Searchable Library Catalog (A3) Contest CSC228/B28
What is the contest about:
This contest is intented to acknowledge outstanding works
for assignment 3 (and also to motivate you to do an outstanding job).
Who can participate:
This contest is for students in the two sections of csc228
at StGeorge campus and in the section of cscB28 at
Scarborough campus.
In order to participate, you should have completed all parts of
the assignment. You shouldn't engage in extra work with the contest in mind,
if you didn't do all the requirements for the assignment.
What is an outstanding work
This is not so clearly defined. An outstanding job could be
a very careful implementation of A3, with extra efficiency issues being
taken into consideration.
It can be an excellent implementation containing extra features not
required by the assignment, for instance: more complex queries (combining
author and title, maybe allowing for "and" and "or" operations), range queries,
a third index (for instance: an inverted list for "subject" field), etc.
In any case, you should describe in your report the extra work you did,
in order to let us know about it.
How to participate
Submit your assignment normally and indicate you would like
to be considered for the contest, by sending an e-mail to your
instructor and a copy to the tutor marking your assignment (please,
also place a note in your assignment).
Your message should have "contest entry" in the subject line
and should describe the strengths of your assignment and any
extra feature you have included.
Who will judge
The three instructors will get your assignment after being marked, together
with any comments the tutor might have about it. Then,
the instructors will meet to look together at your assignment
(looking at the code and report, and running the program).
We reserve the right not to award any prize if we judge there is
no deserving assignment. On the other hand, we may find more
than one deserving assignment, in which case more than one prize
will be awarded.
The results of the contest and prizes
The winners of the contest are going to be announced in the web,
with a brief descriptions of the qualities found in their work.
The code may also be accessible if the students authorize.
The prize will be a letter by the instructors stating the nature of the
contest and assignment, and acknowledging the qualities found in the
particular work. We believe such a letter would be valuable to be attached
to the student's CV, and would provide qualitative information about the
student which often cannot be extracted from numerical grades.
Lucia Moura, Daniel Panario and Danny Zilio