Programming contest [Rev Physics masters]

[James Spencer]

On May 1, 2004, at 1:09 AM, Dar Scott wrote:

>
> On Friday, April 30, 2004, at 10:23 PM, David Kwinter wrote:
>
>> So who's our physics master? I have experience backtesting & 
>> optimizing systems once I've programmed them - but defining the 
>> environment following their specs looks extremely challenging.
>
> I'm not sure how much this is a physics problem.  The simulator is 
> spec'd out exactly and that takes care in doing the low level coding.  
> Some physics might be handy in getting close to a solution.  However, 
> this looks like a search problem to me.  Well, at first glance.
>
> It is a nice problem in that it can be broken up into pieces and the 
> pieces might be done in alternate ways.
>

You are right: last year's problem was a pure computer programming 
problem.  There was no physics involved at all as the contest 
organizers defined the physics of the problem completely and the math 
that was to be used to solve the physics.  I think you can expect the 
same this year.  The few past problems I've looked at did not require 
any knowledge of anything other than how to program.  The consistent 
theme seems to be that algorithm is paramount with processing time 
being secondary but not insignificant.  (When you have only 72 hours to 
write your program and submit your results, a brute force solution 
isn't likely to be successful as you won't find an optimum solution in 
that time, certainly without a supercomputer.)

Spence

James P. Spencer
Rochester, MN

jspencer78 at charter.net

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