Curfew? What curfew?

So I now realise that our time at Perouse Lodge has slowly drawn to a close. It is a kinda sad and sorry sight to see only one breakfast voucher left on the table and to only have 10 minutes to write this blogpost. Jarrah's enforced a curfew (yes, you read it right a curfew <Ray>THE HORRORS</Ray>) because we have an exam tomorrow morning and will by flying out tomorrow night and he wants us to have every iota of sleep we possibly can before jumping on that plane.

Yesterday began with yet another exam, after which we successfully managed to prove an incorrect algorithm, or, a part of if it. Like seriously, who would think of such an atrocious thing as Computational Geometry (or Comp Geom, as it is affectionately called) which is purely maths on a computer (we're not kidding). Following a seemingly endless supply of family pizzas for dinner, we hit the sack for yet another day...

Today's exam was in some ways quite approachable and in many other ways the most difficult so far. For the first time, none of us managed to fully solve any of the three problems presented (my 95s were much to my chagrin) but were a little disappointed that we didn't see some observations that would have simplified the problem. Following a chocolate accumulating lab (1 chocolate for each problem solved ^_^) we headed down to dinner at the local Thai restaurant where we bumped into (ex-)HS1917 tutor Rupert.

It's time to get some sleep... hopefully I'll have net either at the airports in Sydney or Dubai or in Italy! The world awaits... the IOI is rapidly approaching... and we're all excited!

Pancakes and How to make your teammates squirm for 50 minutes...

Waking up late once again (I seem to see a little bit of a trend :S) we hurried down to breakfast to order the famed Perouse Lodge ricotta pancakes which "really get the heart beating (/palpitating/stopping)" topped with berry compote and ice cream. This is a time to remember all my friends who would be bustling to school while I indulge myself (moral of the story: do informatics; we have the best breakfasts!)...

The business part day started with a slightly easier trial exam than those previous, but still was not without its difficulties. This was followed by a free afternoon during which Goldy ran off to laser tag, and the rest of us were stuck in a computer lab for the better part of 5 hours. A suggestion of a 5-hour-long blogging marathon was (evidently) rejected due to the ever growing fear of RSI. Instead, we resorted to the (evidently anti-RSI) activity of TypeRacer for the majority of the time.

Following dinner and the return of Goldy, we settled down for the nightly session of Contact where it took Nic, Goldy and GP over 50 minutes to figure out 'precipitation', being repeatedly frustrated due to their belief that it clearly was not a word. Yet another exam follows tomorrow and it shall be tough... as nails. We must be tougher!

Cross Products and Even Crosser Informaticians

Today, the four students, as well as the two tutors, collectively proved a greedy algorithm for a computational geometry problem. We then individually wrote several hundred horrific lines of code to solve the problem, before realising our proof was wrong. It still scored 70% on orac though, so I think of this as being 70% completely and utterly correct. Proof by test data? Such is informatics.

We must really love informatics

It has been decreed by Jarrah that from now until dinner is our "free afternoon". We can do literally anything we want right now, we have no exams to sit or problem sessions to attend. What are we doing? We are sitting in a silent computer lab, practising informatics.

This is, of course, not what most people would think of as a "fun afternoon". We learnt a long time ago that we are not like most people (In a totally non-elitist way. We aren't better than most people. We are just weird). Most people would not order two massive glasses of orange juice to have with breakfast just so that the price would match exactly $20, most people would not stay up far later than they should this close to an IOI just so they could play another round of a word game and most people would not care about the outcome of a competition which took place years before they were born. Yet we do. We are strange. You probably knew that already.

It is the fourth day of the IOI training camp now. We've sat two practice IOI exams and the Japanese Olympiad in Informatics, each going for five hours. At this rate, we should be well and truly used to exams by the time we get to Italy.

Aside from the fifteen hours of exams, we have discovered that the AMT really wants their IOI team to eat well. We have been to very nice restaurants and eaten very nice food for every meal.

