Class for Competitive Programming

International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)

Miyagi Academy is dedicated to promoting coding as a competitive sport. Every year 4 secondary school students from each country (including Hong Kong SAR) are chosen to compete at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Train your children for this competition and let them have a taste of competitive sports.

What is IOI?

International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual international programming competition for secondary school students that challenges students' problem solving and programming skills. Every year 4 students from each country are chosen to compete at the international event. It is the second largest Olympiad, after the International Mathematical Olympiad, in terms of participating countries.

The Hong Kong Olympiad in Informatics selects 4 representatives from Hong Kong each year and is organized by Hong Kong Association of Computer Education, the Education Bureau, the Department of Computer Science at Chinese University of Hong Kong and City University of Hong Kong.

Experience competitive sports and have fun

International competitive programming contests require certain skills that are instrumental in life. They can be taught.

This class aims to cultivate students’ passion in problem solving on problems that require a combination of human intelligence and machines’ computing prowess. The ostensible goal is to prepare kids to compete in the International Olympiad in Informatics 2020 but the overarching mission is to develop lifelong skills. Training will cover the follow 3 aspects: 

  • English Comprehension
  • Discrete Mathematics
  • High Performance Coding Skills

Instructor

Hsi Haye Chan went to a local government secondary school in Hong Kong and obtained distinguished results in the HKCEE (9As) in 1995. Afterwards he attended Cornell University, a prestigious Ivy League university in US, to study Computer Science, from which he graduated number 1 in his undergraduate class. Mr. Chan then began his Wall Street career as a junior investment banker in New York City at Salomon Brothers’ Investment Banking Department, followed by an illustrious career at various hedge funds in US and Asia. In 2013 he founded his own hedge fund Agamemnon Capital. At the end of 2017, Mr. Chan retired, thus concluding his successful 17-year Wall Street career.

As a secondary school student, Mr. Chan represented Hong Kong at the 1996 International Olympiad in Informatics, an international competitive programming contest that challenges contestants to solve mathematical problems using coding skills. He believes many young students can benefit from the practice of competitive programming like he did, and is devoted to training bright young children the art and science of competitive programming, which should prepare them for the rapidly changing world.

Intermediate curriculum

  • 8 major topics, each covered by 2 classes.
  • For students who already know how to solve simple problems using C/C++ or Python.
  • There are bespoke 1-on-1 classes for advanced students upon inquiry.

Set up ideal coding environment for competition and practice. Screen real estate management.  Tips and good habits conducive for coding competition performance. Through counting primes, students will learn about benchmarking and certain sorting techniques. Some O.I. mathematics.

Brute force search for a solution. Recursive Search. Binary Search. DFS and BFS.

Stack, Queue and Linked List. The idea of Abstract Data Type.  set and map in C++.

Insertion Sort. Bubble Sort. Big-O notation and time complexity. Merge Sort and Divide and Conquer.

Transition Formula. Recursive Implementation. Memoization. Iterative Implementation.

Partial Sum. Difference Array. Precomputation.

Generating random inputs and stress test a program. Best practice in printing debug info and other debugging tips.

Visualization Skills. Pseudocode as a solution design tool. 

Class Format

16 weekly classes in replit workshop (online) format. Each class is 1 hour. Students are expected to spend at least 3 hours each week at home practicing exercises assigned.

Hardware Requirement

Macintosh, PC for Zoom and replit coding workshops.

Prerequisite

Possess basic knowledge of C/C++ or already fluent in Python. 

Course Fee

HK$1000/hr
(Full refund guaranteed before Class 2)

Why choose miyagi Academy?

World-Class Instructor​

Students will be taught by a distinguished instructor who scored 9As in HKCEE, represented Hong Kong in the IOI, studied Computer Science at Cornell University and graduated #1 of his class.

Motivated Learning

The short-term feedback of the coding competition provides strong motivation to fuel students' desire to learn

Participation in Competitive Sports

The experience of competitive sports teaches kids vital aspects of the world that are not taught in conventional school curriculum

Measurable Outcomes

Unlike many interest class, the objective of this training course is tangible and measurable.

Train to be the best

Exercise the mental muscles for computational thinking. Train like a world-class athlete of the mind.

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