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21st International Olympiad of Informatics Opens, In Bulgaria and Online
Kostadin Vodenicharov writes "The International Olympiad in Informatics is considered one of the most prestigious programming contests in the world. Currently the 21st IOI is being held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (which was the country that also hosted the 1st IOI), from 8th to 15th August. High school students from all over the world have gathered to put their programming skills to the test. Everyone else who wishes to participate can do it in the online contest which will run in parallel with the real one and will present the same tasks to be solved. The competition itself is going to take place on Monday 10th August and Wednesday 12th August from 9:00 to 14:00 EEST (UTC+3)."
I remember when my team won the Math Olympiad back in high school. The light hearted competition was what really stands out as the prime motivator for me. Without this kind of competition, we geeks would have just been white wedgied wallflowers with wack Hypercolor t-shirts.
The kids taking part in this IOI are going to take home something memorable. And hopefully the American teams can learn a little more about the rest of the world.
physics and other olympiads get any mention here
Use the submit a story link and there is a good chance that your articles would get posted to the main page.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
It's also a great way to get a scholarship to a great university, like MIT (no flaming to other schools, insert your favorite school here that gives need-based scholarships to international students)
From my experience, from the people that I know from Eastern Europe, only those that went to such international Olympiads (math/informatics) managed to get admission to MIT..
In many eastern-european countries, it's more difficult to qualify for this event than the actual tournament..
Kudos to those who participate and to their teachers..
In my time there was no TopCoder, UVA, etc... it wasn't easy to prepare for these.. But now I'm sure it's even more challenging, given the amount of material available..
They also put us contestants up in the Novotel Plovdiv, supposedly the flashiest hotel in Plovdiv.
It's a common mistake. But a dumb one. After all they are two different terms.
So when will the games be? Are you telling me, that the organizers themselves are the ones who failed? That would be hilarious! :D
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
That's why he called you a wussy nerd. Comprehendes?
Is there a prize for that too? Nerds should do well. Maybe combine both activities. "Oh oh oh, recursive closures, you do it too me baaaadly!"
Table-ized A.I.
To assimilate this word back into English which already has a common(-sense) name for the field would probably have made the founding father of Computer Science wonder if he was right about the first part of his famous statement:
Then again, the use of "Olympiad" (where -cs would finally have been indicated instead) is probably just as questionable.
Could this lack of African accomplishment be due to the IQ difference between Africans and either Europeans or Japanese? The average IQ of the Africans is about 20 points lower than the average IQ of the Europeans or the Japanese.
My African peers claim that racist discrimination is the "reason" that Africans cannot win in these contests. Is this claim true or false?
I quote Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006:
Olympiad
Noun
1. a staging of the modern Olympic Games
2. an international contest in chess or other games
The word "olympiad" is extremely common in the names of major national and international contests in fields such as mathematics, science, computer science, etc.
Africans and African American individuals have made great strides in science in technology. It's well known that botanist George Washington Carver invented over 200 things out of peanuts. It's less known that African Americans are also behind such technologies as pace makers and traffic signals.
However, that there are outstanding individuals of any race is not surprising. What is surprising, as you have pointed out, is the dearth of African Americans winning these competitions. However, if you look at the problem statistically, you'll find that they are winning in proportion to their representation as participants. Which is to say not at all.
But why is that? The simple answer is to ascribe lower intelligence to Africans, but that is a cop-out. The real answer is multifaceted and has roots both in external discrimination as well as negative factors in the African American community which hold back achievement. White racism is also at fault for creating mass media caricatures like Steve Urkel and Carlton Banks as black kids succeeding in society due to their overwhelming non-blackness.
The problem you describe is insidious and sad. But it isn't because Africans and African Americans are less intelligent than you or me. It's due to much more complex socio-cultural reasons that have their roots in racism.
So did anyone manage do participate in the online contest ? It only shows a blank page to me. Also, what do you think about only allowing 3 languages ? Isn't choosing the best tool available for a task the most important skill for a good programmer ?
Software Development consists of several relatively independent skills:
- programming (knowing how to use the tools)
- algorithms
- architecture and design
- knowledge of processes (development methodologies, etc)
- enabling teamwork (allowing many developers to work together)
etc.
The IOI competition is for high-school students and tests mainly the 'algorithms' aspect.
The ACM competition is for college students and tests mainly the programming aspect. (strange, one would think that the aims of those two would be reversed)
There does not seem to be a big competition for testing the architecture and design abilities, although arguably they are even more important (unless you count the Real World competition). Part of the difficulty perhaps is that it is tricky to come up with an objective measurement. An approach that I have been using is the following:
- give a task and provide plenty of time
- at 50% of the time change the requirements of the task slightly
- at 90% of the time change the requirements significantly
If proper design has been used, then making appropriate modifications would be easy and the task would be accomplished in time. This closely mirrors the situations in reality.
I look forward to the Special Informatics Olympiad. Especially for all those WTFers who have no natural ability to code, and so have to scratch out a living in eCommerce. It would be good to see them honored.
