TA3

TA3 submission did not go smoothly. We had issues all the way up to midnight and even then we took a late-submission hit and resubmitted Monday after realizing that our matching algorithm was not working correctly. But we got it working and did fine.

Our algorithm added +1 points to a TA if he/she had listed the specific specialization and/or programming language(s) that was desired by an instructor of a class (each type a new class was considered, all available TAs started with zero points). +2 if a TA was "qualified" to teach a course, and +3 if he/she had taught the course previously.

We thought we had it all worked out until we found that our matching code was using TAs from all semester. Thus John from Fall 2008 and John from Spring 2009 could be assigned to a Fall 2009 class even though they are the same person spread among 3 semesters). So we had to resubmit but it was all OK. Hopefully TA4 will go a lot smoother. We'd better use our time wisely for the next submissions since they are stressing that they won't be as lenient for the final iteration.

As for the algorithm, a few simple modifications were used to implement the point system. After that, it was comparable to dropping in a fancy new engine into an old car. All we had to do was make the connections. A nice little break from having to code a huge piece of software since we all already had it from Project 3.