The Australian Informatics Olympiad is a computer programming competition for Australian high school students run by the Australian Informatics Olympiad Committee (AIOC). The Committee, a department of the Australian Mathematics Trust (AMT), holds the 3 hour competition in early September each year. The competition began as the Australian Informatics Competition (AIC) in 1998, and in 2005, was divided into Intermediate and Senior divisions and renamed as the Australian Informatics Olympiad, when the AIC became a pen-and-paper competition.
Contents
Competition Format
The Australian Informatics Olympiad is a 3 problem competition held on the internet over 3 hours. Competitors are allowed to begin the competition at any time within a specified period but once started, must complete the three hours in a single block. In the first competition in 1998, competitors had to solve 3 problems in 3 hours. This was changed to 4 problems in 4 hours from 1999 to 2009, but was then changed again, back to 3 problems in 3 hours since 2010.
Competitors must solve AIO problems by taking input from a specified input file and writing output to a specified output file. Input files could have any input within specified bounds and in a certain format. Contestants must then output the corresponding answer in a specified format to the output file. Sample data and output are supplied in the problem statements for each problem but judges will use secret test data which is often more strenuous than the sample data to test solutions.
AIOC Activities
The AIOC is the organising body for the:
The AIOC also organised the inaugural 2007 Asia-Pacific Informatics Olympiad.
The AIOC is responsible for selecting and taking a team of the four best-performing high school informatics students to participate in the International Olympiad in Informatics.
The AIOC manages an informatics contest server which also acts as a training site for students with over one hundred accessible problems and real-time evaluation of uploaded solutions.
Competitions
Since its creation in 2005, the AIC (Australian Informatics Competition) is the only pen-and-paper competition organised by the AIOC which does not involve the use of a computer or knowledge of programming. The AIC tests problem-solving skills similar to those used in solving more difficult problems in competitions requiring programming. The questions are of multiple choice and short answer format for optical reading and computer marking. There exist three divisions: Senior (years 11 and 12), Intermediate (years 9 and 10) and Junior (years 7 and 8).
Initiated in 1998, the annual AIO (Australian Informatics Olympiad) is a nationwide computer programming competition sat by students in early September. The competition is three hours long with three programming questions, and is split into Senior (years 11 and 12) and Intermediate (years 7 to 10) divisions. Based on these results, approximately 25 students are selected to attend a 10-day training school at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Note: From 1998 to 2004, the AIO was termed the AIC, as no pen-and-paper competition existed. In 2005, the old AIC computer science competition was renamed to AIO and the new pen-and-paper competition took the name AIC
AIIO
The Australian Invitational Informatics Olympiad (AIIO) held annually in February since 2006 is open only to the students selected to attend the previous year's December School of Excellence. Results of the AIIO contribute to the selection of approximately fifteen students to attend the April IOI Team Selection School, and to a lesser extent, the selection of the four members of the team itself. The AIIO is more difficult than the AIO and requires knowledge of basic algorithms learned in the December school.
The French-Australian Regional Informatics Olympiad (FARIO) is a joint-managed competition organised by both the AIOC and France-IOI. The competition began in 2004 and is open to any interested students in France and Australia. Results from the FARIO are also used along with the AIIO to select fifteen students for the April IOI Team Selection School and IOI team selection.
Australian IOI Medalists
In 2014, Ishraq Huda was the first Australian to achieve a perfect score and equal first place in the IOI.
The following table lists all Australian IOI medalists ordered by colour and number of medals, then by last year a medal was received. B represents a Bronze medal, S a Silver and G a Gold.