I was swayed by all the sources you site
The real incentive is to be one of the best high-schoolers in the world at something you enjoy doing. Also I went to the Olympics because it allowed me to skip some of the other boring classes to allow me to focus on programming. Too bad I never got that far. :)
If you're in it _just_ for the money, you're doing it wrong.
apart from the lack of sources, it sounds like complete crap. Aside from the fact that IQ tests generally favor people with an education (pretty low standard of schooling in Africa). You neglect to mention that most of it was colonised and arbitrarily divided up between the powers for hundreds of years. These arbitrary divisions have obviously led to open warfare (over potentially very rich resources) between clans/tribes/ethnic groups. This is the same process the Americas went through, Asia went through and Europe went through but much much earlier in their histories. Also your example of Japan doesn't mention the Marshall plan which was put in place for precisely this reason (Also, Japan was very technologically advanced even before the war, this kind of knowledge doesn't just disappear). Africans may be destroying their own societies, but this is in no small part due to meddling and encouragement (either implicit or explicit) by the more "developed" nations. As the ost recent examples see CHinas involvement in with Sudan (oil) and oil interests in Nigeria. The british began studies on the Hutu/Tutsi people in order to establish physial differences between them (circa 50s, we all know how that panned out). French meddling in Algeria? American interests in Libya? Suez canal crisis? Russian involvement in Angola? Many many tragedies in Africa have been precipitated by involvements of Western powers. Assuming that the (dubious) claim of lower intelligence is actually true, there are many many reasons why progress is retarded in Africa. Also, on a side note, IIRC there was a "study" by some scientist that said that Africans had a thicker skull than white people which accounted for their smaller brain size/lower intelligence. This was debunked by proper research, but I still hear it often quoted by idiots....
What exactly needs citing? Your point is stupid as all the things he said are well known facts. Except the average IQ thing, that is. But even particular statement may have some truth to it, as no one has been able to do research on the matter without drawing racist flame from every imaginable party. It's sad really, that an entire research field is denied to researchers simply due to it being a touchy subject.
Your point is moot. Europe has been having wars for probably thousands of years. The last major one being around 50 years ago. Or how about the more recent example of 1990 and 2000, where the Yugoslav states were at war. The last one being between America and Serbia. Where the Americans destroyed amazing amounts of infrastructure, and a Chinese embassy. Those countries are all doing superbly well compared to _any_ African country, apart from South Africa which is usually the exception. This one example is proof of nothing, really. But neither is your statement that African countries are constantly at war. So there must be other reasons they are performing badly.
It's all about the culture in that country that affects that countries performance. It baffles me when no one wants to admit this. It's not racist to admit that different cultures have different effects on their members.
Since when did IQ tests measure intelligence?
As a contestent in the IOI in Egypt last year I can tell you that the problems you're solving are really, really hard. I estimate that more than 50% of all professional (working) programmers wouldn't be able to solve even one of them. This is becouse this is algoritmic performance programming and not generic functional one.
To make up the problems they usually take one or more generic problems (like maximum flow), then they add an additional twist that makes the implementation non-trivial. So first of all you have to had solved similar problems and know the algorithm. If you don't you might go for the brute force solution that usually gives you 10-30/100 points. However, the brute force solution usually takes a long time to construct, therefore it's all about planning.
You have 6 hours and 3 problems. If you think you can do a problem the "real" way, you better be damn sure, unless you want to waste time on thinking and writing useless code. Usually the problems are constructed so that you are tricked to belive they are much more trivial than they actually are when you analyze them. That got me several times. Spending ~3 hours to construct an algorithm that completed the "testing" test case but failed most/all test cases that gave points.
One guy in our team had a great strategy. He ignored in depth analyzation and started writing a brute forcer as soon as he understood the problem. This way he was guaranteed 10-30 points per problem, and usually when writing a brute forcer, you get to understand the problem so well that you can make improvements or even write the correct solution for it.
I was amazed that a 13 year old earned a gold medal the last year. That means he's probably better on algoritmic programming than 99% of the readers of slashdot.
I wish all contestants this year the best of luck.
It could also be that US students are more likely to be driven by a "profit motive" (prize money) rather than prestige alone due to our culture. There's also the question of how much prestige such awards have in a given country or culture. US employers seem less enamored by "academic" successes compared to something they see as a more practical test or metric. In Asia, accolades and awards seem to go further. There are too many unknowns to make blanket statements about Americans being "no good".
Table-ized A.I.
I tried out for the french IOI team this year(didn't make it of course, or else I wouldn't be looking at this I think), and really enjoyed myself just for the workshop and the tryouts. The other guys at the workshop were there obviously to find potential members, but firstly just to teach us programming skills. Not things like how to make a guess game or whatnot, but to learn "useful" skills, namely algorithms, complexity, and problem solving. They also have a site with programming tutorials that don't go too indepth in terms of language, but have very indepth algorithm explanations(which is good considering that most "my first programming book"s don't even bother with algos). I can't really vouch for other IOI teams' preparedness and teaching abilities(USACO has a training site though I don't know how well made it is), I can say that that experience really motivated me for the coming years.