Compute This B

[Tramsarran]

You're right. Compute This seemed too much like a webquest. I'd rather have something that will be much easier to prepare for. It's hard to utilize one's knowledge of Excel if one can't find the data needed. What I want is to be given a topic and some useful resources so from there we have to "Compute" the information located within the resources in accordance to the requirements of what data we need to have. I needed more time to compute this, not find this. Can't compute what I fail at finding.

[quadratic]

no using search engine properly and knowing what to type is a computer skill

[chalker]

time?

how efficient and compact the written program is?

i don't really KNOW..i was just suggesting something...

And how do you judge the level of efficiency or compactness of a program? Number of characters? Bytes? Oftentimes that makes the program less 'friendly' because instead of having a lot of comments and meaningful variable names you cut things down to the bare bones. I'd love to have an event that requires programming as part of it, but as I said above we haven't been able to come up with something that meets even the basic criteria I outlined.

[chalker]

......

I'd like that a lot of data could be given to us and our mission/goal is to arrange as much data as we can within the given time. The scores will vary greatly between the teams and it'll be extremely difficult to get a perfect score as there would be lots of data that needs to be utilized and presented in some sort of manner.

Another idea would be to design some sort of presentation; either simply creating a powerpoint and presenting it or saving one on the computer for the judges to grade. We could be given some information about the topic and what we have to present along with some resources that we may use get most of the information. We'd be looking for data but not specific numbers, stats, etc. I have a lot I can say to elaborate on this idea later if there is no better idea. Maybe at Regionals the topic could be something like harmful cleaning products(what it is, examples of it, effects of it, alternatives, action you can take, etc.) Creativity in the computer presentation should count just as strongly as the data presented or "computed". I'll elaborate more on this idea if it seems to follow the required guidelines.

Interesting ideas. Can you give a more concrete example of what you mean by 'arranging' as much data and then how the event supervisors would score the arranged data?

Regarding the presentation idea, how would you objectively grade it?

[zyzzyva980]

Sounds of Music also requires a presentation, and I'm still trying to figure out how that can be objectively graded.

[TheGenius]

And how do you judge the level of efficiency or compactness of a program? Number of characters? Bytes? Oftentimes that makes the program less 'friendly' because instead of having a lot of comments and meaningful variable names you cut things down to the bare bones. I'd love to have an event that requires programming as part of it, but as I said above we haven't been able to come up with something that meets even the basic criteria I outlined.

There are ways of timing the execution of a program, although I'm not quite sure of how they work. As for the size, it should be based on the size of the compiled code, not the source code, so comments, whitespace, and variable names would not be factors.

[tuftedtitmouse12]

no using search engine properly and knowing what to type is a computer skill

hmm....at state competition, could you find the data for some things? i couldn't...and i didn't know that you could fake data...

[tuftedtitmouse12]

time?

how efficient and compact the written program is?

i don't really KNOW..i was just suggesting something...

And how do you judge the level of efficiency or compactness of a program? Number of characters? Bytes? Oftentimes that makes the program less 'friendly' because instead of having a lot of comments and meaningful variable names you cut things down to the bare bones. I'd love to have an event that requires programming as part of it, but as I said above we haven't been able to come up with something that meets even the basic criteria I outlined.

thats fine...i was just suggesting something...i never expected it to go as an event...though it would be interesting.

[zyzzyva980]

and i didn't know that you could fake data...

Guys... you aren't supposed to fake data. Plain and simple. You aren't supposed to do it. This is not a "faking data" competition. This is a "find the data" competition. If you can't find the data, you aren't doing your job. It is against the main rules of Science Olympiad to fake data. It destroys the integrity of the competition. If someone else is doing it, they will get what they deserve later on. You should at least have enough class to do the competition RIGHT.

[tuftedtitmouse12]

ugh.....z, but you don't GET it...at state competition, they7 gave us some data to find but we couldn't find it...we also talked with other teams afterwards and THEY said that they couldn't find it...besides, if you fake data, then at least you get points for doing the graphing....as i found out after compute this was over...