Project 2: Election

Course: COMS 4444 Programming and Problem Solving (F2019)
Uni: Columbia University
Instructor: Prof. Kenneth Ross
TAs: Vaibhav Darbari, Chengyu Lin

User Guide

First thing you need to know is our GUI statics/index.html. You may directly open it and load your file to visualize your result. 2 sample maps (in directory maps) and 1 sample result file result.dat are provided.

In this project, you can implement your ideas using other languages and use this library to verify your result. If you choose our platform, you need to implement the following interfaces:

• election.sim.MapGenerator
• election.sim.DistrictGenerator

And you shall put your codes in directory election/g[n] where n is your group number. You may refer to files in election/g0 for details.

If you are submitting map file, please put your map file in directory maps/g[n] where n is your group number.

Following 2 modules are used to run/verify your result:

• election.sim.MapUtils
  • You may use to run your programed module:

  $ java election.sim.MapUtils run election.g0.RandomMapGenerator \
         -m maps/random3.map \
         -n 333333 -p 3 --seed 20190925

  • Also you may use it to validate your generated map file

  $ java election.sim.MapUtils verify -m maps/random3.map

• election.sim.Run
  • Similar useage here:

  $ java election.sim.Run run election.g0.DistrictGenerator \
         -m maps/random3.map \
         -r result.dat --seed 20190925 -rep 3

  • Also you may use it to validate your generated map file

  $ java election.sim.Run verify -r result.dat

Map File Specification

• The board is a giant equilateral triangle with edge length 1000.
  • Three vertices are (0, 0), (0, 1000) and (500, 500*sqrt(3)).
• First line contains 2 integers: numVoters and numParties. They correspond to the number of voters and the number of parties, respectively.
• The following numVoters lines contains the information for each voter.
  • Each line there are numParties + 2 float numbers. First 2 correspond to the location of this voter. Later numParties numbers are his/her preferences.
• After numVoters + 1 lines, there shall be a line containing 0 only.

Result File Specification

• First numVoters + 1 lines are exactly the same with the map file.
• Starting from numVoters + 2 line, it contains a single integer numDistricts corresponding to the number of districts.
• The following numDistricts lines describe the shape of districts.
  • Each line starts with an integer p, followed by 2p float numbers describes the coordinates of p vertices of this district (a polygon). The p vertices shall be given in order, either clockwise or counter-clockwise.