Peter Heyderhoff (Editor),
Hans-Werner Hein,
Fritz Krückeberg,
Günther Miklitz,
Peter Widmayer
[Image omitted]
[Image omitted]
Copyright 1991
PC Globe, Inc.
Tempe, AZ, USA.
In May 1989, UNESCO initiated and sponsored the first International Olympiad in Informatics which was held in Pravetz, Bulgaria. Although it was the first Olympiad in Informatics, 13 countries participated. This number is considered to be very high compared with the number of countries which participated in the first Olympiads in Mathematics, Physics and other sciences.
During the first IOI in Bulgaria, the German delegate Dr. Peter Heyderhoff had submitted the candidacy of Germany for organizing the fourth IOI in 1992.
The conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the States of the Federal Republic of Germany decided that the next olympiad in sciences after the International Mathematics Olympiad 1989, which was organized by the state of Lower Saxony, should be organized in a similar manner by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Informatics Olympiad is held annually. The following list shows how participation developed over the years and which countries will host the next olympiads. We remember the excellent hosting by Bulgaria, Belorussia and Greece.
represented by the
Federal Minister of Education and Science
in cooperation with the
Standing Conference of the Ministers of
Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder
in the Federal Republic of Germany
and in consultation with the
Federal Foreign Office.
In order to understand this structure one should consider that according to the federal structure of Germany the main responsibility for all matters of culture and education is not with the federal government but with the 16 autonomous states (Länder). On the other hand all contacts with foreign countries are the responsibility of the foreign office of the federal government. So the official inivitation was presented by the Federal Foreign Office. The main financial support was given by the Federal Minister of Education and Science. The IOI'92 was held in Bonn and organized by the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia.
All planning, preparational and organizing activities were done by the National Committee and the organizing office of the German National Competition in Informatics called "Bundeswettbewerb Informatik".
This Olympiad in Informatics is a competition which contributes to finding highly gifted students and developing their talents. In the short period of its existence it has developed into a world-wide contest. With representatives of 51 states and with 47 delegations, the highest level of participation ever has been achieved this year.
After hosting the International Olympiad in Physics 1982, in Chemistry 1984 and in Mathematics 1989 it is a great honour for the Federal Republic of Germany to host also the International Olympiad in Informatics. When young informatics students from many countries compare their skills and when they compete peacefully in a contest with such stringent requirements, the ambitious name Olympiad is justified.
For this competition I wish you every success and excellent achievements which will make your preparations worthwhile. I hope that you will gain many beautiful and interesting impressions during your stay in Germany and that you will be able to make numerous friendships world-wide."
Prof. Rainer Ortleb
Electronic microprocessors are taking on the burden of mechanic routine work and of dangerous and exhausting activities; they accelerate information processing, increase productivity, and they have become an indespensable tool in solving problems and in organizing learning. But an increase in the processing of personal data entails also the risk of misuse, and it may cause inadmissable interferences with the personal rights of the individual.
The educational system as a whole is obgliged to meet these new challenges. It must not only act in response to them but has to contribute to actively shaping these tasks. Since the media are especially effective in influencing young people in their thinking, feeling and acting, schools must see their new importance and responsibility.
The ministers of education and cultural affairs of the Länder have encouraged the integration of the new information and communication technologies into teaching and education by a series of agreements. As early as 1972 they initiated the acceptance of the informatics in the curriculum of the senior level at secondary schools (gymnasiale Oberstufe), and in 1982 they agreed on uniform examination standards for the Abitur exam. (The abitur is a secondary school leaving certificate equivalent to other countries' university entrance examinations.)
The education in information technology has become an established element in the school curricula of all Länder of the Federal Republic of Germany. The objective is to give all young people a basic understanding of the new technologies and to educate them in understanding and using the media in a rational and critical way. Boys and girls at school are also to be given possibilities to gain creative and playful access to these technologies.
Especially gifted young people are to be given the opportunity of deepening their interest in informatics beyond the regular classroom lessons and of comparing their achievements with students of similar talents and interests. The German Competition in Informatics which is supported by both the Federal Government and the Länder serves this purpose.
The International Olympiad in Informatics is a forum for those who have qualified as best in this discipline and who have won national competitions. This year 46 delegations from all over the world are coming to Bonn to compete in solving computer programming tasks. I cordially welcome all guests and I wish the participants much success in the competition.
I hope that you will remember your stay in Germany with pleasure, not only the competition but also the program and the encounters with people from all over the world."
Prof. Diether Breitenbach
The great number of participants shows how quickly the idea has spread that the most highly talented and motivated students of various nations should be given the chance to meet in an international contest, which also gives the opportunity to learn something about the host country, to exchange views with others and to make friends.
I am glad that this competition is taking place in North Rhine Westphalia and that we can show you some parts of it. I do hope that the program we are offering you is mooting your interest and that you will enjoy the excursions as well as the competition.
I wish you much success in the competition and a very pleasant stay in North Rhine Westphalia."
Hans Schwier
Siemens Nixdorf AG, München
Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Bonn
Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung mbH, Sankt Augustin
Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg
UNESCO, Paris
Apple Computer mbH, Ismaning
Berlin2000 Olympia GmbH, Berlin
Borland GmbH, Langen
Bücher Behrendt, Bonn
Cornelson Verlagsgesellschaft, Bielefeld
Co.Tec, Computergestütztes Lernen, Rosenheim
Digital Equipment GmbH, München
Ernst Klett-Schulbuchverlag GmbH, Stuttgart
Evangelischer Ausländerdienst e.V., Dortmund
Falken-Verlag GmbH, Niedernhausen
Hansen & Gieraths EDV-Vertriebs GmbH, Bonn
hr werbung gmbh, Frankfurt
Lanier Deutschland, Neuss
Markt & Technik GmbH, München
Microsoft GmbH, Unterschleißheim
Parsytec Anwendungen GmbH, Aachen
Stoll EDV Europe GmbH, Swisstal
Telekom - Deutsche Bundespost, Bonn
Travelling Software Inc., Bothell, USA
Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg.
There could be
The Chief Coordinator of IOI'92 Dr. Hans-Werner Hein informed the 12th World Computer Congress "IFIP CONGRESS 92", which was held in the beginning of September 1992 in Madrid, Spain. He gave a poster illustrated lecture about:
"International Olympiads in Informatics:
What is a proper programming competition task?"
