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majk's blog

By majk, 4 years ago, In English

To all problemsetters!

The first ever European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics will take place in Zurich in June 2021. We are looking for interesting problems for the contest! The authors of selected proposals will be invited to the onsite event.

You can find more information about the contest and the call for tasks on the EGOI website.

The submission deadline is 31.10.2020.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +4 Vote: I do not like it

How does co-authoring work? Is it that just one person has to be chosen as the official author and just one will be invited? Not sure how it works for IOI either, just wondering

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    I believe that all the authors are invited (of course assuming that the number of coauthors is reasonable) on IOI. I am not 100% sure though.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    I don't know about IOI, but our current policy is one task = one person.

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4 years ago, # |
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I've heard about this initiative for some time already and I am really curious about what the community thinks about it.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    Wouldn't it be politically incorrect to state something on the matter? Jokes aside, I think it could help girls that don't trust themselves to spend a lot of time training with the exact purpose of IOI in mind, but would trust themselves being among the best girls in their countries. I hardly can see any reason for this to affect negatively the girls, but who knows? Was this required? I don't think it was required in the true sense, but I appreciate olympiads more than industry as being the level to take such actions (i.e. in olympiads you're encouraged to develop passion and aim for more than needed, whereas just enforcing certain gender stats on acceptance in universities/tech companies would not by itself increase the actual passion and interest — just provide a job in the field).

    The only downside I see is unfairness towards non-girls: being a brilliant girl you now have one more competition to go to, which in several countries brings extra scholarships and anyway gives 1 MORE chance to go to an international olympiad (and all the advantages of that, like travelling meeting smart people). One could hardly, if at all argue against the fact that if you do invent an olympiad for girls there should be one for non-girls too, to keep things balanced (and except for extra funds required, that would clearly not affect anyone negatively); or at least that it makes more sense to do that than only one half.

    In any case, given the trends, since there is an EGMO, why not have an EGOI? What's truly painful for non-girls however is not even having the equivalent. I expect this to contain many more countries than CEOI does, just like EGMO contains many more than other unisex olympiads across europe so (at least the ones Romania competes in, not very literate on the subject). So I always hoped for an EOI in this sense.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      One could hardly, if at all argue against the fact that if you do invent an olympiad for girls there should be one for non-girls too

      If one really thinks like that, they don't have to worry, because many national olympiads are just like that.

      Korean IOI camp usually have like 0~2 girls among 60 participants. I can't imagine how they feel.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        Wait, by "olympiad for X" you understand "non-X can participate but they usually don't"?

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      As a female, it's hard to find a group of females also doing competitive programming. I personally know about 10 people who do it, excluding myself, and 1 is female. I know some may disagree with this initiative, but I'm quite pleased with it.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it -55 Vote: I do not like it

    I've heard about what a lot of girls think about such initiatives in general: "thirsty nerds".

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    I feel like I should say this. It's not actually argument for or against. But I think it at least relevant.

    I am transgender, male to female. I am closeted and will probably stay this way for the rest of my life (it's simply not feasible to come out: it's so uncertain who will accept me, and I'm too tall to ever really pass as woman).

    On one hand, my feelings should not affect how world works.

    On the other hand, whenever I read such announcements it's very hard not to imagine distressing voice in my head like "Hey throwaway68332, you're not a girl! And YOU. WILL. NEVER. BE. A. GIRL. EVER.".

    (I am also relatively active on CF, probably this is not the first comment from me you read. Real account is purple-yellow.)

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      It's the first time I understand why somebody created a fake account. I wish the world was more tolerant.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      Dear throwaway68332, thank you very much for raising this issue. As you said, this is an important topic to talk about.

      We, the organizers of EGOI, welcome any participant that identifies as a girl at EGOI and it is important to us that transgender people feel as accepted as any of the other participants.

      That said, as in other olympiads, each country is responsible for its own selection process.

      However (and this goes to any transgender person) if the organizers of your country's selection do not let you participate only because of being transgender, please feel free to contact us (you can find a way to do so on egoi.ch) and we will talk to the respective organizers.

      I am very sorry that the announcement of EGOI has affected you in such a way. If you have any suggestions on how to improve/change the communication around EGOI, please feel free to send me a PM, we are always happy about inputs.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        First, thanks for being supportive, it's great that you understand. However any kind of participation would require coming out of the closet which for me is not feasible. I just wanted to share something about being trans that other people probably don't realize.

        And I'm older than 20 anyway :)

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        We, the organizers of EGOI, welcome any participant that identifies as a girl at EGOI

        Oh boy I hope you won't have anyone decide "I want to compete so I identify as a girl".

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +56 Vote: I do not like it

You should market it like "you want to go to the onsite event because there will be girls".

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4 years ago, # |
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By the way, what is the plan after 2021? Are there already hosts for, say, 2022 and 2023?

This is a large contest so it may be difficult to find hosts. In any case, thank you for organizing the contest in 2021!

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    At this point in time, there are no official hosts for 2022 or 2023, however we are in contact with different countries and will post it on the EGOI website as soon as future hosts are official.

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4 years ago, # |
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Oh yeah, the expected difficulty isn't explained very well. You mention the upper limit as "IOI difficulty", which is itself a rather wide range of difficulty. Is it IOI + one simpler problem for each day? Is the upper bound an easier IOI problem and the rest reasonably scaled down until one "easy problem for a casual secondary school contestant"? These strike me as the most likely possibilities.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    We were not very sure about the correct difficulty, so we ran a test contest with some potential participants. The sample was not super big, but nevertheless provided some useful information.

    The easiest task was 1178C - Плитки, with various progressively increasing constraints. There was an extra subtask added compared to the CF contest, with constraints $$$w,h \leq 10^{18}$$$ (i.e., the only complication was fast exponentiation). While almost everybody got the task with constraints $$$w,h \leq 1000$$$, on the last subtask the success rate was about 50%. This is roughly in line with what we want from the easiest task on each day -- that almost everybody progresses very far in this task.

    So, the short answer to your question is that the lower bound on difficulty is roughly Div2C.

    Note that compared to IOI, we'd like to have 4 tasks each day instead of 3, in order to have smoother gradient of difficulty, given the target audience. As for the upper bound, the hardest task from IOI is likely too hard, but the medium one on each day is perfectly fine for EGOI.

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4 years ago, # |
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What is age restriction can somebody be < 18 years old(and maybe come with the leader of the team).Because i participated in European Junior Olympiad In Informatcis 2019 last year and i have made a lot of tasks but i am only 13 so maybe i can come with the leader.Actually i am sure answer is no > 18

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4 years ago, # |
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lmao simps

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4 years ago, # |
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How many countries will participate?

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4 years ago, # |
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How do you girls prepare for this contest? Any tips are welcome! :D

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3 years ago, # |
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Gentle reminder: call for tasks ends in about two weeks. We've already got some interesting tasks, but we're still looking for a couple more!

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3 years ago, # |
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Where can I see past EGOI problems/solutions?

EDIT: Never mind; the first EGOI will occur in 2021 XD

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3 years ago, # |
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.