2014 IOI 國際資訊奧林匹亞競賽心得

12A 陳伯恩Brian Chen

The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual international programming competition for high-school students, the highest and most prestigious of its subject. "Informatics" really just means computer programming here. After several regional preliminary rounds of programming tests, followed by four weeks of practice and tests at a selection camp during the school year, I was selected to Taiwan's 2014 IOI team, along with three other contestants. Taiwan also had an unofficial "B-team" of four other participants, because the IOI was held in our country this year. During those weeks, and for several more weekends afterwards, the eight of us practiced doing problems from previous IOIs and discussed solutions to help each other improve. In addition, the fact that Taiwan was hosting the IOI was that I didn't have to travel very far to compete, and that many of my classmates were able to volunteer for the IOI, to guide the teams from across the world around and help them communicate with the organizers.

The main competition was held at the Taipei International Conference Center. Hundreds of tables and laptops were set up for us, the contestants, to program on. For two five-hour blocks in two different days, we'd work on a set of three programming problems of varying difficulty, trying to come up with programs to solve them. When we submitted our programs, they'd be sent to a judge machine that ran the program many times with different input, and checking its answers. If the program's answers were all correct, we would be awarded full points for that problem. We could get partial credit if our programs gave correct answers only for some simpler inputs.

In this year's results, I placed 13th. Three contestants --- Ishraq Huda from Australia, Scott Wu from the United States, and Yinzhan Xu from China --- scored a perfect 600, and were crowned first place. Although there is no official ranking of countries, a contestant unofficially calculated a ranking by total score and posted it on Codeforces, a well-known competitive programming site. Happily, Taiwan's team had the 4th highest total score, behind China, the United States, and Australia, and just barely above Russia.

The IOI was not only a competition, however; it was also a unique opportunity for contestants and guides to get to know each other, and the organizers had planned lots of fun events to make this happen, to great success. For example, the first night, there was a mini game-show activity where contestants formed teams and tried to blow ping pong balls out of bowls of flour or pass rubber bands with energy bars held in their mouths. The second night, there was a dance party involving lightsabers. Two IBSH students served as our DJs just like at any other school dance; the contestants (including yours truly, of course) and volunteers huddled together waving and jumping to loud pop and rock music. In the mornings and afternoons, there were also excursions that took everybody to a museum in Yilan, Taipei 101, and Lihpaoland Amusement Park

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The game held many twists and turns. I managed to win the first round, for which I received a small top, but never won any later rounds. However, from among nearly a hundred contestants, one of the volunteers managed to win three prizes, including an ocarina. He was then banned from the game to keep the crowd from rioting. The very last prize was a pair of expensive Beats headphones; a lot of people were particularly invested in winning this round, of course, which meant that everybody would chant “TIE! TIE! TIE!” when the number of survivors was small enough to gather in a circle at the center of the basement and throw their poe together. Amazingly, there were three ties where all survivors failed on the same throw, each one followed with increasingly vigorous cheering and jumping from the onlookers. So we restarted three times before a volunteer finally won the earphones and my classmate kamikaze-hugged him.

The IOI concluded with a big farewell party on the last night. I had brought my guitar, a hobby I had only recently picked up, to the IOI and was ready to perform --- I had been practicing my guitar in a secret room since day 1. Before I even got to do that, though, I met a Georgian contestant who asked to borrow my guitar, then played a dozen or so songs while we sat on a staircase behind the gym and asked me countless questions about my guitar: what brand it was, how much it cost, and so on. Then he broke into a deeply technical discussion about string quality that I didn’t understand and told me I should switch my guitar strings. So much for any pretense of skill I had.

Still, later during the party, I played my guitar and sang Coldplay's “Yellow”. Although I was quite nervous and held my pick with a death grip to prevent it from dropping, I think I did okay. After me, three or four other contestants, including the one from Georgia, gathered at the stage to inquire whether they could play as well. For the most of the rest of the night, we played and sang and had lots of fun, although our fun was mainly confined to the stage and the front of the gym because there were lots of other fun booths set up in the back and on the sides.

I was glad to meet so many other contestants from the other countries, as I learned a lot from them. I've already mentioned the Georgian contestant and various others who we played guitar with. We (the Taiwanese team) also talked to the Japanese team for quite a while on the morning of the second day of the contest. We showed each other several rhythm games and exchanged addresses and so on. I learned that Japanese people are heavy Twitter users from the conversation. At the Yilan museum, we also got many pictures with other teams. (We were also switching country signs with other teams at the time out of fun, so that's why we can be seen holding blatantly incorrect signs.) Finally, I got to know the United States team and took pictures with them on the last day. One of them was a full scorer, as I've mentioned; another one, who I was somewhat familiar with from a math website, had solved the hardest problem of the IOI by submitting slightly different programs until he found one that was lucky enough to solve the particular test inputs, something colloquially described as a "hack". It was quite a humbling experience.

Because of all of these things, the IOI was a week-long experience at the top of the world that I'll never forget. I am elated to have been part of it, and to have made so many new friends among contestants and volunteers alike. I'm grateful to all of them for making it a wonderful experience, both in how much I learned and how much fun I had, as well as all others who helped me on my journey to make it to the IOI: my family and my teachers with their continued support. I hope future contestants in all subjects could have experiences as wonderful as I did.