He pointed out that an important topic conerning programming competitions is that of the implicit use of certain informatics paradigms. Informatics started on one hand with mathematical paradigms (e.g. Turing machine etc.) on the other hand with product specific paradigms (eg. von-Neumann processor). Meanwhile many paradigms are used concurrently in informatics and new ones appear every now and then (e.g. Object based systems, Neural Nets). It seems to be evident that an IOI competition should not stress certain informatics paradigms too much. His conclusion was that a programming task should have the features: basically paradigm-free, context-free (in a cultural sense), text easy to understand and carefully worded, task decomposable and easily demontrated, results to be easily judged, and, within the olympic constraints, educational.
The Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD) is a limited liability company and was founded in 1968. Its partners are the Federal Republic of Germany and the States of North-Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse. The GMD is member of the Association of National Reseach Institutions (AGF) in Germany.
The objectives of the GMD are:
Eight GMD institutes in three locations are forming the organisational framework for these research and development tasks sharing different parts in them:
This concentration of effort is also being applied within the institutes in form of Pilot Projects. Precisely defined steps and milestones will determine the priorities of their research and development work. These projects will be representative of the work of each institute, and they will gain importance, especially with regard to the public recognition of their results.
The Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI) was founded 1969 in Bonn in order to promote informatics. The 17800 individual and 330 corporate members are coming from informatics research, -education, -industry and -applications and comprise also students in informatics.
Scientific work within GI is done by more than 100 Expert Committees, Special Interest groups and Working Groups. Those committees and groups are structured in nine divisions: Foundation of Informatics, Artificial Intelligence, Software Technology and Information Systems, Telematics and Computer Architecture, Information Technology and Technologial Applications, Informatics in Economy, Informatics in Law and Public Administration, Informatics in Education and Profession, Informatics and Society.
The 25 regional groups in Germany take care of members and interested people as far as professional and regional questions are concerned. The Deutsche Informatik Akademie, located in Bonn, initiated and mainly supported by GI, offers a high program of continued education for professionals in informatics throughout Germany.
Recently the International Conference and Research Center for Computer Science in Dagstuhl Castle has been founded. It is jointly supported by GI and the universities of Saarbrücken, Kaiserslautern and Karlsruhe. Financial support comes from the Saarland and Rheinland-Palatinate.
GI is member of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) and of the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS). GI has a seat in the council of the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring foundation and is member of the Deutscher-Verband-Technisch-Wissenschaftlicher-Vereine, which comprises all technological associations in Germany. Every two years GI awards the Konrad-Zuse-Medaille for outstanding contributions in Computer Science. The main organ of the GI is the scientific journal Informatik-Spektrum.
GI and GMD do not only arrange the Informatics Olympiad, but they are also responsible for the National Competition in informatics.
The purpose of the German informatics competitions is the academic encouragement of interested and talented pupils. It should motivate them to become involved with the subject matter and methods of informatics, the application of information processing systems and the resulting problems. In particular, the use of systematic and objective methods and the social relevance of these methods should be considered. In addition the competition should encourage better school education in informatics and attract public attention.
The competitions are characterised by the eight problems which are given each year in the first and second rounds. In the first round five generally understandable problems are given and circulated in September to all schools. A pupil must solve at least three of these problems to qualify for the second round. In the secound round three additional and more difficult problems are given. Participation is about 3000 pupils in the first round, 300 in the second round and 30 in the final third round from which the candidates for the International Olympiade are selected.
A book series Bundeswettbewerb-Informatik-Aufgaben-und-Lösungen edited by Peter Heyderhoff is published by Klett-Schulbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-12-7107501. Each volume contains the eight problems for a year and the problems of the IOI, with comprehensively documented solutions and educational comments.
The German Informatics Competition is organized, controlled and promoted by a coordination committee, a problem development panel and an organizing office with Dr. Peter Heyderhoff as Managing Director.
The task of the National Committee was to develop the guidelines and general planning frame for the IOI'92 and to prepare its realisation.
His tasks were the following:
The President of the Jury was consulted and supported by the Chief Coordinator and the Managing Director of the IOI with whom he cooperated confidently.
The Scientific Committee was nominated by the Chief Coordinator Dr. Hans-Werner Hein out of the circle of coordinators. With the help of the Chief Coordinator it prepared the selection of tasks for the IOI.
The Scientific Committee had the following tasks:
25 coordinators nominated by the organizer had the following tasks:
Its tasks were the following:
His responsibilities included
The Chief Coordinator was consulted by the Managing Director of the IOI.
His tasks were
His tasks were:
All 200 computers had to be transported, unpacked, connected, installed, checked, supervised and loaded with the necessary system software.
The participants of the competition had to be instructed concerning the application.
During the competition the work of the participants had to be supervised. Participants of the competition and members of the jury had to be assisted when printing the programs.
After the competitions the software had to be deleted again, the computers had to be checked, removed, packed and transported.
Planning and leading of recreational activities. Didactic and methodical preparation by considering the international composition of groups and the program in total. Conversation in English.
The recreation program included: condition training with music, long-distance races, ball games (football, basketball, volleyball) and swimming.
Indoor gymnasions could be used depending on the weather.
Everyone wore identifying badges with the following coding:
numbers (1..4) = student, green dot = team leader, white dot = accompanying person, yellow dot = hostess, blue dot = coordinator, black dot = technician, red dot = organizer, two dots = chief, two red dots = chief organizer, two green dots = leader of the delegation.
The organizing office benefitted from the valuable guidance of Prof. Fritz Krückeberg, chairman of the National Committee and institute manager at GMD, who excercised his role as supervisor in a friendly, committed and cooperative manner.
In 1990 two leading firms of Germany's computer industry agreed to grant technical support by providing free of charge around 200 computers for a period of four weeks for the IOI'92.
Performing the administration of finances, the Managing Director cooperated with the GMD's department of finance, which provided accounting and cost control service. His secretary assisted him. The rest of the organizing staff were not involved in financial matters.
While the members of the Coordinating and Scientific Committees were all teachers and scientists, who could be hired with their employers' consent, the organizing office had to rely on a large group of high school or university students who were given short term working contracts or who were remunerated on an hourly basis and according to commitment. That way many jobs were done by persons who had no professional qualifications. This explains a few shortcomings. But the organizers hope that the impression is true: the overall reaction to the organizers' performance on the principle of "by young people for young people" has been quite positive.
The amount of preparation work of the various groups with specific tasks is indicated by the following schedule:
In addition, minor meetings were held with private sponsors and government representatives to prepare the opening and closing day activities, parts of the cultural program and to coordinate the acquisition of additional sponsorships.
As far as the hotel room booking is concerned, it is worth mentioning that the organizing office allocated the rooms to the individual guests, thanks to the computer equipment and software (Paradox, version 4) used by the office. The hotels could then be given a complete room booking plan.
