British Informatics Olympiad

The British Informatics Olympiad (BIO) is an annual computer-programming competition for secondary and sixth-form students. Any student under 19 who is in full-time pre-university education and resident in mainland Britain is eligible to compete. The competition is composed of two rounds - a preliminary 3-question, 3-hour exam paper sat at the participant's school and a final round. The top-15 performing students each year are invited to the finals (currently hosted by Trinity College, Cambridge) where they attempt to solve several more difficult problems, some written, some involving programming. Typically a score of 75 to 90 out of 100 is required on the first round of the competition to reach the final.

Of these fifteen, four are chosen for the British team, and one or two are chosen as reserves. This team goes on to represent Britain in the International Olympiad in Informatics in the summer of that year.

Mark schemes are available for all past papers at the competition's official site. Official worked solutions are available for papers 1995-1999 and 2004, whilst unofficial solutions are available for papers 2009-2014.

Competition format
In the British Informatics Olympiad round 1, there are 3 questions to be completed in 3 hours. Each question has a primary programming question that is worth the bulk of the points. The first question is designed to be easily completed by anyone, whilst the rest are significantly more difficult. The programming part A of each question is followed by smaller and simpler questions that can be answered through a variety of techniques like brute force testing, logical reasoning, simulation, and combinatorics knowledge. The competition can be done in any programming language in any environment, sat in the participant's own school.

The round 2 has 4, much harder questions, to be sat in Cambridge, using a Linux environment and programming in C/C++.

Sponsors
The BIO has been sponsored by video-games developer Lionhead Studios since 2002. In the past, it has also been sponsored by Data Connection and Jane Street.