Lack of Computer Science?

[tdooner]

Does anyone else lament the lack of Computer-related Science Olympiad events? I know that many 'real' scientists might look down at Computer Scientists, but overall I feel that Computer Science is as valid a discipline as any of the other testing events. (Full Disclosure: I am a Computer Science major).

I know that in high school I always loved doing Compute This even though it wasn't nearly computer programming. And, as I recall hearing, computer programming used to be an event many years ago.

In today's technological age, does anyone else feel like Science Olympiad could be more centered on computational sciences?

[quadratic]

Amen
java needs an event

[RandomPerson]

Amen
java needs an event

Please try to add more thought to your posts... its not very pleasant to read through all this borderline spam.

There was a long discussion on here a while ago, I'll see if I can find it. I agree that it is quite necessary, but there were some serious problems with such an event brought up.

Edit: Found: http://scioly.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php? ... e&start=30
and I'm going to recommend that this thread be merged with that one, I don't think this thread should be locked because I want the discussion to continue, and I frown on thread necromancy.

Just to restart the discussion here so people don't have to go back and look through everything, here was a very good post by DeltaHat

I've done a lot of thought about writing a computer science event and like the discussion of what I see here. After talking to a few state directors about the topic, I have come upon a few critical questions that must be answered before such an event can proceed.

1. How do you make a computer science event that requires no knowledge of computer science by the event supervisor? As Fleet said earlier, most schools have killed their computer science programs and don't have programmers on staff. Most SO tournaments are run by educators, especially at the regional level. If the event requires that the event supervisor assess the quality of a student's solution by any standard metric of software quality, the event is doomed to fail. There are simply not enough qualified judges within the SO system to run such an event.

2. How do you make a computer science tournament any better than the dozens that already exist? Wikipedia lists 45 individual computer science contests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:P ... g_contests). Computer scientists are a competitive bunch and have been using the tools of the trade to challenge and rank themselves for decades. What can we do in SO to provide a challenge that is not already being met elsewhere? Personally, I'd like to adapt RoboCode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocode) for SO. That would be awesome!

3. Is computer science actually within the scope of Science Olympiad? SO has traditionally focused on the physical sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, earth science...), the applied physical sciences (engineering, forensics...), and the greater scientific and research process/skills (experimental design, technical writing...). While computer science has "science" in it's name, it is fundamentally the study of information and computation; pure computer science has nothing to do with the physical world. There applications of computer science that have tremendous implications to the physical science world (computational biology and simulation, for example) but Computer Science is not "science" in traditional SO realm. If SO wants to add the "theory of computation" to its catalog of events, I'd be more than supportive.

[tdooner]

Good find. I gave that thread a read. After looking through it, it seems like most people want an AP Computer Science merged in here. I think that would be awful.

If there are physical building events, why not make a digital one? Make one where teams must control a virtual robot or some type of digital agent with a goal of competing against other players. Everything could be standardized -- there could be an "official" test suite under which your program must run and that will pass your program all necessary values. While the rest of the tournament is happening, your program is fighting against all other programs in a massive tournament.

Anyway, the odds of this becoming an official event are nonexistent, but could this be worth a shot as a trial event? I guess, if your regional competition held this event -- would you consider participating in it?

[sciencegeek100]

most would be too hard to run for the number of teams...

even science bowl doesn't have it anymore

[tdooner]

Too hard to run?!? As far as event scalability is concerned, a Computer Science "building" event would be extremely doable. The national event coordinators could even write the testing script to be used at the competition.

Let me pitch this event to everyone this way:

Imagine an event where you design a program (an algorithm) to compete. You're designing it to implement the most effective strategy for a certain 1v1 game. If your strategy is better than the opponent's strategy, your program will win. This would be an "impound" event -- you would hand your code over on a thumb drive to the event captain, who would then run it with his or her testing script. Over the course of the tournament, each team's program plays against every other team's program and some type of ranking system is used.

Would you (or assuming you knew how to program) like to compete in this event? Personally, I think it sounds like a good time. It's exactly like a building event (e.g. Sumo Bots) except digital.

[French_Toast]

Too hard to run?!? As far as event scalability is concerned, a Computer Science "building" event would be extremely doable. The national event coordinators could even write the testing script to be used at the competition.

Let me pitch this event to everyone this way:

Imagine an event where you design a program (an algorithm) to compete. You're designing it to implement the most effective strategy for a certain 1v1 game. If your strategy is better than the opponent's strategy, your program will win. This would be an "impound" event -- you would hand your code over on a thumb drive to the event captain, who would then run it with his or her testing script. Over the course of the tournament, each team's program plays against every other team's program and some type of ranking system is used.

Would you (or assuming you knew how to program) like to compete in this event? Personally, I think it sounds like a good time. It's exactly like a building event (e.g. Sumo Bots) except digital.

That, actually, is not a bad idea. I'd definitely give it a try if it were to become an event. I doubt I'd be any good at it, but I like that it's not just programming skill that we're testing, but also strategy(which may or may not be a good idea for SO specifically, but sure is fun).