2011Q3 Reports: Linguistics Olympiads 2011
This report summarizes activities of the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) (http://www.ioling.org) and the English Language Computational Linguistics Olympiad (ELCLO), which is a cooperative arrangement between countries that administer their linguistics Olympiads in English. We report on the ELCLO here because English is the lingua franca of the ACL and because the ELCLO focuses on computational linguistics more than some of the other linguistic Olympiads. Other countries administer their linguistics Olympiads in their national languages, and are not reported on here.
Relevance of linguistics Olympiads to ACL: Linguistics Olympiads identify students with computational as well as linguistic aptitude. The contests consist of puzzles that require analytical skills such as data abstraction and constructing and constraining a search space. For the North American contest (http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu), more than half of the winners major in computer science and mathematics in college. They are our future colleagues and ACL members.
The 9th annual IOL will be held at Carnegie Mellon University on July 24-30, 2011. Around 120 high school students from 20 countries will participate. The participating countries are: Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, India, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam.
Details about previous IOLs (contest problems and winners) can be found at http://www.ioling.org/.
The IOL is still accepting donations and sponsorships. Please direct potential donors and sponsors to this page: http://www.ioling.org/fundraising_iol/
English language Olympiads were held in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, and Australia. Details can be found at these web sites:
(Can't find Ozclo web site at the moment.)
Linguistics Olympiads depend on thousands of hours of volunteer time. To find out how get involved with your national linguistics Olympiad or to start one in your country, contact Lori Levin (lsl@cs.cmu.edu) or Dragomir Radev (radev@umich.edu).