Posted Monday 15 April 2011.

It’s a long way from the far west NSW town of Cobar to Canada. But local high school student Robert Newey found an unusual way of getting there! He was one of the four-member student team that represented Australia in 2010’s International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), part of the UNESCO sanctioned International Science Olympiads, which was held at Waterloo, Ontario, Canada from 14-21 August. Robert tells the story in one of his blogs which we have reproduced here.

The 2010 IOI team about to depart for the Closing Ceremony, from left Luke Harrison, Evgeny Martynov, Robert Newey and Kenneth Wong.

Back in 2008, I found the Australian Informatics Olympiad on the Australian Mathematics Trust’s website, and inevitably came to the section about that year’s IOI team.

I was astounded and amazed that there was a way for programming to get me overseas representing Australia. Then I saw an IOI problem. Needless to say, it was quite problematic and I had no way of solving it. I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to solve it. After that I placed the kids that went to an IOI up on a seemingly unreachable perch.

Last year, my maths teacher chanced across me mentioning the Maths Olympiad. That prompted him to dig up a letter asking the school for entries in the Australian Informatics Olympiad (AIO). At that stage I only knew the programming language Python, so it was quite fortunate that 2009 was the first year that Python was accepted as a language.

Since it was my first Informatics competition I assumed that I would go quite poorly, so I read the results from bottom to top. I quickly realised that I hadn’t gotten a Bronze medal, that got my hopes up for a Silver. It then struck me that I hadn’t gotten a Silver either. I wasn’t hopeful of getting a Gold, and I almost stopped reading halfway through Gold. So when I saw that I came second, and by two points no less, to someone that had done extremely well last year, I was overjoyed. This was compounded by being invited to the December Informatics camp at the ANU.

The months in the lead up to the camp were spend learning C++ (another programming language) and solving problems on the Australian Informatics training website.

After many sleepless nights, problems started to get progressively easier. The December camp was amazing, I had never been surrounded by so many people that shared the same interests! It was amazing and wonderful and incredible, and it was over in 10 days. I really only came down from the high the AIO gave me on the plane home.

Everyone from the camp was invited to sit the Australian Invitational Informatics Olympiad and the French Australian Regional Informatics Olympiad. My results from these secured me an invitation to the IOI team selection camp that April.

This was another incredible event, since this camp meant I was only one step off an IOI. Quite openly, I didn’t like my chances of making it this year, the words “Quit while I’m ahead” jokingly crossed my lips on more than one occasion.

I slept really well the night before the first selection exam, I mean, I didn’t expect to do that well, so there was no stress. Almost unfortunately, day one went very well, so the pressure was on for the second day. In the second exam I got the first three questions out fairly promptly, but I feared that my solution for the fourth and final question was going to be too slow. It occurred to me that this question may be all that was standing between me and an IOI. So I put my head down and nutted out the solution that was fast enough.

The wait after selection exam two was possibly the most stress I have ever endured. I had gotten out all the questions, but there was a lingering thought that I must have made some small error that would cost me dearly.

Tradition dictates that the process for revealing the team is as strenuous as possible. While the team is being decided, all the students are locked in a room together. Once the team has been decided, the students play cards to choose the order for people to leave the room and find out if they have been selected or not. It didn’t help my mental health in the slightest that I was the third last one out.

Walking up the stairs to where Bernard and Jarrah* were I was so nervous that I was shaking. When they offered me a place on the team I continued to shake. It didn’t hit me that I would be going off to Canada in a few months.

Sitting on the plane to Los Angeles, it’s kind of dawning on me that I’m on my way to an IOI. The people surrounding me have won six IOI medals between them, and I hope to join their ranks soon.

Sitting on this plane to Los Angeles I’m living my impossible dream. So today was simply amazing. That is all.

Posted by Robert.Newey at 2.19am

* Bernard Blackham was the Team Leader; Jarrah Lacko, Deputy Team Leader.