In order to make it easier for our international guests to move around, to see things and to meet people, a group of about 30 girls from the Clara Schumann Grammar School in Bonn had volunteered to form a Reception Committee and to organize an escort service. Each delegation was greeted at the airport or at the railway station by two of these girls who then showed them the way to the hotel. During the competition week and in some of the cultural programs they were committed to doing small organisational and informational jobs.
Another transportation task was the hiring of buses for the various trips during the competition week. Since it was not certain how many people would participate in the different cultural activities offered, due to options offered by the program, bus capacity had to be estimated. The private transportation company helped at short notice to provide the capacity actually needed.
Later, at the meeting of the International Committee on 27th October 1991 in Bonn, the paper "Preliminary Regulations" was accepted, following the basic outlines of the draft paper (see report of the Meeting of the International Committee, chapter 1.9). The organizing office provided its secretarial assistance service.
For future reference it may be of interest to know how many computers were set up per room and the room sizes; there were six rooms available and the computer placement was as follows:
Room No Room size ComputersIt may also be interesting to know what kind of equipment problems had to be solved. The following excerpt from a check list will give a good illustration:S 1-2 97 qm 36 S 5-6 226 qm 82 S 7 36 qm 13 S 8 34 qm 12 S 9-11 73 qm 26 S 10 29 qm 10
The Technical Committee did a remarkable job. During and after the competition a number of knowledgable persons observed that a private company with professional computer technicians would have had trouble if asked to perform the same tasks in the same time and with the same dedication and with the same excellent results.
Members of the National Committee were:
Members of the International Committee:
1. Peter Heyderhoff opened the meeting and welcomed the participants. He introduced the following guests:
On his initiative the International Committee (I.C.) agreed to thank the Greek government for all its efforts, support and hospitality in the IOI'91.
2. Christos Kilias gave a detailed report of the organisational and financial aspects of the IOI'91. The total cost amounted to 12 million drachm - salaries for personnel not included.
As to the countries which received invitations, he pointed out that all countries with embassies in Greece were invited. He suggested that in order to be able to calculate with stable figures, new countries should be invited to participate for the first time as observers only.
3. Peter Heyderhoff gave a report of the preparations for the IOI 1992 in Bonn. He pointed out that the funding had been secured thanks to corresponding efforts by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science and by the Ministry of Education of the Land North Rhine Westphalia. He also explained the various activities planned for the Olympiad. On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Science, Dr. Tilgner reported briefly on the procedure of officially inviting countries to participate. The IC welcomed the program as presented. It made a few suggestions to organisational details.
4. The paper "Announcement and Preliminary Regulations" was discussed and accepted with minor changes:
8. Ries Kock gave a report on plans for setting up an olympic information centre in the Netherlands. The information centre may function as an e-mail box and distribute didactic material for IOI training.
9. The report of preparations for the 5th Olympiad in Argentina was postponed. It was suggested that the organisation of a group flight from Europe to Argentina should be considered in order to profit from low charter flight rates. There should be an e-mail discussion of details.
10. Ries Kock and Yngve Lindberg reported on their preparations for hosting the Olympiad in their countries. In the Netherlands the government was willing to take a decision by end of November 1991. In Sweden no problem should arise for organizing the Olympiad in 1994. Hungary may be able to organize the Olympiad in 1996. It would then coincide with the country's 1000th anniversary.
The IC drafted the following plan for countries to host future Olympiads:
11. Tom van Weert reported on the cooperation with UNESCO/IIP and IFIP TC3 on education. He proposed the following points:
There could be
13. In a final discussion, the IC accepted the paper "Guidelines for Future Olympiads in Informatics".
The President thanked all participants for their committed and fruitful collaboration and closed the meeting.
Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Brunei, Belorussia, Canada, China, Columbia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabun, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunesia, Turkey, Soviet Union (Russia), Ukraine, United States, United Kingdom, Viet Nam, West Africa, Zimbabwe.
Austria, Bahrain, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, France, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Morocco, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, West Africa.
1. Colombia 3 persons 2. Gabon 6 persons 3. Kuwait 6 persons 4. Morocco 1 person 5. Mongolia 6 persons 6. Nigeria 1 personand according to their application the following teams are expected later:
7. Algeria 6 persons 8. Argentina 1 person 9. Bulgara 6 persons 10. China 1 person 11. Viet Nam 6 personsDuring the arrival day there had been many opportunities for personal contact and for exploring the surroundings of the convention hotel. In the nearby parc (Rheinaue) there was a big open-air folk festival. In the hotel, the Siemens Corporation showed an exhibition about the use of computers as a help for handicaped people. IBM presented a colourful globe clock with worldtime information. The IOI announced that an exhibition of posters of participating countries was being prepared. The computing room was open so that every participant was able to get aquainted with the equipment.
This Common Prayer was conducted by a young teacher Dr. Uli Drescher and by Gaby Heyderhoff with her worship music team. International well known hymns were presented with guitare, flute, violin and percussion instruments. Short readings from the Bible in many languages, prayers, thanksgiving and periods of silent prayer constituted this act of common prayer. A majority of those who had already arrived attended this service and were impressed by its dignity.
The Heilig Kreuz Church, the place for this Common Prayer, was opened for the whole week for everybody's silent worship.
Remarks on the GMD's Presentation
Program in the afternoon
(Music by Winners of the German National
Competition "Jugend musiziert"
(Youth Music Festival))
Youth Ensemble Vivaldi from Bottrop:
Ulrike Sawicki (Mandoline), Silke Müller
(Mandoline), Anke Naujokat (Mandola),
Birgit Schwab(Gitarre), Anke Göntgen
(Kontrabaß)
I welcome also representatives from embassies, government institutions, science and research institutions; our olympiad staff and all our assistents.
We remember with pleasure the Third Olympiad in Informatics which we experienced a year ago in Greece, in Athens and Anavyssos. For this brilliantly organized olympiad and for the heartly welcome which we received, we thank the Greek government and Professor Christos Kilias and his organizing team.
We wish all participants and guests of the Olympiad a pleasant and culturally inspiring stay in Germany and a peaceful sporting competition. Personal contacts are equally important for the success of the competition. Friendship starts and grows in the hearts of young people.
The Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker as patron of the organizers greets all participants and wishes the olympiad in Bonn every success and interesting comparisons.
