Archive for August 31, 2010

A Thought: on Exercise and Fitness !

Aug 31st

A few hundred years ago if you spoke about the importance of ‘exercise’ for keeping ‘fit’, people would have laughed at you. Today? We call it ‘essential’ and schools and institutions teach how to go about it. in those days, they got all the exercise they needed from work, outside or at home – and remained ‘physically fir’. Making a living, raising a family, household chores, walking to and from places, was enough and gave them all the required movement of the God-given body parts, so they didn’t have to worry about any ‘exercise’ outside this.

Today? Today, we have fitness centers, gyms, and personal trainers. (I have nothing against them or the people frequenting them!) There are high-tech machines, and even electronic games to help us exercise. Each gadget comes with its own ‘selling points’. Some you can strap to your arms and legs and tummy and relax in front of the TV — they claim its vibrations give you your daily recommended quota of exercise. You can even sleep off – and the required exercise for the day is done!! There are virtual reality exercises, dancercise (exercise through dancing – ‘day clubs’ to compete with night clubs??), elliptical, and who knows what else – and more will follow. So why worry? Cheer up!

Well then, in the future when folk will not have even the time we have today (for the exercise), they can strap a few machines when going to bed … and be physically fit. Hurray! Good Luck!!

Excercise, Fitness

Amrita ACM ICPC – 2010

Aug 31st

Posted by P.K Binu in Computer Science

3 comments

: 2009 ICPC Contestants @ Amritapuri Campus

ACM ICPC – Asia Amritapuri Site Regional Contest 2010

(http://icpc.amrita.ac.in/2010)

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is a multitier, team-based, programming competition operating under the auspices of ACM and headquartered at Baylor University. The contest involves a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the ACM-ICPC World Finals. Participation has grown to several tens of thousands of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines at almost 2,000 universities from over 80 countries on six continents. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. Quite simply, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) traces its roots to a competition held at Texas A&M in 1970 hosted by the Alpha Chapter of the UPE Computer Science Honor Society. The idea quickly gained popularity within the United States and Canada as an innovative initiative to raise the aspirations, performance, and opportunity of the top students in the emerging field of computer science. The contest evolved into a multi-tier competition with the first Finals held at the ACM Computer Science Conference in 1977. Operating under the auspices of ACM and headquartered at Baylor University since 1989, the contest has expanded into a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the ACM-ICPC World Finals. Since IBM became sponsor in 1997, the contest has increased over 800%. Participation has grown to involve twenty-two thousand of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines from over 1,931 universities from 82 countries on six continents. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. Quite simply, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world. The annual event is comprised of several levels of competition:

Most grueling moments @ the contest environment

Battle of the Brains - The contest pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only. Others require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. Still others are simply too hard to solve – except, of course, for the world’s brightest problem-solvers.

Revealing the problem solutions by judges on stage after the contest

Judging is relentlessly strict. The students are given a problem statement – not a requirements document. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges’ test data and acceptance criteria. Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. You don’t want to waste your customer’s time when you are dealing with the supreme court of computing. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner.

Amrita in ACM ICPC

ACM – ICPC is the world’s largest programming contest, primarily sponsored by IBM, and this is the sixth year Amrita is conducting the Asia Regional Contest. In India, only two institutions( IIT Kanpur and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham) are authorized by ACM to conduct this contest. This year, it is going to be a multisite contest where more than 150 teams are expected to participate from different campuses inside and outside India. In the years 2005 and 2006, the contest was held in Coimbatore campus. Last three years since 2007, the contest is being held in Amritapuri (Kerala) campus. During the past three years, 200 (60 to 65 teams) participants attend the Onsite Contest at Amritapuri Campus and this year, we are increasing it to 450 (more than 150 teams). To attract the participation of mentors (coaches) of these teams, we are planning to announce “Coaches Award”, and for the students, “Special Award for Top Ten Teams”, “Best Performance Award”, etc. The contest is a three day event with lot of excitement, fun and games with an excursion to the nearby scenic places.

Contestants enjoying delicious food

Amrita ICPC Online & Onsite Contest Dates Announced

Online Contest is also called as the “Preliminary Round” scheduled on October 17th 09:30 AM IST. All the teams shall complete the registration process before October 10th in order to participate in the Online contest. For more information on the registration process please visit the site

http://icpc.amrita.ac.in/2010

The teams shortlisted from the online contest will be invited for Onsite Contest which will be held in Amrita University, Amritapuri Campus on 11^th and 12^th of December, 2010. Two to three teams selected from the onsite contest will participate in the ACM-ICPC, 2011 World Finals to be held in Cairo, Egypt.