{"id":26572,"date":"2018-11-14T05:00:17","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=26572"},"modified":"2018-11-13T23:39:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T05:39:37","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-student-team-null-zeros-in-at-speed-programming-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2018\/11\/14\/austin-peay-state-university-student-team-null-zeros-in-at-speed-programming-contest\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University student team \u2018null\u2019 zeros in at speed programming contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin Peay State University (APSU)<\/h2>\n

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Austin Peay State University (APSU) computer science students continue to impress this semester. <\/p>\n

Three APSU teams recently competed in a national speed-programming competition, and one team almost finished tops at its site. <\/p>\n

\"APSU's<\/a>

APSU’s Harrison Welch, front, Chris Tuncap and Lexie Nance were on team “null.”<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Team \u201cnull\u201d finished second to a team from the University of Memphis during the November 3rd competition at the University of Tennessee at Martin, and the team finished 54th<\/sup> out of 125 teams in the overall competition, the Association of Computing Machinery\u2019s International Collegiate Programming Contest Mid-Central USA region. <\/p>\n

Team null finished the same number of problems as the Memphis team, but needed more time to do it.<\/p>\n

That tiebreaker is all that separated the two, with the Memphis team finishing 39th<\/sup> in the overall competition. <\/p>\n

\u201cCompetitively, we\u2019re in the top half of schools, which is always good to say,\u201d Dr. James Church, team coach and Austin Peay assistant professor of computer science and information technology, said. \u201cWe\u2019re going up (against?) the University of Illinois (which earned three of the top four spots), we\u2019re going up against Vanderbilt, we\u2019re going up against the University of Chicago, Washington University. I mean these are some big names.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Happens at the Contest<\/h3>\n
\"Three<\/a>

Three APSU teams traveled to UT-Martin to compete in the International Collegiate.<\/p><\/div>\n

The International Collegiate Programming Contest is a real-time online competition that takes place over five hours at colleges across the country.<\/p>\n

Three-person teams try to solve as many programming problems as they can as quickly as they can. This year\u2019s regional contest offered nine problems, and the problems ramped up in difficulty quickly. All the problems were hard.<\/p>\n

The teams are ranked by how many problems they solve. If teams solve the same number of problems, the team who solved theirs faster is ranked higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a challenge, but it\u2019s really fun,\u201d Robyn Yates, a senior computer sciences student who participated on APSU team Namespace Awesome.<\/p>\n

[320left]\u201cWhen it starts, our goal is to read all the problems. If something feels like you can solve it, you start and split off. Toward the end everyone is working on the same one because usually they get a lot harder,\u201d stated Yates.<\/p>\n

Team null solved four problems, including the problem dubbed \u201cExam,\u201d which only 58 percent of the teams nationally solved. Team null solved it on the first try; most teams needed two tries. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe did very well,\u201d Church said. \u201cI\u2019m always impressed by any team that can get more than two problems right.\u201d <\/p>\n

All of APSU\u2019s teams solved three or four problems.<\/p>\n

Meet the APSU Teams<\/h3>\n

Austin Peay State University sent three teams. They were:<\/p>\n