As far as I know, we're set to have another exam every day up until the IOI. We don't really mind this. Again, we are weird and we like exams. Exams exams exams.

Look at me, still talking when there's Informatics to do.

Smart IOI team is smart

So, me and nic haven't blogged much because we don't have laptops and we never have time after exams because we need to eat food to survive and stuff. Goldy and junkbot on the other hand, I have no idea about, especially considering the amount of documentation Goldy's been doing. (He's been taking pictures of almost every meal among other things.) But now we have a free afternoon so time for blogging marathon!

Anyway, this post is about how smart the IOI team is so without further ado, here's a bunch of quotes:

FURTHER ADO: Okay, it seems pretty junkbot heavy at first but no offense intended, it's just that me and junkbot are in the same room so therefore more quotes.

Junkbot brought a huge suitcase. When we first got to our room at perouse lodge he says: "Time to measure the radius of the door."

Goldy still hasn't shown up, despite the fact that he lives the closest out of all of us. While looking out the window, junkbot exclaims: "Oh hey, is that goldy?... oh wait, it's just a woman."

While examining the bedside lamp, junkbot says: "dude... look at how big this button is... ... dude..."

While searching for something good on tv we hear: "don't chop off your hand." This is why watching tv is a good thing. Because we learn things.

While playing plants vs. zombies: "Oh god... there's a plant getting through" ... yeah...

On our first night while discussing what dinner to get:
Jarrah: "Any preferences?"
Junkbot & nic: "Not Italian"
Me & goldy: "... wait... why?"
Everyone else: "... because we're going to Italy."

While examining code done by computer science students on the guest accounts we're using:
Goldy: "Aww... that's so cute."
When I ask to confirm what the distance formula is:
Goldy: "Aww... you year 9 kids... so cute."
When goldy finds out I don't have facebook:
Goldy: "Aww... aren't you above the age limit... aww, that's so cute."

So there. Undeniable proof of our intelligence. Since this is a free afternoon with not much else to do there'll probably be more blog coming up so watch out for that.

It is most definitely not possible to make an exam easier than this

"We have covered all this work all semester. It is only from the work we have done in tutes. It is easier than any of the labs we've done. It is most definitely not possible to make an exam easier than this. You have 40 and 10 minutes. That's 50 minutes. Five zero minutes. You can start now. Make sure you don't forget how easy this is. You should be able to know how to do this..."

The comforting sound of a highly over-enthusiastic computing tutor in an adjacent lab was more than sufficient to send the entire IOI team into (uncontrollable, for some) laughter. The (rather bleak) scenario we were faced with were 3 problems with not-so-good-actually-sort-of-half-decent-maybe-bad-ish-English from the Japanese Olympiad in Informatics (JOI) for five (point) zero hours.

Some hours earlier...

Waking up 30 mins late and only spending 85% of my breakfast voucher, we proceeded to the computer science building (known as K17) to discuss the terrors of the B-Session (pronounced ber-session or bee-session if you are feeling agricultural today). After wrestling with 300 lines of code for 3 hours in order to find the largest square for an Egyptian Pyramid Base (IOI 2008), finally scoring 100% was highly gratifying.

(Chris don't read this) After almost forgetting to collect a receipt from the Jewel of India, and dumping my bag in ERHU for the JOI, I did more than enough exercise for the week by disregarding the lift and acquiring running up and down 12 flights of stairs and across University Mall simply to fill up my water bottle.

* * *

After figuring out how to connect points on a plane to form a non-self-intersecting polygon (and not much else), the contest ended. The six of us headed down to Cafe Ciao for Italian (!) where I struggled to find an answer to "How do you order something that you can't pronounce?" Heading back to the Lodge, where we have been going for over 2 hours playing Contact (a word game) and blogging before realising it was already 2300 and we have an exam tomorrow. And with that, I'll wait for someone else to order and "Could I please have that too?".

On informatics

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.

Konrad Marshall of The Age recently ran a story that neatly explains what it is IOI contestants do.

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.