Hilary Term Week 8 Newsletter
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Competitive Programming and Presburger Arithmetic Talk!
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Good Evening, CompSoc-ers,
Here we are at last, at Week 8! As a new committee arrives and the term winds to
a close, our schedule begins to settle with two final events.
On Monday, we're back for one last Competitive Programming stint! Join us
tomorrow at 7:30pm to face off against your friends and foes one last time before the term wraps up.
On Thursday at
5pm, we'll be joined by SWAG Officer-elect Hera Brown for an insightful talk on decidable extensions to Presburger arithmetic! Make sure to come along for our final talk of the term.
If you missed our Annual General Meeting, you can also find our new committee below.
On that note, until next term... toodle-pip!
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— Declan, CompSoc Secretary
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Fun Computing Fact: I expect we're all familiar with the video game DOOM and
all its incarnations on different platforms (including TypeScript's type system),
but you're probably less familiar with the techniques its original 1993 release used to run at a playable speed. Coming at a time before the advent of the 3D graphics accelerator units which would become modern-day GPUs, DOOM had to be rendered in software
on the CPUs of the time – slow Intel 386 or 486 processors which predate the Pentium.
One of the hardest tasks was making sure walls that shouldn't be seen weren't visible
to the player. id Software's developers used a technique new to video games – binary space partitioning, familiar to those who've taken Computer Graphics. DOOM's levels contained binary trees where leaves were convex subsectors, formed by subdividing
the map by wall planes. Nodes represent level planes, with two children describing what's in front or behind that plane. These BSP trees could be precomputed, allowing the game to quickly determine rendering order at any point in the level by traversing the
tree in reverse.
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At last night's Annual General Meeting, members elected the new committee to lead CompSoc
through 2025/26. Please welcome the following individuals!
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Still not a member? How?! Membership only costs £1 for LIFE, with tons of benefits -
discounts on merch and tickets, free food at all socials, our exclusive Discord server and more - so it's definitely worth signing up!
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Competitive Programming – Eighth Week Contest
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As Week 8 rolls around, it's time to close out our Competitive Programming sessions for
the term! Come along this Monday at 7:30pm as we prepare to face off against friends and battle one last time before the term closes out. Feel free to join us regardless of your skill level – we're open to beginners and experts alike!
When: 7:30-9:30pm, Monday 10th March
Where: Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science 7 Parks Rd,
Oxford OX1 3QG
Click 'Going' here: https://fb.me/e/2Qx6f1B75
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Decidable Extensions of Presburger Arithmetic
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We may be days away from the end of term and the bliss of vacation, but it's never too
late for a good talk! This Thursday, we'll be joined at 5pm by former President and SWAG Officer-elect Hera Brown for a talk on the topic of decidable extensions to Presburger arithmetic, the first-order logic theory of the natural numbers with
addition. Make sure to join us for our last talk of the term!
When: 5-6pm, Thursday 13th March
Where: Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science 7 Parks Rd, Oxford
OX1 3QG
Click 'Going' here: https://fb.me/e/6mtiwgQYM
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Hilary Term 2025 Termcard
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Make sure to join
OxWoCS (Oxford Women in CS), a society we're working closely with, if you identify as a
woman or woman-adjacent person in CS! They have a host of wonderful events on, including talks, panels and socials. Computer Science is unfortunately a subject with one of the biggest gender gaps in Oxford and worldwide, and addressing this is
at the core of OxWoCS.
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or, contact us at committee@ox.compsoc.net
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