International Olympiad In Informatics Research Articles

Learning models and achievements of the most gifted students

The emergency of switching to an online learning model due to the COVID pandemic impacted the educational process in of schools world wide. We conducted an anonymous survey at the elite high schools in Serbia whose students won 45 medals at international Olympiads in mathematics, physics, and computer sciences in the last 4-year period (2019–2022). The impact of switching from in-person to online learning on the achievement of the gifted students was analyzed. The results of the research revealed a downward trend in the final grades and achievements in international Olympiads, which persists even after returning to the face-to-face educational model. This trend is confirmed by calculation of the Pearson correlation coefficient (−0.62) between school years and achievements in international mathematical Olympiads, international physics Olympiads, and international Olympiads in informatics. Gifted students’ satisfaction with online learning during the COVID pandemic was also analyzed using content analysis of open-ended questions. The surveyed gifted students showed a high level of self-criticism and maturity by expressing their opinion about online learning. In the group of gifted students, there is a higher level of agreement about harmful consequences of online learning on the level of their education and work habits than in other research conducted on similar topics. Moreover, the level of agreement is in a positive correlation with students’ achievements and final grades.

Staying DRY with OO and FP

We discuss the coding principle Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) and compare various tactics to achieve DRY code, both in the context of object-oriented (OO) programming and functional programming (FP). Neither OO nor FP play a significant role in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), but these paradigms are highly relevant in industry. This article aims to make clear that they offer useful computational insights that should appeal to talented students and that could somehow make their appearance in the IOI. We conclude with an AHA insight and some WET advice for talent development and programming contests.

The Official IOI Website: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This paper is an extended report from one of the discussion groups at the 35th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Hungary. It looks back at the evolution of the official IOI website, provides an overview of the current web resources and reflection on their strengths and weaknesses. The report also proposes short-term and long-term suggestions for further development of the IOI web services.

Palestine at the International Olympiad in Informatics: Advancing Computational Thinking Among K-12 Students

The Palestinian Olympiad in Informatics has been a significant endeavour since its inception in 2017. It has steadily grown, with programming clubs established in all schools to foster student interest and skill development. The milestone of winning the first bronze medal in 2022 marked a notable achievement in our journey. This report provides an overview of Palestine’s participation in the International Olympiad in Informatics, outlining our objectives, preparation efforts, performance, and the profound impact of our involvement on the local and international levels, sparking increased interest in computer science across Palestine and fostering international collaboration and innovation in informatics.

Trends on Returning Contestants and Geography at the International Olympiad in Informatics

In this paper, we conduct several statistical analyses of IOI 2011 to 2023 performance data, with a focus on tracking returning contestants and identifying geographic trends. This paper identifies several properties of IOI performance data, such that it has strong internal validity while still being subject to random noise. Visualizations are presented throughout to aid the IOI community’s understanding of students’ competitive programming progress. Afterwards, the geographical analysis shows that countries’ IOI performance is correlated to demographic indicators such as population and the Human Development Index. It is, however, more strongly related to competitive programming interest in the country.

Change Management in Preparing Indonesian Team to IOI

Indonesia has been participating at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) since 1995. The process of selecting the four contestants remains unchanged. All medalists in the national level competition were invited to take a series of training camps to select competitively the candidates. In the first two decades of participation in IOI, Indonesia have collected two gold medals, and these surprising achievements were merely more because of luck, and not as a result of a reliable training/selection process. We believe reliable and good training is a basis to predict and expect a stable achievement. Through careful observations and reflections, a change of course of action is needed to bring Indonesia’s achievement to the next level. This paper shares Indonesia’s experience in changing and implementing strategies during the national training camps to better prepare the four contestants to IOI. What are the changes taken by the coaching team that have been exercised that made it possible for Indonesia to achieve three gold in the last four consecutive years?

Новые формы работы с юниорами в международной среде олимпиадной информатики

The article describes the problem of creating an accessible Olympiad environment to support the creativity of students in grades 5-10 based on digital programming competencies and digital project tracks in specialized subjects based on international experience in partnership with the participating countries of the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).
 The infrastructure of the International Junior School of Informatics (ISIJ) and the organizational and technological model of the Olympiad environment are presented as an online network of reference sites in the regions of Russia and partner countries of the Olympiad environment not only for participation in the ISIJ Cup, but also for the systematic preparation of students and coaches to participate in the international level Olympiad movement.

