Hello codeforces community. As we know the world is now facing a huge problem, we hear about it everywhere, I am sure even some of you are staying isolated from people because of it. Some events are getting cancelled because of it, and the most important events for our community are also in danger of being cancelled. I am talking about IOI and ICPC WF. I saw some official announcements regarding COVID-19 from both of the events (ICPC, IOI). I understand that they can't decide anything yet, but I am very surprised not to see anyone discussing the problem here.
I personally think there are only 4 possible solutions
Host the event, but with less countries participating.
Cancel the event
Do something online, and do not require people to travel to Russia/Singapore. (The problem here will be trusting participants)
Delaying the events (I know this will be very hard, and will cost a lot of money)
I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this (mostly regarding the 3rd point), and maybe IC will consider our thoughts when making their final decision.
UPD: There were already some discussions about ICPC here (thanks Chilli for pointing that out), so I think it's better for this blog post to be only for discussions about IOI.
enoone orz
MrDepomposition orz
DavitMarg orz
Why on earth are you pinging me?
orz OTZ
I have an official confirmation of the cancellation of IOI 2020 from the head of the IOI Federation. Moreover, from this year IOI will be conducted only on odd years, because reasons. Details, as always on ioi.com, but they are not available to everyone (but for me, yes). In general, the IOI committee is now thinking about conducting the IOI retroactively (dummies will receive medals).
orz DavitMarg
Maybe
There was another public announcement regarding IOI 2020 from hosts recently, so I'll quote it here (in case someone else like me, missed the update on official IOI 2020 website):
As you can see, the hosts have already done a short survey on the situation and have shared the results with IC. I am also always monitoring Codeforces for IOI-related topics and in the event of some great feedback/opinions/options/discussions/questions appearing here, I will make sure to summarize it and let the rest of the IC know of it when we'll have our emergency meetings.
Is postponement a possibility?
Yes, please see the official e-mail from IOI President I've just posted here as a comment.
Is there any information about whether EJOI 2020 will be cancelled because of coronavirus? For IOI there is at least some information and we know when to expect the final decision, but I haven't found anything about EJOI.
I'd be rather surprised at this point if they go ahead with ICPC. I imagine it will be delayed, not cancelled though.
There was already some discussion here about ICPC WF: https://mirror.codeforces.com/blog/entry/74648
Yes it will kill capitalist pigs
The latest update regardless IOI and COVID-19 has just been circulated on ioi-announce@.
Dear friends of IOI,
As we are all aware, the international situation with COVID-19 is unpredictable and is changing rapidly. However challenging, all countries are united to fight the battle against this invisible foe. In this difficult time, our thoughts are with you all, and especially with those that have lost their dear ones in this pandemic around the world.
In the best interest of the health and well being of all IOI participants, The IC and the Singapore hosts have met online on March 23 to evaluate the current situation. As a result, we have the following information to share with the community:
We hope this new information will give you flexibility in making plansfor selecting teams. The IC and hosts will continue to meet monthly, and we will keep you all updated as things develop further. If you have any questions, please contact the IOI Secretariat at secretary.ioinformatics@gmail.com.
Stay safe and Best wishes,
Greg Lee
IOI President
An important question to be discussed is whether online IOI is better than no IOI. I am going to state my opinion with some arguments. Anyone is free to disagree.
I think that an online IOI is a very bad idea because it will be in a completely different format compared to IOI and most importantly, it will be completely unfair. Here are some points:
Cheating. Perhaps the most obvious problem is that people can cheat. This can be by collaborating with other contestants from the same team or by getting people outside the team (for example better contestants who are no longer in high school) to help. There is a big incentive to do that since a good medal at IOI will eventually help you get scholarship, a good university, etc. The teachers and people responsible for the team will also have similar incentive so you can't rely on honesty. What is more, since you will have to send all problems earlier for translation, it would be especially easy to cheat. One can argue that this can happen during the normal IOI if a team leader really wants to cheat, which is true, but it would take significant effort and risk, whereas in an online IOI it is practically riskless.
