International Olympiad in Informatics

The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual Computer science international science olympiad for secondary school students. The first IOI was held in 1989.

The contest consists of two days computer programming, solving problems of an algorithmic nature. Students compete on an individual basis, with up to four students competing from each participating country (with around 81 countries in 2004). Students are selected through national computing contests. For example, in Britain, students compete in the British Informatics Olympiad for a place in the national team.

= Structure of the competition =

On each of the two competition days, the students are typically given three problems which they have to solve in five hours. Each student works on his/her own, with only a computer and no other help allowed, specifically no communication with other contestants, books etc. Usually to solve a task the contestant has to write a computer program (in C programming language, C plus plus or Pascal programming language) and submit it before the five hour competition time ends. Later on, the program is graded by being run with secret test data, consisting of multiple (typically 10 or 20) test cases. The contestant is awarded points for each test case that his program solves correctly, and within the given time and memory limit. In some cases, the contestant s program has to interact with a secret computer library, which allows problems where the input is not fixed, but depends on the program s actions - for example in game problems. Another new type of problems has known inputs which are publicly available already during the five hours of the contest. For these, the contestants have to submit the according output file instead of a program, and it is up to them whether they obain the output files by writing a program (possibly exploiting special characteristics of the input), or by hand, or by a combination of these means.

The scores from the two competition days and all problems are summed up separately for each contestant. At the awarding ceremony, contestants are awarded medals depending on their relative total score. The top 50% of the contestants (i.e. two per country, on average) are awarded medals, such that the relative number of gold : silver : bronze : no medal is approximately 1:2:3:6 (thus 1/12 contestants get a gold medal).

= List of IOI websites and locations =

IOI 2009 will be held in Bulgaria, 2009

IOI 2008 will be held in Egypt, 2008

IOI 2007 will be held in Croatia, 2007

IOI 2006 will be held in Mérida, Yucatán, Yucatán, Mexico, August 19 - August 26, 2006

IOI 2005 was held in Nowy Sącz, Poland, August 18 - August 25, 2005 [http://www.ioi2005.pl/]

IOI 2004 was held in Athens, Greece, September 11 - September 18, 2004 [http://www.ioi2004.org/]

IOI 2003 was held in Wisconsin, United States, August 16 - August 23, 2003 [http://www.ioinformatics.org/ioi2003/]

IOI 2002 was held in Yongin, Republic of Korea, August 18 - August 25, 2002 [http://www.ioi2002.or.kr/]

IOI 2001 was held in Tampere, Finland, July 14 - July 21, 2001 [http://www.ioi2001.edu.fi/]

IOI 2000 was held in Beijing, People s Republic of China, September 23 - September 30, 2000 [http://www.ioi2000.org.cn/]

*IOI 1999 was held in Antalya, Turkey, October 9 - October 16, 1999 [http://www.ioi99.org.tr/]

IOI 1998 was held in Setúbal, Portugal, September 5 - September 12, 1998

IOI 1997 was held in Cape Town, South Africa, November 30 - December 7, 1997

IOI 1996 was held in Veszprém, Hungary, July 25 - August 2, 1996

IOI 1995 was held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, June 26 - July 3, 1995 [http://olympiads.win.tue.nl/ioi95/]

IOI 1994 was held in Haninge, Sweden, July 3 - July 10, 1994

IOI 1993 was held in Mendoza, Argentina, October 16 - October 25, 1993 [http://www.ioi.org.ar/mendoza/]

IOI 1992 was held in Bonn, Germany, July 11 - July 21, 1992

IOI 1991 was held in Athens, Greece, May 19 - May 25, 1991

IOI 1990 was held in Minsk, Belarus, Soviet Union, July 15 - July 21, 1990

IOI 1989 was held in Pravets, Bulgaria, May 16 - May 19, 1989.

= See also =

International science olympiad

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest

Central European Olympiad in Informatics

British Informatics Olympiad

National Olympiad in Informatics, China

= External links =

*[http://www.ioinformatics.org/ IOI International Committee Website] *[http://olympiads.win.tue.nl/ioi/ IOI Secretariat Website] *[http://www.ioi2005.pl/ IOI 2005 Website] *[http://www.ioiforum.org/ Olympiad Forum in Informatics] (had been closed and now reborn as a Chinese-only web forum) *[http://www.tobias-thierer.de/olympiads-photos.html Photos] from some former Informatics Olympiads.