Head's Newsletter 9 July 2021

INTERNATIONAL INFORMATICS OLYMPIAD

Between 19th - 25th June, Year 12 student Benedek Szilvasy represented the UK in the International Informatics Olympiad, hosted this year (remotely!) by Singapore. Benedek was selected for the team of 4 after his high score in the first round and subsequent excellent performance in the National Final. The IIO consisted of two sessions across the week, each consisting of a gruelling 5 hour exam, involving extremely challenging programming tasks. Scores for each entrant in each national team were determined by automatically testing the program against a variety of inputs and seeing if the expected output was obtained. Benedek scored particularly well on the second day, scoring within the top half of entrants internationally, which under new rules, would be awarded "Honorable Mention". He scored 100% on one of the 6 tasks, on 'mutating DNA'. This is a phenomenal achievement, with Benedek being the first Tiffinian in history to represent the UK on the Informatics team. Congratulations to the formidable Chinese team, who ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the world respectively!