The British Informatics Olympiad is the computing competition for schools and colleges. We are proud to present BIO 2001.

The 2001 British Informatics Olympiad Final

The 2001 British Informatics Olympiad final took place at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from 6-8 April.

The competition consisted of two stages. On the morning of Saturday 7th, two written questions were set (note that all are available in Postscript and PDF format):

• Analogue gadgets (ps) (pdf) (1 hour) - structured question-and-answer task.
• Traffic (ps) (pdf) (45 minutes) - free essay question.

After a break for lunch we moved to a computer room (thanks to Trinity College, Cambridge). Languages available were Turbo C++ 3.1 and Turbo Pascal 7.0 and - a special exception - Visual Basic. The following questions were given to the finalists at the start, in no particular order:

• Widget, Wotsit and Doodah (ps) (pdf)
• Code book (ps) (pdf)
• Home on the range - part one (ps) (pdf)

Those who submitted correct solutions to Code book were then given the question

• Code book - bonus question (ps) (pdf)

Those who submitted correct solutions to Home on the range were then given the question

• Home on the range - part two (ps) (pdf)
• Home on the range - part three (ps) (pdf)

We gave the finalists 4 hours to solve these problems. Suffice it to say, no-one was able to solve four or more questions in the time available!