High School Students Get Creative in IUPUI Computer Programming Contest

Given some number of occupants, what is the probability that two people in the same room have the same birthday? You might take a guess, using your life experiences. Or, better yet, you might write a computer program to deliver a more exact answer. That's exactly what area students who competed in the IUPUI High School Computer Programming Contest did.

Fifty-one students from 10 high schools participated in the second annual contest, which was hosted by IUPUI's Department of Computer and Information Science. Students were presented with 10 programming problems and given four hours to write the programs. They were judged by the speed with which they completed the programs, and how the programs conformed to the specifications of the problems. Students competed in teams of two members.

"The contest problems are typical of those attempted by college level students," said Shiaofen Fang, associate professor and chair of the Computer Science Department. "Our faculty are pleased at the number of students who accepted the challenge of this contest and are impressed at the originality that is evident in their answers."

The winning team was Alex Hearn and Sahil Yakhmi, both freshmen at Park Tudor. This is the second consecutive year that a Park Tudor team has won the IUPUI programming contest. Second place went to two seniors at Carmel High School, John Zhong and Tylor Zou. Senior Samuel Dittmer and sophomore Sidney Fletcher, from Zionsville Community High School, earned third place for their efforts.

The contest was open to all high school students in the Indianapolis metropolitan area. The contest problems and entries were created and judged by IUPUI students who are members of the Computer Science Club.

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