The British Informatics Olympiad is the computing competition for schools and colleges. We are proud to present BIO 2002, sponsored by Lionhead Studios.
The 2002 British Informatics Olympiad Final

The 2002 British Informatics Olympiad final took place at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from 12-14 April.

As a preparation to the competition, finalists were given the following (relatively easy) question to get familiar with the programming environment (note that all questions are available in PDF format only):

• Warm-up (pdf)

The competition consisted of two stages. On the morning of Saturday 13th, two written questions were set:

• Bubble memory (pdf) (1 hour) - structured question-and-answer task.
• Humour (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 C++, Pascal and Visual Basic. The following questions were given to the finalists at the start, in no particular order:

• Dressage for pigeons (pdf)
• Strangers (pdf)
• Film part one (pdf)

Those who submitted correct solutions to Film part one were then given the questions

• Film - part two (pdf)
• Film - part three (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!