NEWS

At the beginning of September, the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) was held in Tsukuba, Japan, and Rakuten Institute of Technology was honored to both sponsor the event and participate as presenters during it. The IOI is an annual international informatics competition for high school students from around the world, held every four years, with this being the 30^th time it is held and the first time for Japan to be the host.

As well as the competition, the week is also filled with social and cultural programs to foster friendship across nations, and this year it was attended by more than 900 participants representing 85 different countries. The competition consists of two days solving several complex algorithmic informatics problems, combining skills in problem analysis, design of algorithms and data structures, programming and testing, and the results are then tallied up to decide the winners. As a revered international event, the opening ceremony was even attended by Princess Kako, the second-eldest grandchild of Japan’s emperor.

Satoshi Egi, one of our researchers, represented Rakuten Institute of Technology at the event by holding a presentation on Egison, a programming language based on pattern matching that he developed. To commemorate the event, we designed a special t-shirt to showcase the language that you can see below.

The front has the definition of a multiset matcher, an Egison-specific object used to define a multiset pattern matching algorithm, and the back has a program using the multiset matcher to describe different poker hands. The combination allows for the wearer to simultaneously explain how the multiset matcher works, and at the same time use the poker program as an example, and is sure to make an impression at any informatics party.

The many participating students participated with a flurry of enthusiastic questions, turning it into a very active and captivating session. In the words of the presenter himself, it was an honor to present to so many young people with impressive knowledge of programming, and he looks forward to running into them again at future events and workplaces.

For more information on IOI and Egison, see the below links.

Egison

International Olympiad in Informatics

IOI 2018