Foreword

The publication of this issue marks a milestone in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI): for the first time in three years, the IOI is returning on-site. Alongside it, we will have the first face-to-face IOI conference since 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic is still with us, but – like many international events – we are beginning to explore how we can manage the health risks yet still bring the community back together again. After all, the IOI is a prestigious international competition, but it is also more than that. It is an exchange of cultures and ideas; an opportunity for young students to travel and experience new places and meet new people; an opportunity for team coaches and educators to share the different ways in which they identify and nurture talent in their own countries. We must acknowledge that the world is not an equitable place. Different countries are moving through the pandemic in different ways, due to a mix of geography, policy, economics, access to vaccinations, public opinion, and of course sheer luck. Not every country will be able to attend IOI in person, and not every speaker will be able to speak live at the IOI conference. For this reason we are enormously grateful to our hosts in Indonesia for committing to a hybrid IOI, where countries who cannot attend on-site are still able to compete online. Unlike some other international events, this ensures that the IOI can start to move out of the pandemic without leaving anybody behind. The pandemic is of course not the only challenge that we are facing as an international community. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has impacted many international events, and the IOI is no exception. The IOI’s response to Russia and Belarus has been to accept online contestants from these countries, but only under a neutral IOI flag, with no national names or symbols. By doing this we aim to take a clear stand against what Russia and Belarus are doing in Ukraine, yet remain engaged with the young teenagers who are the future of these countries, and for whom a genuine engagement with the international community can only help. We do appreciate that the IOI is a scientific event, not a political one, and that there have been many conflicts in the past where we have remained silent. However, it is also difficult to ignore the scale of the destruction, the widespread attacks upon civilian, medical and educational targets, and the potential for this to spark a greater conflict that is unspeakably worse. While it is impossible to draw a precise line as to when IOI should or should not take a stand on international matters, we have nevertheless decided that this time a line has been crossed. I am very excited for the Olympiad this year, and for the chance to discuss in person some of the other challenges that our community faces. One of our longest and still most significant challenges is diversity – in particular, gender diversity. To this end it was wonderful to see the first ever European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics hosted by Switzerland last year. I encourage you to keep an eye out for the second edition in Türkiye in late 2022 (https://ubilo.tubitak.gov.tr/egoi2022/). Finally, my thanks to the editors and organisers of this journal, as well as all of the authors who have submitted papers. I look forward to seeing the talks in August in Yogyakarta!

Hosting IOI 2019 Azerbaijan: Back to the Future

Who would guess that the 31st International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Baku, Azerbaijan will be referred to as “the last normal” one for so long? While the IOI community looks forward to the upcoming onsite events, the readers may be interested in a retrospective report on the IOI 2019 from the host organizing, scientific and technical committees. This report covers the whole process throughout bidding, preparations, event days and closeout, shares some pain points and provides a number of practical recommendations. The authors hope that by looking back at the IOI 2019 Azerbaijan they will also help potential hosts of future IOIs.

Olympiads in Informatics in Kyrgyzstan

This report provides description of the Multi-stage National Olympiad along with other inner competitions in informatics, the online platform to conduct competitions in informatics in Kyrgyzstan, the participation in IOI and in other international olympiads in informatics. This report also presents the principles and ways to create tasks (naturalness; presentation of real processes; reference to known objects; non-Euclidean spaces; “brute force method is either inapplicable or gives too overestimate of complexity”) and examples of tasks of various levels with classification.

Organization and Results of Mongolian National Online Olympiads in Informatics

Incorporating coding skills into the basic literacy skills of 21st century citizens is common in many parts of the world. This is because the development of artificial intelligence and smart devices and their social use have become real, and in the near future, the ability to use robots and artificial intelligence devices for their own purposes has become a skill that every citizen should have. Algorithms and programming are included in the Mongolian general education information technology course curriculum. The coding ability plays an important role in the development of a new century citizen’s thinking, creating and evaluating skills. One of the activities that promotes the development of this skill is the International Olympiad in Informatics. Our country has been participating in this Olympiad since 1991 and has won three bronze, one silver and one gold medal. You can participate in the online Olympiad regardless of where you live in Mongolia. This type of Olympiad is very important to support the continuous development of students who are gifted in programming and coding, as well as to enable them to successfully participate in national and international Olympiads. Mongolian Informatics Olympiad Committee (MIOC) organized 24 online contests using Contest Management System (CMS1 ) which is official IOI judging system. In this paper we considered 22 online contests organized in 2019, 2020, 2021 years and classified 115 problems chosen in those contests by topics and complexity. We also report here results of a small research about scores got by participants, development of problem-solving skills. A new registration web system developed while implementing IOI judging system is explained.

The Italian Job: Moving (Massively) Online a National Olympiad

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a pervasive effect worldwide, including local, national and international Olympiads in Informatics. Most national Olympiads had to be moved online, a process which poses a number of serious challenges. Help across countries is of uttermost importance in this context, to enable a successful continuation of the IOI during globally hard times. In this paper, we share the experience gained and tools produced during a year of online Olympiads in Italy, hoping that other countries can take profit of these (freely available) tools and suggestions for their own Olympiads.