Herewith I declare the Fourth International Olympiad in Informatics as opened."
als Vorstandsvorsitzender der GMD sollte ich Sie in deutsch begrüßen. Je suis aussi un professeur à l'Université de Genève et je pouvais aussi vous saluer en francais, ... But I will break all protocols and will talk to you directly in English because this is the language you understand best. I was asked to make a short speech and I had the choice, I could talk about the olympic spirit, I could talk about GMD which is the host organisation and I could talk about Schloß Birlinghoven because, after all, my office is in this building. I will not follow these instructions. As far as the olympic spirit is concerned, as a Greek I should know a lot about it, since the olympic idea was started in ancient Greece. But I really believe that all great ideas don't belong to one country, they belong to the whole world, so anybody could talk about the olympic idea as well as a Greek. The second topic about GMD and about this building: GMD is a large federal research laboratory of the German government. We have about 1,400 people. There are about 800 in this area, 300 in Berlin and 300 in Darmstadt. We are doing research and development in information technology. I will not go into details about the projects we have. Somebody asked me whether this is our largest room that you could fit in and I said probably not, but it's the nicest and if you look around you're surrounded by European culture. Almost all the paintings you see and the fire places and the works of art are originals. A lot of them don't come from Germany, they come from other places in Europe, they come from Italy, they come from France, etc.
As you're studying modern technology you should contemplate also what ancient technology was all about. So finally I'll spend the most of my time on informatics. You could describe the evolution of this area in four words: computation, information, communication and imagination.
The first computers, as the name actually implies, were mainly for computation. Computation was an old dream that many scientists and mathematicians had over the centuries. They wanted a mechanical way to compute. They wanted to think, they didn't want to waste their time in computation. The old computing machines and especially the new computers can perform very many computations. But as time went by computers were not mainly used for computation. Even small calculators, that most of you already have, exhaust all your needs for computation. Very few people need more computation than these small calculators provide. Although for specialized cases you need very large computers to do computation, most of the computers most of the time don't compute. They do other things.
The second word explains a little bit more what computers were doing after computation. They were dealing with information. Take as an example an airline reservation system. You walk in and you reserve a seat. And believe me, there is usually a very large system which does that for you. When you think about the computation that has to be effected, it's not very sophisticated, all you have to do is subtract 1 from a number which is not more than 300. There are that many seats and you have to take one. And then you have to scratch your head and ask what do these big computers do the rest of the time. They deal mainly with information. And a lot of the cycles of computers the world over are mainly for transaction oriented database systems which deal with information in general.
One could stop here but I think that we have a brighter future. I consider that communication is probably even more important than information. People are overloaded with information. I mean it's just too much and most people cannot really absorb it. There are a lot of external databases. There is a lot of information floating around. In large organisations the problem is not to have access to information. The problem is that you have too much. You have different systems and they tell you to do different things. But there is one area that still is not exhausted and that is the need for communication. Communication was originally completely independent from computers, mainly based on telephones.
When people think about communication they think about wires, they think about telephones and about television. There are two things that are happening which are extremely important. The first is that the raw technology for information systems and the raw technology for communication systems is exactly the same. You may not know it, but if you look at the value of a very large telephone system, most of it is in software, it is just programs. As time goes on, especially with new wide band networks, we replace copper with fibre optics and get a lot of bandwidth, but we still have to deal with communication. There is a huge application area coming. Many people are willing to invest not only their money but their time in communication. Most of the people who today study informatics may work tomorrow in the communication area and not in the informatics area.
For your age it's not important what people do now and it's not important what people would do in a few years from now. It's very important what people would do in ten years from now. More than that I just can't predict.
The fourth word that I would like to leave with you is imagination. You may ask in what way computers can deal with imagination. A new area of multimedia and visualisation is coming, where computers play a very large role. High definition television has as many chips as a computer. With the help of computer systems - and perhaps you get a chance to see some of them here - you can visualize things. Pretty soon you will be able to use computers in a very similar way, just as artists worked when doing these ancient paintings. They saw something and they painted it. Now what you can do is you can see something and you cannot only capture it but you can compose it using computers. If you go one step further then you don't have to see something. You can imagine, you can describe it properly and you can see it in terms of multimedia systems. That is extremely important.
People come and go. They imagine a lot of things during their life time and there is no way that they can leave for other people what they have imagined. I would have loved to see some of the things that some of the famous or perhaps not so famous people have imagined. I would have liked to see what one of these artists who painted one of these paintings in this Großer Saal had imagined. I think our technology will give you that capability. In your life time, not only you will see it, but you will probably use it. Thank you."
Before getting to the evaluation of your work, let me first briefly describe to you what your work consists of, that is, how you should perform your task. This olympiad deals with algorithmic problems that you should be solving in the next few days. To do so, each of you has a problem that is not exactly algorithmic, but similar, namely to win a medal (gold if possible). Naturally, there is no problem if you do not win a gold medal, since the main thing is to participate in this competition. Let me tell you anyway how to win a gold medal, just in case you want to try.
Problem:
How to get a medal (gold if possible) in this olympiad ?
Let me extract the part of the solution that can be described algorithmically; for most of you, this must look very simple:
Solution:
program olympiad 1992; begin solve problem 1; solve problem 2; if you are clever and lucky then get medal else don't worry, be happy end.
As in every programming task, the question is now to refine that program and specify the subtasks in more detail. I will - again algorithmically - describe how to solve problem i, for i from 1 to 2.
Procedure solve problem (i: 1..2); begin get text of problem i and read it; if you have a question within 1/2 h then ask; repeat think until a good idea comes to mind or timeout; develop an algorithm; write a program and debug it; describe the solution; wait for the coordinator end;
You will get the problem text in the morning of the day in which you have to solve the problem; the first problem text will be given to you at 10:00 h on Wednesday, the second problem text at 10:00 h on Friday. Like in many algorithms and programs, this problem solving procedure contains one main loop that consumes most of the computation time: You think. You think and you think and you think, and since the timeout is only after five hours, you will probably exit the loop by having some good idea. So, wishful thinking, let's assume some good idea comes to your mind rather quickly. What do you do next? You think through the idea once again, you describe it, you write it down on paper, and you try to find an algorithm accordingly; this is the essence of the whole story. As soon as you are convinced that this is the way to go, you write a program, you type it into the computer, you run it, and you debug it. And then you will probably just have to sit there and wait for the remaining few hours, until it is 15:00 h and somebody comes and picks up your solution.
