If you haven't heard of informatics before, it can seem quite inscrutable. Ever since I sat my first competition in 2004, I've had to field questions from friends and family wondering just what informatics is anyway.
"Informatics? Like... information?" Kind of. But not like a trivia quiz, where you need to know specific information. We learn about how to manipulate information: how to take clues and combine them into the bigger picture.
"What's a programming contest got to do with maths?" More than you might think. Programming is telling a computer instructions; maths tells us how to ask the computer questions. It's the creative difference between calculating your taxes and evading them.
...though please don't quote me on that.
It's basically reasoning about reasoning. Instead of asking, "What is the answer to question X?" informatics goes one meta-level up, asking, "What is the general process for answering all questions such as X?"
It takes a special way of seeing the world to solve these problems. If I can sneak some time in edgewise in between training the team, I'll try to post a little more about the kind of skills it took for our team to get where they are.
Selecting an IOI team is never an easy task. This year, Jarrah, I, and the rest of the team selection committee sifted through the work of over a dozen very talented programmers before settling on the four who make up this year's team.
Believe me -- the kids we had to pass up on? They're no laughing matter either. Every one of the students we work with in our camps are brilliant: fast learners, abstract thinkers, highly creative and phenomenally adaptive.
So trust me when I say that, now that we've sifted the best from the best (the 24-carat from the 23-carat?), we have an incredibly kick-ass team on our hands, one that's going to do Australia proud when we head off to Italy in a week. I'm confident in these four.
