Monday, Nov. 18, 1985
Campus/Area
University Daily Kansan
7
Cherril Youngblood/Special to the KANSAN
Wynn B. Rost, left, and Randall B. Sparkman, both members of the Southeast Missouri State University computer team, try to solve a programming problem. KU was the host of the North Central Computer Programming Contest on Saturday in Strong Hall.
Computer contest tests skills
By John Williams Of the Kansan staff
While KU football players were battling on the field in Lincoln, Neb., University of Nebraska students were winning a different sort of contest at the University of Kansas Saturday.
The gridron they competed on consisted of minds against computers, a clock and 19 other teams. Nebraska wowed with their programming contest.
Nebraska finished four of 11 problems within the six-hour time period. The second and third place teams, Northeast Missouri State University and Kansas State University, both finished three problems.
The competition involved 20 regional teams and was sponsored by the KU department of computer science and the KU chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery, a professional organization of people who work in computer-related jobs, Rose Marra, secretary of the KU chapter, said Saturday.
The main goal of the competition was to have fun, but more importantly, it tested the teams' programming abilities, organization and speed of understanding an unfamiliar computer system. she said
"They have never used the
system," Marra said. "We sent them some background information, giving some general information about the Honeywell, but nothing is like the real thing until you can actually use it."
KU's team, which placed second at a competition last week at the University of North Dakota, could not compete because of the unfair advantage of using its own computer system, she said.
Ken Jordan, Lawrence senior and a judge of the competition, said the difficulty of problems ranged from very hard to very easy, but were not much different to problems assigned in CS 200 classes. Most problems, designed by computer science professors, were mathematical, while others were problems of business application.
"The really tough problems, of which there are one or two, are to separate the good programmers from the really good programmers." Marra said.
Jordan also helped prepare programs to make the computer more user friendly.
"We had to make it so they could learn a lot about the system in a short period of time," he said. "We had to make it easy for them."
With any computer system, he said, programming commands can
be wrong and the computer will tell the programmer. One problem that would make the computer system harder to use, however, was printed in various, obscure places in the program. So Jordan and others had to come up with ways of printing all error statements in one place.
Bob Dowling, a junior at Quincy College, Quincy, III., said learning the computer system was the easiest part of the competition, but waiting for print programs near the end of the competition was the hardest part.
"But the system was still different," he said. "If it had been a system we were used to we wouldn't have had some of the errors in programs we had."
Gary Krone, a junior at Quincy College, said it was human error and not machine error that was at fault for Dowling's errors in programming. Dowling had part of his program erased at one time, costing him about half an hour to retype the commands into the computer.
Larry Stoll, a senior at Quincy College, said the team knew what to expect, and the key goal was just to have a good time.
"But to top the fact that we only sent one program in completed and didn't place, we were also team 13," he said.
KU considers Geneva talks
Films depict arms race
Summit fever is hitting the University of Kansas.
By Bengt Ljung Of the Kansan staff
As President Ronald Reagan and Soviet party leader Mikhail Gorbachev prepare for their meeting tomorrow and Wednesday in Geneva, a science will show films and posters concerning the nuclear arms race.
In Alderson Auditorium of the Kansas Union, students will be able to consider the same questions and arguments that Reagan and Gorbachev will be tossing across the negotiating table.
"I'll show a series of films on this and hope that people will go away with a little more information," Clifford Ketzel, professor of political science at the showing, said yesterday. "It will increase the marketplace of ideas.
the information against war and for disarmament."
Eight films and filmstrips will be shown both today and tomorrow. They have been produced by diverse organizations to provide a wide variety of views. Ketzel said.
"I hope to influence people to use
"I tried to get more on the administration's side but couldn't," he said.
The films range from promoting the Strategic Defense Initiative commonly known as Star Wars and peace through strength to promoting arms control, he said.
"I have a slide show from an arms bazaar in Washington where soldiers shop for weapons," Ketzel said. "A military officer from the Warsaw prison was able to sneak in, although this was supposed to be very top secret."
Ketzel also will display about 35 anti-war posters in the fourth floor lobby from a collection of 189 posters, "Art and Social Comment."
Australian, Japanese, English, German and American posters are in the collection.
Ketzel said none of the films or posters necessarily reflected the position of the department of political science.
The films and filmstrips will be shown at the same times today and tomorrow as follows:
■ "Weapons Bazaar" and "What About the Russians?" at 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
■ "High Frontier" and "A Critical Look at the Star Wars Defense System" at 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
■ "Peace Through Strength" and "U.S. vs. U.S.S.R. Who's Ahead?" at 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.
"No First Use" and "Ballistic Defense in the Nuclear Age" at 11:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
By Liz Maggard Of the Kansan staff
The University of Kansas Wind Ensemble will take a musical march through the history of military bands when it performs a joint concert with the University Band at 8 p.m. tomorrow in Crafton-Preyer Theatre at Murphy Hall.
Bob Foster, KU director of bands, said yesterday that the University Band, conducted by John Grashel, associate professor of music education, would present the first portion of the concert.
The 40-member ensemble, conducted by Foster, will then present its musical chronology, "A Parade of Marches."
Foster said the ensemble's portion of the concert would begin with two fife and drum pieces from the Revolutionary War performed by four piccolo players and a drummer.
Foster said the drummer would play a rope-tension snare drum similar to the drums used in the late 1700s.
Another group of ensemble members then will perform two marches that were performed in 1776 by the U.S. Marine Band, "Washington's March" and "The President's March." The Marine Band, founded in 1776, is the oldest continuous musical organization in the United States.
Sheet music of the arrangements used in 1776 was obtained from the Marine Band archives in Philadelphia.
"It's very interesting for me," he said. "This is something no one at KU has ever done before."
Other marches presented by the ensemble will include "Military March," by Beethoven, "American Civil War Fantasy," by Jerry Bilk, "The Gladiator," by John Philip Sousa, "the Commando March," by Samuel Barber, and the official march of the U.S. Marine Corps, "Semper Fidelis."
Foster said that each of the concert selections had an
interesting story behind it and that the stories were part of the music's appeal.
For instance, he said, many people might be surprised to learn that Beethoven wrote a march.
Another composer better known for his symphonies also is represented in the concert, Foster said. "Commando March" was written by Samuel Barber as a contribution to the war effort during World War II and is Barber's only march.
"He wrote 'Military March' in the 1830s for a parade in London," Foster said. "Not many people think of Beethoven when they think of marches."
The University Band, conducted by Grashel and Gregory Clemons, Lawrence graduate student, will open the concert. The band will play a variety of concert band pieces, including "Jubilant Overture," by Alfred Reed, "Sine Nomine," by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and "Alvamar Overture," by James Barnes, associate professor of bands and music theory.
Barnes said the overture, commissioned by the Wichita school district for use by its honor band, was popular in Janan.
"A friend of mine who went to Japan to conduct said he'd done the piece five times in one week," Barnes said.
He said the overture *its* underwent a transformation when the sheet music was printed in Japanese.
"There's no such word as Alvamar," Barnes said. "Bob Billings, who developed the golf course, named it after his father and mother — Alva and Margaret. I got a call from my editor in New York who said he couldn't find the word in the dictionary. I explained that it was the name of a golf course."
Some time later, he said, he was attending a band and orchestra clinic in Chicago, when he was approached by a Japanese band director who said he liked to play the "Golf Course Overture."
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