Precisely at 15:00 h, you are required to switch off the computer. That's important. If you don't obey this rule, you will be disqualified. Some time after 15:00 h, somebody (we call him a coordinator) will come and ask you to deliver a floppydisk, with your program on it, and a paper description of your solution. Your team leader will be with the coordinator in picking up your solution. Those two people will run your program on the spot, while you are there. So, if anything needs to be asked, they can ask you directly - things like what should I type here, why is this dialogue so strange?". You will be there and you can inform them whenever they have difficulties with your program. Then they go away, and you go away.
For you, the day's work is done, but for those coordinators, the work goes on. Who are these people, by the way? They are computer scientists, from Germany mainly, scientists involved in algorithms, in programming, and with lots of contacts with people that also program. They have seen beforehand the algorithmic problem that you solved in the competition, and they have studied it in depth. They will be able to look at your solution and see immediately what you have done. Nevertheless, to be as efficient as possible, in a first step the coordinators will go through your solution very quickly and judge it mainly in terms of what your program produces for a large set of test data. They will run your program with a large set of test data, and they will write a protocol of what comes out. If your team leader and your coordinator agree in this first step on the quality of your program - let's say, your program is perfect in all aspects, for example - then there will not be any discussion on your program any more. In general, you will receive some percentage of the full share of points for specified subproblems that you solved; for instance, for reading the problem text, you might get 25 % of all points, and for waiting for the coordinator you might get 1 % of the points, just to give an example.
Nevertheless, there may be cases where your team leader and your coordinator do not agree on the sum of these percentage points for your program. They may have different opinions on how your program performed. In that case, in order to make the evaluation really just and fair, there will be a second round of evaluation. A number of additional experts will look in detail at your program, as well as your team leader and your coordinator. They will try to find out the ideas that are in your program, to get hold of what is in the program, but cannot be deduced from the output necessarily. And I firmly believe that this group of experts will reach a conclusion in almost all cases. If they still don't agree, they will ask the Chief Coordinator, and if this larger group of people still does not agree, then there is the jury. The jury needs to decide on these doubtful cases. As president of the jury, my responsibility is to guarantee absolutely that the jury takes the correct decision in these cases.
Of course, I can never even get close to such a guarantee, but I promise you that I will do my best to make sure that the jury arrives at a correct decision. If anything goes wrong, if you feel the things are not as they should be, you should come to me and hold me responsible, shout at me and ask me what has happened. In 99 % of the cases, I'm afraid, I won't be able to respond. But I will be happy if there is a case in which I can respond, and then I will.
I think these are the main rules that you need to observe. Your team leaders will inform you once again about them in great detail. All the team leaders are members of the jury, and all the deputy team leaders, even though they are not members of the jury, are invited to come to all jury meetings to advice the team leaders. The first jury meeting will be held today in this room at 16:00 h. This first meeting is for the jury to discuss and agree on the regulations again in detail. Then you have the full Tuesday to inquire the team leaders about all things that have been discussed. On Wednesday, you will enter the first round of the competition, for which I wish you all the success in getting a gold medal. Thank you."
The Fourth International Olympiad in Informatics has just been opened, the official signal for starting the "games" has been given and you have been informed of the rules for the competition. At this point the competition days on Wednesday and Friday are probably your main concern. Taking this into account when planning the program, we kept the first two days of the week free for other activities. Anyone with the experience of an intercontinantal flight knows what it is like to cope with the time lag: Many of you will feel the typical fatigue due to the time diffenrence between here and your home country. Many new impressions of Germany as a foreign country to you will add to this. We know that it takes some time to adjust. We hope that our program, which everybody should carry around at all times for quick reference, will help you to enjoy your stay in Germany. Let us take a look for a few comments.
On the first day of the olympiad and right after this assembly we shall have a buffet lunch here in the castle hall. Actually I should use the German word "Schloß" for castle because some British friends have told me that this building of the turn of the century should be referred to as a Manor House and not as a castle. Since we call it a "Schloß" I like the word castle better.
In the afternoon you will be invited by the Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD) - The German National Research Centre for Informatics and Information Technology - to have a look at some parts of its scientific work. Thanks to special preparations by my colleagues here at GMD there will be eight scientific and technological exhibits. Three lectures accompanying the presentations will be held in the Red Chamber, the room adjacent to this hall where some of the audience are presently watching us on a television screen because we could not fit everybody in here.
We have prepared a list of eight GMD presentations which you can pick up in the lobby as you leave the castle. The GMD presentations which comprise the following:
Tonight at six o'clock dinner will be served in the GMD restaurant facing the castle 300 meters down the park. At seven o clock we shall be back here in the castle for a party with dixieland music and barrels of draft beer.
Tomorrow we shall go by bus to the city of Düsseldorf which is the capital of the state of North Rhine Westphalia the biggest of 16 states that make up the Federal Republic of Germany. We shall visit the seat of parliament and the city.
Please note that we are offering sports in the evening. Not only on Tuesday evening but four more times. Three sports teachers will be in charge of this. Ball games and gymnastics with music are on the program. You are invited to participate and to make personal suggestions to the program.
On Wednesday, the first competition day you will concentrate fully on your work. A German television team has announced that it would like to shoot some scenes. I hope you will allow this. We will make sure that there will be no annoying disturbances during the contest.
From many foreign friends we know that a visit to Germany should include a visit to Heidelberg which is ao well known for its charm as an old university city, for its romantic period in philosophy, for its training of students from all over the world, many of whom became famous as scholars, scientists or politicians. The publishing house Springer Verlag - known for its scientific publications - is sponsoring your day in Heidelberg and you will be given a lecture on hypermedia techniques. Visual presentations will make this attractive and easy to understand. We will go to Heidelberg by airconditioned bus. It is a three hour ride. In the evening we plan to be back home in time so that you will be able to get a good rest for the second part of the competition on Friday.
Friday night we are offering a babecue grill in the Gustav-Stresemann-House -providing the wheather will permit this.
On Saturday we will go on another bus trip to Cologne - only half an hour away from Bonn. You will be taken on a guided tour in the famous cathedral of Cologne. There will be tour guides in five languages.
For the afternoon we have scheduled a visit to a small Hollywood world - the studios of Germany's biggest television station - WDR. The Saturday excursions as well as the trip to Düsseldorf on Tuesday have been sponsored by the state government of North Rhine Westphalia.
On Sunday morning you can either attend religious services or go on a guided sight-seeing tour in Bonn where you will visit Beethoven's birth house. In the afternoon you can either do what you please or join us for a hike in the seven mountains near the Rhine with a visit of Adenauer's house. Adenauer was the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. We shall go back to Bonn by boat. You may enjoy the evening in the city or may walk directly back to the hotel.
