![[University of Waterloo]](/images/logobars/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
|
Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Gesturing at blackboard diagram]](/images/2006/0227unlimited.jpg)
Nearly 50
high school students who have taken part in
Waterloo Unlimited
enrichment programs were due back on campus on Thursday, February 16
-- the day of the winter storm closing -- to start a three-day
"return engagement" event aimed at "university
readiness". The reunion finally got started the
following morning with a session on how to listen to a university
lecture; students spread out across campus, then reunited to talk about
what they'd heard. Ryan Voisin of Resurrection Catholic Secondary School
in Kitchener demonstrates centre-of-mass calculations from a civil
engineering lecture he'd just attended. Photo by Doug Copping.
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"The aim of the competition," the CCC brochure explains, "is to provide students with an opportunity to test their ability in designing, understanding and programming algorithms."
Today's contest is actually "Stage 1" of the CCC, as about 25 of the top performers in the senior division will be invited to UW in the spring for two mornings of "Stage 2" competition. Medals will be awarded to the top students in that round of problem-solving The results of the two stages will also be used for selecting the Canadian team for the 2006 International Olympiad in Informatics to be held in Mexico. The IOI is an international competition in informatics (computing) for senior secondary school students from around the world. More than 75 countries were invited to participate in the 2005 IOI, which was held in Poland.
Computer science lecturer Troy Vasiga is the director of the competition. "This contest," says Vasiga, "provides an extra-curricular opportunity for a range of students who are interested in computer science: whatever score competitors achieve, they will hopefully have learned something new and interesting. For those problems which the students don't know how to answer, high school teachers can expand on them and tie them into their lecture topics.
"Overall, I think the contest provides a good educational opportunity for high school students across the country, and hopefully provides an attractive element for some students to think about studying computer science further."
In last year's competition, one of the question asked students to think about a pinball machine that keeps track of past players' scores. "You are to implement the pinball machine's ranking algorithm," it said. "The first line of input contains a positive integer, t, the total number of games played in the lifetime of the machine. t lines follow, given the scores of these games, in chronological order. Input is contained in the file s5.in. You are to output the average of the ranks (rounded to two digits after the decimal) that would be displayed on the board."
"In general," says the brochure, "the following are the types of questions asked: problems that are mathematical in nature, programming, and design and analysis of an algorithm. The CCC is not a competition in the use of software packages or in designing graphics. The problems require creative problem-solving skills and the ability to write programs to implement solutions."
Competitors in Stage 1 are allowed to use "virtually any programming language which is supported at their school," with a suggestion of "Pascal, C/C++, Basic, Turing, Java, and their various dialects". Stage 2 competitors have to use Pascal or C/C++.
Tonight at 7:00, the Muslim Student Association, the African Students Association and the Waterloo Public Interest Research Group co-sponsor a showing of the documentary film "The Pilgrimage of Malcolm X", as a celebration of Black History Month. "In responding to the ancient call of the prophet Abraham to perform the Hajj," a commentator says, "Malcolm took a step that would transform him: he would rise above what America had made him by realizing that at his core he was no different from the whites he resented. Moreover, he realized that those who were oppressive were in worse shape and in more need of sympathy than those being oppressed." Tonight's free showing will be in the multipurpose room of the Student Life Centre.
Tomorrow, the UW chapter of Engineers Without Borders will run a series of events to raise awareness about Canada's role in ending extreme poverty. The event will kick off at noon in front of the Student Life Centre with students and staff 'Washing out Poverty' by paying to wash the backs of EWB members with cold water. Then comes the "Great EWB Race", where teams will take part in outreach and educational activities across campus. The day, which is taking place across Canada by various EWB chapters, will also contain a mass writing session to send welcome cards to newly elected MPs -- and, organizers says, "will send a strong message to the new prime minister that Canadians want to break down the barriers to effective international development."
With the Leave the Pack Behind stop-smoking contest nearing its end, organizers have proclaimed UW Smoke-Free Day on Thursday to raise awareness about tobacco issues, in particular, environmental tobacco smoke. Says Rosanna Morales of LTPB: "All UW students will be asked to demonstrate their support for SFD by not smoking on campus and participating in fun activities throughout the day, including a free pancake breakfast (for the first 300 students), an information fair, games, entertainment and a guest speaker. The LTPB team will offer students information about our event and they are free to choose to whether or not to support our efforts. The event will run from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and will be held in the Student Life Center. A highlight of our event will be a keynote speakers event from 12:10 to 1 p.m. We have invited Dr. Scott Leatherdale, behavioural scientist with Cancer Care Ontario (also UW alumni), to give a talk about tobacco control and what communities can do to create environments that are supportive of healthy lifestyle choices, given that the majority of current smokers want to quit."
