First contact!

Morten Kromberg and Roger Hui duke it out in cyberspace in this sci-fi epic

Rosetta Challenge tasks added to the 2010 Dyalog Programming Contest

In response to feedback suggesting that the suite of tasks in the 2010 Dyalog Programming Contest appears to be a little more comprehensive than many students have time for at this busy part of the academic year, we have decided to add a ‘Rosetta Code Challenge’ to the 2010 Programming Contest, which will run in parallel with the main programming competition. Six weeks remain until the submission deadline on July 18th.

Rosettacode.org is a site which presents solutions to the same (nearly 400) tasks in as many different programming languages as possible. At this time, a relatively small number of solutions have been posted in APL, so we are keen to encourage APL users to submit more APL solutions. To this end, we are offering a USD 250 prize for the best solution to each of the following five (fun!) problems selected from rosettacode.org:

1. Animate a pendulum
2. Knapsack problem
3. Happy numbers
4. Hofstadter-Conway sequence
5. Monty Hall problem

See the Rosetta Code Challenge page for more details on how to participate. The terms and conditions of the main programming competition are not affected by the Rosetta Code Challenge, with the exception that anyone who submits solutions for two or more tasks in EITHER competition will participate in the drawing for the 20 consolation prizes worth USD 100 each.

As is the case for the main Dyalog Programming Contest, you can win the same amount of prize money by referring a winner to the competition as you can by actually participating. While prize winners must be eligible for an Educational License for Dyalog APL, anyone can win referral awards! Be the person who refers the winners for all five Rosetta Challenge tasks and you could win USD 1,250!

Best Regards,

Morten Kromberg
CTO, Dyalog Ltd

Richard Lathwell confesses

My father mentions that he taught Benoit Mandelbrot APL

APL is not for programmers

Jan Karman thinks APL too good for programmers. Part 2 of his series Financial math in q has been posted online.

Graduation of mortality

Just posted at Vector: Jan Karman starts a series of articles on financial mathematics in q with Graduation of mortality

World Wide Computer Programming Contest

Dyalog has announced $11,000 of prizes to be won in a world-wide computer programming contest.

About polynomials

Just posted at Vector

About polynomials Part 2 of Gianluigi Quario's article on the representation and evaluation of polynomials.

Quickly correlating Kendall

Just posted at Vector:

Quick Calculation of Kendall’s Rank Correlation Distribution Phew! Gordon Sutcliffe shares a fast way to calculate Kendall’s rank correlation frequency distribution.

Curve it like Cauchy

Just posted at Vector:

Curve it like Cauchy Bill Jones & Cliff Reiter use some simple J expressions to draw out the implications of Cauchy’s Integral Theorem – and discover startling and lovely shapes.

And a correction: the recent APL2000 conference was in Bethesda, MD, not Baltimore.