On Monday, the last day of the olympiad, we shall have a prize awarding ceremony here in this hall. Professor Rainer Ortleb, the Minister of Education and Science of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Hans Schwier, the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports of North Rhine Westphalia, will be present and will speak to you. We are very glad that our international informatics contest is getting so much attention and that such high ranking personallities will honour our competition with their presence.
From my point of view as Managing Director I should like to add the following observations: Our competition has won the special attention of political leaders in education and science as well as of some leaders in business. Consequently it has been funded by the Federal Minister of Education and Science with the support of the Ministers of Cultural Affairs in the Länder. This entailed that quite a few expert activities on the part of government institutions were involved - from the federal to the community level we found friendly understanding and support in the course of our preparations. A considerable number of government experts in education were committed to make sure that our olympiad could get under way and be organized. But we received much support from private industry. Without the help of our two main sponsors we would not have been able to provide so many computers for the competition. We are very thankful for this and we owe special thanks to the helpful assistance of the two companies' personnel engaged in our preparations.
We are also thankful for the generous support of many sponsors. Their names can be found in a list at the end of our program brochure, and an updated list will be prepared for the press.
Let me add a final remark to the organisational part of the competition. There was a lot of cooperation and moral support from my dear colleagues in 55 countries world wide. With many of you we had very practical and direct correspondence per electronic mail. The set of sample problems and the provisionary regulations we had prepared went around the globe in seconds. On the other end of the line my colleagues from abroad did their bit. I know of quite a few struggles you had in order to get the participation of your national team through: solving funding and all kinds of organisational problems. In many cases where we had no e-mail contact our correspondence went the classic way and per fax machine. I thank you all, my dear colleagues, for your great efforts and for the trouble you and the informatics friends in your countries have taken to enable your students and you to come here to Germany. You and your teams have all contributed very much to making this event the biggest in the short history of our olympiad.
In our understanding of the purpose of all organising efforts before and during the olympiad the following all stands out: Let us work in the right spirit for bringing ever more highly talented young people, teachers and experts in informatics together so that we can exchange views, learn from each other and become friends. If it is true that informatics is a key science - and we do not doubt this - then we have the key for making the exchange of information world wide ever more an instrument of true communication and friendship. Our expertise in computer programming and computer science shall put us on the active side of peacemakers in this world.
Also on behalf of the whole organizing crew of this informatics olympiad I wish you a very successful, enjoyable and memorable olympic week."
On the competition days, Wednesday and Friday, the jury met from 6:00 h to 11:00 h, in order to select one out of three possible programming problems for each of those two days. This decision was supported by the Chief Coordinator's presentation of ways to solve the problems, including example programs. It took the jury from one to two hours to reach its decision. After the decision, each team leader and deputy team leader translated the problem formulation into the mother tongue of the home country. After the beginning of the competition, from 10:00 h onwards, the jury was available for another hour in order to respond to questions posed by the participants.
In the final meeting, the jury agreed on how to award medals to participants.
A number of other points of general interest were discussed in the jury meetings and were given as recommendations to the International Committee. All these recommendations were discussed and adopted in the International Committee. They are reflected in chapter 2 of this report. In particular the jury made suggestions on
At the two contest days the Coordinating Committee gathered at 13:00 for a plenary meeting. The task chosen in the morning by the Jury was introduced and discussed, the scoring and evaluation procedure called to mind. The first evaluation phase then started after 15:00. Later on that days the Coordinating Committee met again to exchange experiences, file and sort the intermediate results, and prepare for the second evaluation phase (which started late in the same evening).
English was the official language of the competition. However, each student had to be able to read the problem in his/her native language. So, once the problem was selected, the team leaders and deputy team leaders from non-English speaking countries began translating the problem. There were approximately 35 different native languages represented. Everything stayed on schedule, and by 10:00 am the contest was ready to begin. Each participant had his/her own computer supplied by IBM or Siemens, with Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, QuickBasic, and Logo already installed. Nearly 200 identical systems were spread out in six different rooms. Now, each student had exactly five hours to solve the first problem. During the first half hour a participant could ask the jury in writing about the text of the problem. Only questions that could be answered with "Yes"/"No" or "No comment" were accepted. The answers were given as soon as possible. On the first competition day five technical problems with computers appeared, four of them necessitating a student's shift to a spare computer system. Each shift required less than 10 minutes. According to Murphy's law two of the shifts happened to the same student, but fortunately she took it very professional. All concerned students received a 10 minute time bonus per shift for compensation. No relevant software losses were reported.
At precisely 3:00 pm all computers were turned off, and students handed in diskettes at the door containing copies of their programs. The contestants filed out of the rooms with looks of amusement, amazement, bewilderment, pain, and relief. Each student had an appointed time to return with his/her team leader and they would meet with a coordinator supplied by Germany at this time to evaluate the students solution and award points. Each coordinator had a score sheet and a disk of files to run against the program. On this first review the source code was not examined - only the output of the program. Points were awarded for a list of eight items, including: does it display input data properly? does it write the solution to the output file? does it construct all possible solutions? were the technical constraints completely obeyed? A perfect score was 100. During this checking, all required tests had be run and a written report was signed by each coordinator and the team leader. Each participant's program was copied on two diskettes and the corresponding description, if any, was collected. The coordinator and the team leader each kept one copy of the diskettes. Printouts were produced by the coordinator and then given to the team leader.
So the team leader and the coordinator together examined each solution and agreed on a preliminary evaluation. By moderating the solution in the Coordinating Committee a just and balanced evaluation was achieved.
It took several hours to examine all 170 programs, signaling the end of the first day of the competition. The jury, which was the final arbiter in all disputes over scoring, met late into the evening to review the results and handle any complaints. There was one misinterpretation by several students on how to handle input data that was out of bounds. The Scientific Committee agreed to change their initial position on this point, since what the students had done in this case was what many of us would also have done. This demonstrates that even as carefully reviewed as this problem had been, it is difficult to state a problem that is completely free of ambiguity.
In the second evaluation phase all cases in which evaluators and team leaders disagreed, were analysed by "looking to the code". The team leader played the role of trying to prove that the solution was fully or partially ok, the evaluator played the questioner role. The team leader's ability to discuss the problem with their student, and read and understand that single program carefully in advance was used efficiently for a fair evaluation. So very few cases remained to be decided by the Chief Coordinator in a third evaluation step. After the second step of the first competition day the team leaders received the evaluation results together with the following letter:
Dear Teamleader and Member of the Jury:With this note you receive the results of the IOI'92 after the second evaluation phase. Though the first evaluation phase was somewhat formal and "quick and dirty", it resulted in very valuable written information (independent from the coordinators personalities) about: program parts that obviously were correct, and teamleader's opinions to some necessarily ambigious parts of the natural language task text. Last night and today we executed the second evaluation phase:
- Detailed analysis of about 40 failing but promising looking programs (sometimes including debugging and special tests),
- Revision of those credits which refer to ambigious task text parts. This was done according to a sort of "common sense" in the teamleaders written comments and credit claims.
