

They only expect us to know up to arrays 0.o? Where'd you see that?

And yeah... if the floppy disks are actually floppy, I don't know if I'll be able to contain my laughter. Budget Cuts likely haha.

But these contests probably have good and bad sides. I think it will be a fun experience either way. The thing I'm most excited about though, is that I'm finally starting to find people that have similar interests as me.

But thanks for that link! I've heard of it, but it completely slipped my mind. Everyone that wants to be in the contest bought a book, not sure what book they bought, but they are supposedly pounding through it. And we meet twice a week, to clear up any questions and such. I'm hoping towards the end of December they will be done, and then we can get through some stuff in that link =D.

I've downloaded a word document from a previous computer contest they had. But for some reason I can't seem to get it to open. I'm hoping I'll find some kind of reference in it.

[davidthefat]

They only expect us to know up to arrays 0.o? Where'd you see that?

And yeah... if the floppy disks are actually floppy, I don't know if I'll be able to contain my laughter. Budget Cuts likely haha.

But these contests probably have good and bad sides. I think it will be a fun experience either way. The thing I'm most excited about though, is that I'm finally starting to find people that have similar interests as me.

But thanks for that link! I've heard of it, but it completely slipped my mind. Everyone that wants to be in the contest bought a book, not sure what book they bought, but they are supposedly pounding through it. And we meet twice a week, to clear up any questions and such. I'm hoping towards the end of December they will be done, and then we can get through some stuff in that link =D.

I've downloaded a word document from a previous computer contest they had. But for some reason I can't seem to get it to open. I'm hoping I'll find some kind of reference in it.

You obviously wont be making a program over 5 mb... so whats so dumb about that? I suggest you just practice stupid stuff like finding all the prime numbers in an array or some other stupid stuff thats in the contest.

[RyanPridgeon]

Last year (and soon this year) I competed in some "Programming Olympiad" or "Computing Olympiad" thing or something, which I think might be similar. In that we could choose whatever language we wanted, as long as it produced a console based .exe which the judges could run.

In mine they didn't even check the code, so you don't have to worry about commenting ETC.

However I warn you, these programs are hard. They're mostly more to do with logic and maths knowledge than programming itself. Any of them could have been done with a basic knowledge of loops, conditionals and arrays, but the thinking was really hard. It started out quite simple as a program of finding patterns of words in strings, and got harder to the likes of a tetris-style puzzle console game and a program which works out all the possible combinations of coins you could use to make a sum of money.

I mean sure, given time anyone could write these programs. But I only had 2 hours so couldn't finish and only got a certificate

[Kros]

They only expect us to know up to arrays 0.o? Where'd you see that?

Judges will be available to help with system commands, but we will assume the contestants have done some programming, up to arrays.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

[XianForce]

They only expect us to know up to arrays 0.o? Where'd you see that?

Judges will be available to help with system commands, but we will assume the contestants have done some programming, up to arrays.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

dang... How in the world did I miss that lol.

But I was finally able to see some of the questions for previous competitions, and they don't look extremely hard. Will definitely take a bit of thought though. Thanks for the help guys =p