Sunday, September 27, 2015

International Olympiad in Informatics: Sri Lanka has 26 medalists

While reading about Coding Jocks got interested in checking out International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).   I was pleasantly surprised to see that Sri Lanka had won 26 medals since 1992, i.e 23 years (facebook and SL website).  The IOI  has been around for 28 years.  Thats not bad for a country of 20 million, though you have small places like Latavia (68),  Lithuania (68) and Singapore (69) having won much more.  China has won 107 and has the highest number of medals.  India has a measly 39 medalist, which is low compared to its fame as the premier outsourcing software center.  Sri Lanka has won 3 Golds, 7 Silvers, whereas India has only 1 gold and 11 Silvers. 

Now for some non politically correct stuff.  In a previous post on winners of the Google Science Fair, I noted there was large amount of South Asian among the winners.   However,  in the IOI the south Asians are severely under represented.  Even in the US there seems to be more East Asians (Chinese/Koreans etc) as winners, specially in recent years. Only one lone name recognizable as of South Asian origin.
Now for the hot potato; looking at the SL winners, there isnt even one name that recognizable as of Tamil origin.  What gives, Tamils cant code or more to the point cant code to compete?.

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