The results for your team you have now in hand and the Coordinating Committee of the IOI'92 hopes that you will agree with its proposal. So far we thank you very much for cooperation, helpful critique and comments. In case you still disagree, please contact me personally as soon as possible, so we can finish the evaluation together.
Very sincerely yours Hans-Werner Hein.
The same procedure was followed on the second day of competition. Finally the Chief Coordinator presented the results in form of an anonymized sorted list to the Jury, who made the final decision. The jury determined the minimum scores for the first, second and third prizes. The number of winners of these prizes was in the proportion 1:2:3 and half of the participants received prizes.
The three main sponsors offered their own contributions to the cultural program: The ministry of education of North Rhine Westphalia with a visit to Düsseldorf and Cologne; the publishing firm Springer-Verlag with a visit to Heidelberg; and the city of Bonn with a free boat ride on the river Rhine and a tour of the city.
There were opening and closing ceremonies which framed the other events of the week. Both ceremonies were held in the great hall of Schloß Birlinghoven - actually a Manor House from the turn of the century, built in imitation of an 18th or 17th century style castle - on the site of the GMD in Sankt Augustin. At each ceremony a concert of classical music could be enjoyed thanks to a quartet and a quintet of young musicians who had been prize winners in Germany's national music competition.
The first day began with a reception by the city of Bonn in the historic Mayor's House. One of the city's mayors welcomed the group, and drinks were provided. Leaving the building, many participants had their group picture taken on the large staircase facing the market place, a view which is also quite popular with foreign heads of governments when visiting Bonn.
After the opening ceremony with some speeches documented in this brochure, the GMD offered eight scientific and technological exhibits and lectures in the afternoon. One telecommunication show was in cooperation with the German Telekom Company. (For details refer to Dr. Heyderhoff's speech on page 28.) In the evening a party was held in the castle and on its terrace with live dixieland music and draft beer.
On the second day there was a trip to Düsseldorf, the capital of the state of North Rhine Westphalia. Upon arrival in Düsseldorf, tourist guides boarded the six buses to take the participants on a sight seeing tour. After visiting the new Parliament building, where North Rhine Westphalia's minister of education, Hans Schwier, welcomed the group, four options were offered for the afternoon: visit of the aquarium, the picture gallery, the Goethe Museum or a walk in the famous shopping street Königsallee. Unfortunately it was raining all day and the program had to be adjusted correspondingly.
On Thursday the participants were taken by bus on a trip to Heidelberg where the publishing house Springer Verlag invited the group for a tour of the city which included the castle and the old university. After an excursion by boat on the river Neckar, professor Thalmann of the University of Geneva gave a lecture on hypermedia techniques in the house of Springer Verlag. During the whole day the weather was marvellous, and in spite of the first day of North Rhine Westphalia's school vacation the traffic flow on the autobahn was surprisingly smooth.
The weekend began with a trip to Cologne. Twelve professional guides received the participants in front of the famous cathedral, which once made Cologne one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in the whole of Europe. The guides offered attractive small group tours in several languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Russian and Chinese. The visitors learned, among other historical details that this building was started in 1248 and that it was finished in 1880. With its 515 feet high towers it was at that time the highest structure in the world. Before the buses took the group to their afternoon activity, some time was given for a walk along Cologne's shopping street Hohe Straße, where a quite unusual spectacle of street artists happened to go by: a group of almost nude people in the appearance of prehistoric animal men chained together and led away by guards in uniform who locked them up in a cage in front of the cathedral. The performance was so convincing that quite a few IOI guests confused the play with reality and asked curious questions. The show left many onlookers puzzled and amazed at this kind of modern theatre art in Europe. The afternoon was spent in Bocklemünd where the group toured the television studios of Germany's biggest television station WDR. Among other things there were stunt shows, special effects and a live radio show with music and cabaret.
On Sunday morning a group of participants went to the American church nearby. Guided tours of the city of Bonn were offered, but the majority of participants preferred to sleep in late, probably because of extensive private partying the previous night. From the organisational point of view it was unfortunate in having ten guides lined up for a group that could be handled by three. But the organizers were convinced that the municipal government of Bonn who provided the guides also finally understood that there were many youngsters who needed to rest and who just stayed in bed without giving anyone prior notice.
The afternoon program, however, with several options was fully booked. The options were:
The last day of the IOI'92, the prize awarding ceremony took place at Schloß Birlinghoven. Speeches were given by Prof. Ortleb, Federal Minister of Education, and by Mr. H. Schwier, Minister of Education of North Rhine Westphalia. Many representatives of various government or private institutions and of several embassies were present.
In the evening of the same day the IOI'92 came to its end with a big farewell party in the Gustav Stresemann Institute. It was a beautiful warm evening after one of the hottest summer days of the year. A band was playing and there was dancing until late in the night. A professional magician from St. Petersburg presented two shows of his best and most entertaining tricks, and with free drinks and snacks everybody could enjoy a wonderful summer night garden party.
Prof. Rainer Ortleb
Federal Minister of Education and Science
Hans Schwier
Minister of Education, Culture and Sports,
North Rhine-Westphalia
Prof. Fritz Krückeberg
Chairman of the National Committee of the
International Olympiad in Informatics 1992
Prize-Giving
Prof. Peter Widmayer
President of the Jury
Dr. Peter Heyderhoff
Managing Director of IOI'92 and President
of the International Olympic Committee
Invitation to the IOI'93 in Argentina
Dr. Alicia Banuelos
Delegation Leader of Argentina
(The Music was performed by winners of the
German National Competition of "Jugend
musiziert" (Youth music festival))
Young musicians from Saarbrücken:
Vivica Schmitt (Violin), Julia Falkenstein
(Violin), Daniel Schmitt (Viola), Sabine
Heimrich (Violoncello).
The prize awarding ceremony was an attractive event of great public interest, so that the two large halls of Schloss Birlinghoven (GMD) were filled by all the participants, numerous guests, including many representatives of foreign embassies, of the ministries of the Länder and the federal government and representatives of the sponsors, press, television and broadcasting companies.
As your host I apologize that it is hot inside and a very nice day outside, but for lunch we will again be sitting outside, so I will not apologize.
