Texas UIL Computer Science
| Index | This web page contains information for the Texas UIL Computer Science contest. Please email Mike Scott with questions or suggestions. |
| Recent Updates | May 5, 2008: Posted the State written exam in pdf format and the material from the hands on portion of the state contest in zip format. April 14, 2008: Here are the 2008 regional materials. (zip file format) The zip file contains the written test, hands on problem statements, hands on sample data and expected output, hands on judging data and expected output, and suggested solutions. The judging data for the Goldbach problem requires the
addition of data for primes that are the sum of two equal primes. For
example 34 = 17 + 17 is part of the output. The suggested solution to this
problem should be changed so the for loop test is On the bongo problem the spaces between letters and numbers on the 7th and 8th data sets should be removed. March 31, 2008: Per the UIL CS advisory council request I am posting all of the district materials to help teams prepare for regionals.
I have also gotten several requests for the 2007 regional hands on materials. I apologize these were not posted earlier.
March 17, 2008: I have posted this year's dry run problem. It is essentially the same as year's past. The purpose of the dry run is a communications check of the contestants' systems and the judging systems. Teams may have the dry run solution preloaded on their machines but need to delete it after the dry run, before the actual contest starts. Here is the dry run problem description(pdf format), the input file, the expected output, and a suggested solution. February 29, 2008: The revised contest director's guide for the pilot of the hands on contest at Districts has been posted. I have also updated the materials at the district hands on page with the 2008 version. (No significant changes from the 2007 materials.) September 28, 2007: The original practice test had errors on questions 22 and 25. I have posted a corrected version. Thanks to Charlotte Scroggs for finding the errors! August 27, 2007: Posted the 2007 - 2008 topic list, supplemental class reference, a practice test and a commentary on the practice test. All files are pdf format. August 21, 2007: UIL will again be conducting a pilot of the hands on programming portion of the Computer Science contest at the district level during the 2007 - 2008 contest year. Computer Science coaches as sponsors are urged to contact their UIL District Academic Directors to agree to participate in the pilot. UIL will be contacting the UIL District Academic Directors via letter and email this fall to offer them them opportunity for their district to participate in the pilot. There will be a third Computer Science Session at the UIL Student Activities Conferences this fall to demonstrate how to run and judge a hands on contest. This session is designed for contestants, CS sponsors and coaches, and school UIL coordinators. Posted the minutes from the UIL CS Advisory Committee meeting which took place on August 17, 2007. May 7, 2007: The 2007 State contest hands on data. (Problem statements, input files, output files, and sample solutions.) are now available. May 4, 2007: The UIL computer science listserv is up. This is a forum to discuss issues with the contest and potential changes. Subscribe to the listserv by sending an email to |
| Useful Links | UIL
Homepage
The Sun Microsystems Java homepage Download the Java SDK Version 6.0 View the Java Standard Library Documentation (Version 6.0) Download the Java Standard Library Documentation Scroll down to the link for "J2SE 6.0 Documentation" and click to download. The instructions for installing the documentation are at this web page. The Java compiler for Macintoshes The PC^2 judging environment. This is a networked judging environment that may be used to judge hands on contests. |
| IDEs | The Eclipse IDE
(interactive development environment)
TextPad. (Not really an IDE. A text editor, with some built in programming capability. (Syntax highlighting, ability to compile and run Java programs with keyboard shortcuts.) |
| References | The Java Language Specification online (one of the official references for UIL Computer Science) |
| Hands-On Programming Practice Problems |
Previous years' hands on problem sets for UIL Computer Science JavaBat. Java bat was designed by Nick Parlante of Stanford University. These are simple programming problems that do not require reading from a file, but are very good for practicing logic, Strings, arrays, decision making, and loops. Problems can be written, compiled, and checked online. Universidad de Valladolid hands on programming problems archive and online judging system. The USA Computing Olympiad Training Program Gateway. More hands on programming problems. Top Coder. A site that runs many programming contests. You must register to use the site. The practice rooms are especially useful. Top Coder has a high school specific contest. See the link for more details. |
| Third Party Practice Materials and Teacher Resources | Best of Texas Contest. A distributed contest run over a period of several weeks. CIS Tests. Also contains free programming problems and explanations of new topics on this years contest. Blue Pelican Java. An online textbook for high school Computer Science using Java. A+ Computer Science Teaching Materials APCentral. For teachers of AP computer science. Especially useful are the teacher's resources pages available from the course homepage. APCS A homepage. APCS AB homepage. |
| Interesting Applications of Computer Science |
A page about the
Austin
Villa Robot Dog Soccer Team. The movie show the dogs in action. Here
is the home page for the
Austin Villa Robot Dog Soccer Team. The team is run by
Professor Peter Stone
of UT. . A traffic simulation for automated cars using a reservation system. (When you choose the Simulate on this page you must then select the Simulator button at the top left of the follow on page and select run to start the simulation.) This is one of Kurt Dresner's research areas. Kurt is a CS PhD candidate at UT. Look at this movie of a later version of the system that allows for turns. And compare it to this video of urban traffic in India. The great race. Getting an autonomous car to drive across the desert. Sponsored by NSF.Alice. An fun, introductory tool for learning to program. From CMU. Playing with fire. "Animated Suspended Particle Explosions." Examples of what can is being done in the area of computer graphics, by Professor Okan Arikan of UT. Goggle Trends. Compare you favorite Hollywood star with computer science. |
| Reading From Files |
Java 6.0 is the official version for the hands on portion of the Regional and State contests. The Scanner class, a member of the Java Standard Library in version 5.0. Here is a discussion about the ins and outs of using the Scanner class to solve problem number 2 from the regional hands on contest.
Here is problem 2 from the 2004 regional hands on contest, solved using the Scanner class. |