The NZOI January Camp for 2024 has just ended and all the students have made their way back from camp!

This year we continued the smaller camp format as it had worked really well last year. In total, 28 students attended - flying in from all around New Zealand. Twenty two students were in the Algorithms and Experienced groups and six girls from the PC4G program were in the Intro to C++ group.

Phoebe and Jasmine tutored the Intro to C++ group throughout the week. The camp teaches C++ as it is now the only language available at the IOI (since Java was removed in 2021!). During that time, the Algorithms group received lectures from UC lecturers Prof. Tim Bell (now a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit), Dr. Richard Lobb and Dr Neil Leslie as well as some of the past camp attendees who came back as tutors. A wide range of topics was covered - from graph theory to segment trees. The Experienced group explored more advanced topics and tasks such as centroid decomposition and the infamous “Dwarfs” problem. They were taught by Dr. Rajko Nenadov from the University of Auckland as well as the tutors.

Outside of the lab, the students went on an excursion to the McDuffs Scottish Mini Golf, participated in a quiz night organized by Joseph, had a Codebreaker contest and took part in an Estimathon organised by our sponsor Jane Street.

As part of our selection process, the students sat two contests during camp. These contests were three and four hours long respectively and were set by the tutors. These contest results, as well as results from the upcoming AIIO and FARIO contests will be used in the selection of the New Zealand team for IOI 2024 in Alexandria, Egypt. After the second contest the students took part in a fun activity where they were tasked with writing a C++ program that could best play the game “Snake”.

Overall, this camp went really well. A special thanks goes to everyone who made it possible - the students, the parents, the lecturers, the other tutors (Jasmine, Phoebe, Jonathon, Iván, Zalan, Nicholas, Joseph, Janindu, and Rajko) and especially to Margot and Suzanne who organised and ran the camp.

Anatol

Camp Photo

If you’re a student who didn’t go to camp, but who thinks this sounds fun, then participate in NZIC! It’s a free online competition, run throughout the year, with some problems approachable to newcomers and some hard ones to work towards. NZIC participants will be contacted towards the end of the year about selection for January Camp 2025.