Last time I talked about technology and more specifically about information technology. Today I thought I will not talk about technology. I will talk about people and prizes. Regarding the gold, the silver and the bronze prizes, other speakers will talk about them.
I will talk about the people that don't get prizes.
I will start with a very short personal story. When I was about your age, perhaps a little bit older, I was a student at a Technical University, and I was a good student. I was working very hard to understand everything about mechanics since I was an engineer. I also understood everything that there was to understand about cars. As a young man I had to go and pass my driving test. I tried the test, I did not succeed. That was a shock. How come I could understand everything about cars, I was a reasonably intelligent person, and I still failed a very simple test?
I then learned something which is extremely important that stayed with me for the rest of my life. Being first is very important, being second is also very important, but failing to be first or second and still stay in the game is even more important. So my advice to you is:
It doesn't matter that this time you didn't get a prize. The fact that you are here means already that you were chosen among many students. At some point in your life you will miss some prize. That's not important. Just stay in the game! You never know, next time you may actually win.
Thank you very much."
It'a a very great honour for me to be able to welcome you here at Schloss Birlinghoven on the occasion of the closing ceremony and the presentation of prizes awarded in the 4th International Olympiad in Informatics 1992 in Bonn. I am very glad that the Federal Republic of Germany was able to host this worldwide competition for pupils. We have all seen the rather neat abbreviation "IOI'92", we shall also remember your identification buttons (name tag with IOI symbol; entitled bearer to free rides on buses and subways), which I am sure you know better how to use than I do. 170 students from 46 countries and their accompanying persons have come to Germany for the 4th IOI'92. Also here are numerous oberservers and foreign guests from yet other states, so that we can in fact welcome here representatives of a total of 51 states from all around the world. The rapid increase in the number of participating teams since the first IOI demonstrate the growing interest which this International Olympiad attracts. Interest which means that the Olympiad has won for itself a firm place among international competitions for pupils. It is a sign of hope to me to see that there are girls here among you today, even if there are only just a few. We take great pains in this country to try to make work with computers attractive for girls. A project along these lines is currently being undertaken by one of the girls' grammar schools here in Bonn. And we hope that our efforts to make the natural sciences more attractive for girls will mean that, in future, we shall see girls in our own team.
My thanks and recognition go to all of you who are participating in the competition. The fact that you have been able to participate on behalf of your country deserves special recognition and shows that you are among the best in your country in this ever more important area of the practical sciences. If I may perhaps adapt a saying from Normandy, it is not short-term effects, such as coincidence and luck, which have led to your success here today but hard work and conscientiousness.
I should like to congratulate the prize winners on their success. A success born of much hard work. Those of you who have won prizes here are among the best in your age group internationally. But even if you did not win a prize yourself and very often the difference between those who win a prize yourself - and very often the difference between those who win prizes and those who do not is marginal -, the fact that you have taken part in this international competition earns your special recognition. You have all demonstrated what excellent results can be produced by young people when they are faced with a challenge. The contacts and friends which you have made here are an additional gain for you all.
I should particularly like to thank all those who helped to promote the competition. First of all, I should like to mention the members of jury. They had an extremely difficult task, which they performed extremely well in the short time available to them. I should also like to thank the accompanying persons, who supported and motivated their charges in many difficult situations. Furthermore I should like to thank all those who were responsible for the organization of the competition, including its long-standing preparation, and also all those who have contributed to its success and continue to do so until the last guests leave tomorrow. My particular thanks are due to Land North-Rhine Westphalia, to the Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), and of course, to the Bundeswettbewerb Informatik, which is responsible for the organisation of the competition per se. My particular thanks also go to the sponsors who made available the computers required for the competition and who also contributed to the framework programme.
You, the participants, have in your own countries proved your skill in the selection procedures carried out on a national level. In many countries the selection procedure begins with several thousand participants. Here in Germany, too, we have our own national selection procedure, organized by the Bundeswettbewerb Informatik, which has been in existence since 1980 and last year admitted 3000 participants to its first round. Our German team for this Olympiad was selected from those participants who reached the final round of that procedure. One thing which all selection procedures have in common is that they are suitable for identifying talented individuals and for giving those individuals encouragement. In our country, therefore, the selection procedures for the Olympiads in Informatics, Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics as well as our national competition in the natural sciences and the modern languages represent an important part of the necessary process of encouraging talented individuals.
Today, at this awards' ceremony, I can see very clearly that the notion of encouraging talented individuals is recognized worldwide and that these people are no longer left to their own devices. In the light of the great task confronting us, we need people with talents in new areas. Whenever young people compete on the basis of their work, as tey did at the IOI'92 here in Bonn, where we were seeing the best young computer experts from many countries, we can be expect that they have been encouraged to go on producing even better results than before.
I hope very much that the international atmosphere which these young people experenced here will contribute to international cooperation in the sciences later on. I hope that the new friends you have made here, or the old contacts you already had with friends from other countries, will be contacts which you take home with you and develop. In this respect, this International Olympiad in Informatics is also an important step towards solving many problems. Increases in the populations of many countries where space is limited, or worries about the preservation of the environment, confront us with very great tasks which need to be solved by employing all our assets, and this means we need to have gifted people in new areas, particularly in the natural sciences. This is a subject of great importance.
So, I hope, and wish all of you, that the spirit of this competition may be with us and nourish and inspire us for a long time to come and that the International Olympiad in Informatics will continue to develop successfully. I hope very much that you have enjoyed your stay here in Bonn, that the friends you have made here will be friendships which you maintain in the years to come and that you will remember your time here with pleasure.
I am very pleased to be able to present you with a t-shirt as a souvenir of Bonn and of the 4th International Olympiad in Informatics. Once again I should like to thank all of you who participated and all those who contributed to the success of this competition. Thank you very much."
The promotion of competitions for school children and students across the range of subjects is one of the most pleasant duties in the life of a Minister of Educational & Cultural Affairs. For this reason I was very pleased to be able to accept the offer of the sponsor of the Olympiad that the State of North-Rhine-Westphalia should host the competition.
I am very pleased to be able to welcome you here today not just on behalf of the State Government of the host state North-Rhine-Westphalia but also on behalf of the conference of Ministers of Education & Culture of the 16 German constitutional states.
We all had to get accustomed to the rapid speed with which computer technology has been developed since the construction of the world's first fully automatic program controlled and freely programmable computer, the legendary Zuse Z2 in 1941. The Olympiads in Informatics are quite capable of keeping pace with these developments.
The doubling in the