eduardische's blog

IOI – Honourable Mentions and other updates
By eduardische, history, 5 years ago, In English

I wanted to share several updates related to IOI after the International Committee meeting in February in Singapore.

  1. As was e-mailed to ioi-ga@ earlier today, there is a proposal from IC to introduce Honourable Mentions at IOI 2020 pending GA approval at GA1 of the IOI 2020. After lengthy internal discussion about various formats, the chosen one was “For those contestants who do not receive medals, the score necessary to achieve an Honourable Mention is the largest score such that at least 70% of all contestants receive either a medal or an Honourable Mention”. This means that without changing the current IOI medal structure, about 20% of all contestants will be acknowledged with Honourable Mentions. Again, this is all subject to GA approval.

  2. There was a discussion about the ongoing situation regarding COVID-19. Please refer to updates at the official IOI 2020 page.

  3. IC has formally approved the new logo of the IOI. It isn’t dramatically different, but the unavailability of the original logo in high-resolution or vector formats was forcing many in the community to re-create the original. The hope is that this will no longer be necessary and the logo in various formats can now be downloaded from IOI official website.

  4. After making the survey during IOI 2019, we have now updated the contact information (website and contact e-mail) for all the members (apart from a couple of countries, where I’m still trying to obtain the information). It’s available at the official IOI website. I have manually checked that all websites are working last month.

  5. Pages on various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube) have been created for the IOI. The links to them are also available at the top-right corner of the official IOI website.

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +112 Vote: I do not like it

I will probably sound insensitive/arrogant with this, but I think HMs just further dilute the importance of prizes. Half the people getting a medal is plenty already, why was this a needed change?

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +66 Vote: I do not like it

    From my understanding (since I wasn't attending that discussion in person) at the IOI 2019 group discussions various members of GA discussed this and expressed its desire for IC to introduce Honourable Mentions. The chosen amount of 70% was to be consistent with other major Science Olympiads as well, where you have:

    • IMO: HM is using a different criteria, but effectively over the last 5 years average of 74.25% received an award (medal or HM)
    • IPhO: 67% receive an award
    • IChO: 70-71% receive an award
    • IBO: 70% receive an award

    In my personal opinion, Honourable Mentions are well-established in other Science Olympiads and do not dilute the value of the medals themselves. Similar to IMO (can't vouch for other Science Olympiads), the recipients of Honourable Mentions would not be a part of the Closing Ceremony.

    So I believe that your concern is a valid one and to answer that IC believed that there was a clear desire to look into this from GA and this is similar to other major Science Olympiads. However, as I mentioned, all of this is due to approval vote form GA at IOI 2020, and unless I'm mistaken, this would also require a 2/3 majority (rather than a simple majority) vote to pass; so this will not actually take effect without explicit GA approval.

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -34 Vote: I do not like it

What does IOI mean?

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