Three South African students won Silver Medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) held in Merida, Mexico last week. The three are part of a team of four that was selected from 15 000 participants in last year`s Standard Bank / Computer Society SA Computer Olympiad.
The IOI is an annual competition for young computer programmers. It is held in a different country every year. This year 284 participants from 72 countries took part. The competition itself takes place over two days.
On each of the competition days, the participants receive three problems. They have five hours to write the computer programs to solve these problems. After five hours the evaluators use data sets of increasing complexity to check if the program can provide the correct answers in the allocated time - often less than half a second.
The South African competitors are selected from a competition that embraced last year over 300 schools and 15 000 participants. This year`s SA competition attracted over 34 000 participants!
The three Silver Medal winners:
Ralf Kistner, the 2005 Standard Bank Trophy winner for the highest mark in the South African Computer Olympiad - when he was still in Grade 11. Kistner is currently in Grade 12 at Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch.
Kistner is a regular participant in Maths Olympiads, having taken part in the 2004 Pan-African Maths Olympiad, and the 2005 International Maths Olympiad. Kistner lists his hobbies a climbing, programming and maths.
Keegan Carruthers-Smith, who was a participant in IOI 2005 while he was a Grade 12 Learner at Pinelands High. He is currently a first year student at the University of Cape Town. He is a regular Olympiad participant, having excelled in the Accounting Olympiad, the Science Olympiad and the Maths Olympiad. His other hobby? Skate boarding.
Joshua Yudaken was one of the top students in the Standard Bank Computer Olympiad while he was still in Grade 11. He is currently in Grade 12 at King David School, Linksfield, Johannesburg. Like many of the other computer whizzes Yudaken is a keen chess player and was vice-captain of the Gauteng provincial Chess Team.
Max Rabkin, the fourth member of the team, narrowly missed getting a medal too. Rabkin was in Grade 11 at Cedar House School when he won his place in the team. He is now studying Computer Science at the University of Cape Town.
The team was delighted with the experience. "We are proud of the medals, but we also loved the opportunity to mix with young people from more than 70 other countries. The organisers gave us plenty of time to make new friends."
Peter Waker, Vice-President (Education & Training) of the Computer Society of South Africa, comments: "This is the best result we have had since 2001. It is amazing that a small player like South Africa can do so well in a competition with the rest of the world. The USA, Russia, China, Poland and Korea walk off with most medals, but three silver medals for our chaps; that is an amazing achievement."
Adds Mike Murphy, from sponsor Standard Bank: "Despite the negative press that the education system in South Africa continues to receive, these results show that things are not all bad. Talent is clearly still in abundance and results like this give us confidence in the future of this country."
Donald Cook, team leader, reported: "The International Olympiad was well organised and a great success. Our team of young contestants did very well to score three silver medals. The team felt that the questions were challenging, interesting and well balanced from moderate to difficult over the two days of the competition."
Cook added that one of the second day questions was extremely difficult, and noted that only one out of 284 contestants received full marks for the most difficult question.
Among the advice the organisers had for the contestants were the following:
If you ate a pepper that is too hot for you: Rinse the mouth and drink milk, ice cream, yoghurt or tomato juice; or eat rice, bread or a fresh lemon or lime. Do not drink water: it will make the problem worse, and Spanish for "I want to eat grasshoppers": Quiro comer chapulines.
The entire delegation consisted of:
* Keegan Carruthers-Smith from Pinelands High, Cape Town (now at the University of Cape Town)
* Ralf Kistner from Paul Roos Gymnasium, Stellenbosch (currently in Grade 12)
* Max Rabkin from Cedar House School, Cape Town (now at the University of Cape Town)
* Joshua Yudaken from King David School, Linksfield, Johannesburg (currently in Grade 12)
* Donald Cook: Team leader
* Graham Poulter: Deputy team leader
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