A leading expert on environmental health risks will give a public talk Thursday afternoon, exploring the safety of drinking water in Canada. Steve Hrudey, the 2006 TD Canada Trust/Walter Bean Visiting Professor in the Environment, will deliver a lecture titled "150 Years and Counting: Drinking Water Safety Lessons are Learned Slowly." In his talk, Hrudey will examine drinking water safety in Canada, ranging from the Walkerton disaster to the recent Kashechewan reservation evacuation. Despite advances in technology and painful lessons, he says, Canadian governments seem slow to understand how to assure water safety. The event, open to the public, will start Thursday at 3:30 in the Humanities Theatre. Admission is free.
| WHEN AND WHERE |
|
Apple brown bag seminar: "Speed Your Time to Results in
Research with Apple," 12:00 to 2:00, Campus TechShop, Student Life Centre.
Career workshop: "Work Search Strategies", special session for international students, 4:30, Tatham Centre room 2218, registration online. Stress relaxation session, next in the weekly series, Wednesday 12:00, Math and Computer room 5158, sponsored by Employee Assistance Program. Free noon concert at Conrad Grebel University College: "Orchid Ensemble: Chinese-Western Fusions", Wednesday 12:30, Grebel chapel. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics lecture: Lisa Randall, Harvard University, "Warped Passages." Wednesday 7 p.m., Waterloo Collegiate Institute, ticket information online. 'E-Merging Learning Workshop' by Mark Morton, Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology, Thursday 11:30, Flex Lab, Dana Porter Library, details online. Financial Econometrics Conference (eighth annual), sponsored by Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance and Institute for Quantitative Finance and Insurance, Friday, Davis Centre room 1302, details online. |
| Actually Wednesday evening (March 1), not Thursday |
Coming Friday and Saturday is the second annual International Development Student Conference, to be held in the Davis Centre. The conference will address such issues as "What do rich nations owe developing nations? What is the extent of our environmental impact? Are there universal human rights? Should multiculturalism require assimilation?" Keynote speaker will be Naresh Singh of the Canadian International Development Agency. Attendance at the talks, and at the NGO Fair to be held both days, is free; there's more information (and registration) online.
People who do project management are the kind of people who need to book their time far ahead, says Dean Perkins of UW's continuing education office. That's why he's drawing attention now to a course that won't be offered until May: "Juggling Multiple Projects", a two-day workshop that builds on the "Applied Tools and Techniques" project management course offered earlier. Dates for this one: May 1 and 2. Continuing ed can be reached at 888-4002 for more information -- and, as usual, there's a 50 per cent discount on the course fee for UW staff members.
A recent addition to electronic resources in UW's library is the Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals -- which was, as its title suggests, created at UW. It's the magnum opus of John North, a Victorian specialist in UW's department of English. The reference work boasts "every periodical and newspaper published on a regular basis, from daily to annually, in every language, within England: a goldmine for cultural historians, genealogists and all subject specialists." In paper form it occupies 20 red-bound volumes; electronically it's a lot smaller but has the same 50,000 listings, now available to researchers in history, literature and other fields at UW.
The schedule of computing courses to be offered in March? is now online in the usual place, says Peggy Day of information systems and technology. "This month we concentrate on theses, with Creating Your Thesis with Word, Creating Your Thesis with LaTeX, Submitting Your Thesis Electronically, plus Database Management with Access, Equations with Word and PowerPoint. UW-ACE courses include Action Editor Part I and II plus Gradebook."
Since it's Pancake Tuesday -- the day before Ash Wednesday begins the Christian season of Lent -- there will be pancakes available for lunch at Brubakers cafeteria in the Student Life Centre. . . . The bookstore is launching another remainder sale in the South Campus Hall concourse, today through Thursday. . . . Pick Your Plan Week is under way, time for undergraduates to make any necessary changes to majors, minors and options. . . .
CAR