Introduction of “Honorable Mention“ Award at the International Olympiad in Informatics

In 2020, there are 14 International Science Olympiads for secondary school students, which aim to gather teams from all the countries around the world, with the brightest young eligible students from each country. These Olympiads are not just a science competition but a means to care for talent in the particular scientific field. International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is one of the first five Olympiads that arose, after Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, and before Biology Olympiad. Being the “summit” of the brightest students, they generously award recognitions to contestants in the form of gold, silver and bronze medals, and additionally – the so called “honorable mention” award. IOI is the only Olympiad that up until 2019 has not introduced the fourth-degree award – “honorable mention”. In this paper we explore the rules of the other four scientific Olympiads in order to compare their methods of awarding contestants to the current one used by IOI, and to use that analysis for proposing a rule change that will introduce “honorable mention” category at IOI. Furthermore, a set of possible approaches are considered, and for each one, the “retroactive” impact of the rule to the results of the last five IOI issues is presented. At the end, as a conclusion, the most appropriate approach is proposed.

National Programming Competitions, Team Selection and Training in Hungary

Programming competitions for middle and high school students have a long tradition in Hungary, the first national competition dates back to 1985, and our country has been participating in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) from the very beginning. This paper presents the current situation and challenges of Hungarian nationwide programming contests, national team selection, and training system.

Recommending Tasks in Online Judges using Autoencoder Neural Networks

Programming contests such as International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI) and ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) are becoming increasingly popular in recent years. To train for these contests, there are several Online Judges available, in which users can test their skills against a usually large set of programming tasks. In the literature, so far few papers have addressed the problem of recommending tasks in online judges. Most notably, as opposed with traditional Recommender Systems, since the learners improve their skills as they solve more problems, there is an intrinsic dynamic dimension that has to be considered: when recommending movies or books, it is likely that the preferences of the users are more or less stable, whilst in recommending tasks this does not hold true. In order to help the learners, it is crucial to recommend them tasks that are challenging but not unsolvable compared with their current set of skills. In this paper we present a Recommender System (RS) for Online Judges based on an Autoencoder (Artificial) Neural Network (ANN). We also discuss the results of an experimental evaluation of our approach in both the scenarios in which we consider, or not, the intrinsic dynamic dimension of the problem. The ANNs are trained with the dataset of all the submissions in the Italian National Online Judge, used to train students for the Italian Olympiads in Informatics.

IOI Talks: New Initiative for Publishing Presentations, Events, Interviews, Book Recommendations and Videos of Interest to the IOI Community

Most of the activity of the IOI community occurs during the International Olympiad in Informatics (and a couple of weeks around the event). In this report we present “IOI Talks” which is a new initiative to occasionally publish presentations, events, book recommendations, interviews and videos that can be of interest to the broader IOI community. Additionally, we will give an overview of the content for the first event.

Argentine Olympiad in Informatics

This article describes Argentina’s selection and training process for the International Olympiad in Informatics, to identify and prepare the Argentine team members participating in the international olympiad. Additionally, recently developed online resources that have proved very useful for student preparation are presented.

Finding the shortest path in a graph and its visualization using C# and WPF

The shortest path problem is a classic problem in mathematics and computer science with applications in Economics (sequential decision making, analysis of social networks, etc.). The presented work is an example of realizing and applying of Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest path between two vertices in a connected, undirected graph, which is often a solved problem at a time annual International Olympiad in Informatics. For this purpose, are used the technologies, .NET 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, and WPF for the graphical user interface. The implemented program allows drawing an undirected graph, visualizing the shortest path between two vertices and finding its value. This software is a valuable tool for the study of Dijkstra's algorithm and is a great pedagogic instrument. All figures of path visualization included in this paper are actual screenshots of our visualization program.

Programming, Software Development, and Computer Science – The Golden Triangle

I present my thoughts on programming, software development, and computer science (CS), and their inevitable relationship. Originally this was intended to help prepare some CS courses aimed (also) at non-CS university students. But it is also relevant for students in secondary education, especially if they have an interest in participating in the International Olympiad in Informatics.

Fostering Informatics Education through Teams Olympiad

Even though the International Olympiad in Informatics directly involves a restricted number of pupils from each country, one of its primary goals is stimulating interest in computer science and information technology over the whole younger segment of the world’ s population. In several countries, this aim has to be accomplished without an active intervention of the Ministry of Education on school programs, relying on the efforts of small devoted organizations. In this context, promoting the involvement of a large number of school teachers may be as crucial as difficult to achieve. Following a 9-year experience of teams competitions in Italy, recently shared with other European countries, we argue that teams Olympiad may be an effective tool for widening the participation of high-school students and teachers, synergistically cooperating with existing individual competitions. On the one hand, teams contests foster peer education, encouraging talented students to help training fellows. On the other hand, these competitions can be more appealing both for average students, valuing group membership more than personal accomplishments, and most importantly, teachers: team achievements are more recognizably linked with the overall school or teacher performance than solitary excellences, resulting in increased returns rewarding the involved subjects.