Accidental cheating. Maybe you're a person who believes in the honesty of competitors/leaders. Maybe you believe that if we all agree together, nobody will cheat. Even if that were true (it isn't), there is still a problem. If you have the whole team of a country competing together at the same time, there is a big risk of people unintentionally collaborating. Exchanging a simple sentence such as "oh this problem is actually very easy" is already a form of cheating. It conveys a lot of information. Undoubtedly such things will occur even if all people are trying to be honest.
Timezones. Quite obviously, there will be people who will have to compete in the middle of the night. You can try to argue that they'd be jet-lagged in Singapore either way, but that's not exactly true. Even if they really wish to change their schedule so that they wake up right before the competition, there are many things outside of one's control. Maybe sleeping during the day is not possible (e.g. noisy neighbourhood). The human body and your circadian rhythm also can't be easily tricked by just going to bed whenever you think is right. There will always be people heavily disadvantaged by the timing.
A different skill set. An online IOI implies online access for the competitors. This immediately makes the competition quite different. Competitors will have access to any prewritten data structures, algorithms and resources, making the skill set that's evaluated in the online IOI a different one from regular IOI — mainly the ability to implement and debug code from scratch is no longer a core necessity. One can argue to what extent this is an issue, but I believe it is a real problem.
Finally, one can argue that all these apply to any online competition. Why don't we ban all online competitions? The difference is that IOI is supposed to be a completely fair competition giving everyone a chance to represent their country. Additionally, most online competitions don't really give an incentive to cheat (and even then you see a lot of cheaters) and those that do are usually just competitions set by private companies in which case it's up to them to decide how much to care about fairness.
Now I understand a lot of people will have this year as their only shot for IOI, so it is natural to not want to cancel it. However, I stand by my arguments and I think if an online competition is to be made so that all the efforts so far don't go to waste, it shouldn't be considered an IOI.
As e-mail stated, "as a backup plan, we are looking seriously for an online IOI". That means that the plan is still being developed. However, maintaining the integrity of IOI is the top priority when designing such a plan, so I personally don't believe that will result in online access for the IOI competitors. At the moment, my understanding of the word "online" in this context is that we are looking seriously for an online IOI, where everyone would not be physically in the same location.
My personal opinion, is that there are ways to organize an IOI online while ensuring the integrity of the competition, so my position is strongly at "online IOI is better than no IOI". Some of your points are very important and I believe both hosts and IC are aware of them while developing that plan. However, I personally, don't think that some arguments such as timezones (which in my eyes is always a factor in IOI – I often couldn't sleep before competitions) are enough of an argumentation to deny the whole year of students an opportunity to showcase their skills and results of years of preparation, but those arguments are definitely something still worth considering, so thanks for bringing them up.
P.S. Your accidental cheating point is an interesting one in general; and I personally believe that it happens often in onsite programming competitions. I wouldn't be surprised if at some competition I mumbled something a bit too loud and someone could have used that information. But it's something that I'll definitely keep in mind, as whereas usually it benefits a random participant (however, not always, some ICPC quarterfinals with multiple sites may be another example); if that pool is a random participant from your country or university; that becomes something that needs addressing in my opinion.
APMO (which everyone gives in their own country for some reason) had the idea where we gave it offline in the daytime for each country, and we were strictly forbidden to discuss any problem online until told that it is OK by the committee. This would not allow for a live scoreboard of course, but I am pointing out that is has been done before in an International Olympiad.
Has been done before does not mean fair. Honestly, holding it at different times for different people is likely more unfair than anything I've described. You're not even relying on team leader honesty, but on competitor honesty, which is absurd. Also the accidental cheating point is huge in such scenario.
One can argue that this can happen during the normal IOI if a team leader really wants to cheat, which is true, but it would take significant effort and risk, whereas in an online IOI it is practically riskless.
It takes close to 0 effort, all the participant needs to do is get a phone with sim card and hide it from the guide, and then the leader can send the solution to the said participant. I think relying on the integrity of the team leader is necessary in both case.
There are two aspects which are different when it is onsite.
The effort — you're downplaying it a bit. Surely, it is not really difficult to cheat. However, you do have to get a phone with sim card that works in the corresponding country, hide it from the guide and stay late so the translation meeting is over. As far as I know leaders don't get the solutions as well so he'd have to send the problems late at night (i.e. around midnight) at which point you'd start thinking about them. If your whole team is in on it — significantly easier. If you're alone in the cheating scheme, you have a lot more hiding to do.
