Engineers to compete in Texas

Four engineering students will win the most prestigious computer programming competition in the nation today. Or so says Engineering Dean Gregory Farrington. The 15th annual Association for Computing Machinery Scholastic Programming Contest will take place in San Antonio, Texas today, attracting teams from all over the world. The University's team finished second in the regional competition, qualifying it for the finals with 25 other teams. Farrington said the University's success so far is "wonderful," and that the University's team members "are going to clean up." Farrington also said he feels the engineering students are "outstandingly" prepared. "How can they do anything but win?" Farrington said. In the competition, each team will be allotted five hours to solve five "real world" computer problems, such as decoding a message in cryptography. Engineering junior David Elliston said in a written statement that problems at the regional tournament ranged from easy -- locating hidden words in blocks of letters -- to the more difficult task of writing an optimum program for a supercomputer and determining whether it should solve problems sequentially or solve several problems at a time, or a combination of the two. Team advisor and Associate Computer Science Professor Insup Lee, who did not travel with the team, said last night he is "excited" because it is an honor to be in the final rounds of this tournament. Elliston added that the biggest challenge will be that each team is given only one computer and that allocating time efficiently is of great importance. The University finished third three years ago and former students have helped this year's competitors by giving them their old questions. The contest is sponsored by AT&T; and has been expanding rapidly since it began 14 years ago.

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