The premeditation. If you are going to cheat onsite you damn sure know what you're doing and plan it. It being online is quite different, and a form of "accidental cheating" can apply to leaders in a similar way. Imagine a leader gets the problems for translation and then subsequently in that evening chats with the students. Maybe he drops in a "You guys know how to code 2D segment trees, right?" or similar. Something like that requires much less planning. It can be spontaneous. People can convince themselves it's benign. It won't change a lot. I'm sure they knew how to code them either way. In my opinion very few leaders would resort to premeditated cheating in which the whole team is in on it. A spontaneous slip up giving some information on the other hand? Many, many more.
That is incorrect. Every IOI I've been at GA I can remember, short notes describing a solution were presented to GA either with the problems or shortly afterwards.
I was not aware of that. It seems like a bad idea to me, but that's a completely different conversation. Thank you for correcting me.
Beside that one, I stand by my other points.
Remember that GA does not only translate tasks. They select tasks and can file minor or major objections. Which would be hard to do with unknown solutions, since everyone at GA would be forced to solve the task to see if the approach used is extremely similar to what they've used at their national competition/training, for example. See point #13 from IOI 2013 GA minutes for an example of what may happen during task selection.
So as long as GA selects the tasks and does not delegate it entirely to ISC/HSC, I'm not seeing how this aspect can be avoided.
I guess you agree that 1. is a lot easier. (PS. getting a sim card is extremely easy, you can mostly get them in the airport. Most IOI that I know, our team leader will generally get a SIM card so that he will be able to use it in case of emergency? So getting another one is a piece of cake?)
For 2, I don't disagree with accidental cheating, my point was about cheating as it was under your "cheating" category. I do agree that we will have to handle accidental cheating,
I am just pointing out the effort of cheating if the leader/deputy is involved is not very different whether the contest is online or not.
I understand your point and agree with it partly. I think my main point regarding team leaders is that when all people are comfortably in their country, far away from organizers, the risk of being caught cheating is practically zero. At that point the line between proper cheating and accidental cheating begins to blur, as it depends only on the individual leader's viewpoint what's cheating and what isn't.
Well yes, and that's why I think it's up to the committee to set rules so that accidental cheating would not occur. For instance, your point about dropping hints, this can be mitigated by requiring the leaders to self quarantine after translating the task?
It’d be helpful to review how APIO is conducted. It is also an online competition. I believe APIO is a “fair competition”, but maybe it’s just because people are downplaying its significance. I’d like to hear more opinion about this.
Will the first-year university students be able to participate?
Yes, check this
Quoting regulations:
A Contestant is a student who
IOI 2020 is dead. Online competition is very unfair as Enchom mentioned and in September, the most will not be pupil anymore as the universities start.
It doesn't really matter if people start university earlier than IOI. The IOI could start in September this year, and IOI 2018 took place in September.
No need to point out specific exceptions here -- since in the southern hemisphere the school year ends in December, first year university students are eligible to participate in IOI every year. All that matters is that you were a student during December of the previous year.
Agree, even I've seen some guys participated in ICPC before IOI
We should turn IOI into a Codeforces round and stream the editorial like Technocup!
Online contest is very unfair for "formal" contestants -- how can we know who is cheating?
But a mirror contest on Codeforces is very fascinating:)
what
From the IOI website :
Well shit. An IOI when most contestants are already university students, often abroad? I'm not sure if it would be better or worse to hold it online in such a situation, but it's a mess nonetheless.
Hmm why? IOI 2012/2018 was held in September.
I know, I participated in IOI 2012... but it says "any earlier than September", which is most likely later. September is already at the end of normally acceptable schedule. (Some universities don't even start the school term until October.)
Sorry bro, but I don't think studying abroad is a problem for participating in IOI. They can travel from there. And if they have to wait for the admission decision, the latter is generally given by institutions on March-July, and since the competition is going to be after august the local team could buy tickets before travelling without major problems.
Furthermore, many IOI contestants in South America are first year college students, including me ;-)
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Since there are still a couple months for the holding of IOI, Can it be easier than other options to delay it ?