IOI'2001 Competitor Questionnaire
Return to IOI'2001 Home- Original Text of Questionnaire
- Marked-Up Version of Questionnaire to show how answers are encoded
- Processing Program (Pascal)
- Raw Questions (input to processing program)
- Raw Data for Responses to Closed Questions (input to processing program)
- Statistics for Responses (output of processing program)
- Summary of Responses to Open Questions
Notes
There were 272 competitors at IOI2001. Each delegation received 4 competitor questionnaires in their mailbox togehter with the results for the Second Competition Day. By the end of IOI2001, we had received 119 completed forms (almost 45%). The survey was anonymous.When interpreting individual responses, it should be noted that:
- Competitors may have misundertood questions;
- Competitors may have made mistakes in completing the questionnaire;
- Competitors have subjective interpretations of answers involving a graded scale;
- Competitors may have been biased in participating in the survey (e.g. because of their competition performance, their perceived opportunity of participating again next year, delegation pressure, etc.)
- Competitors may have failed to recall all relevant information.
As always, it is not clear how representative the set of respondents is for the whole ensemble. However, because of the large number of respondents, the overall picture painted by the whole set seems fairly accurate.
Brief summary of results
- 1, 2: More than 1/3 of the respondents used Linux on both competition days;
less than 2/3 used Windows;
very few used both or switched between competition days. - 3...5: Many useful suggestions were offered for improving the Linux and Windows environments, as well as the grading system and web services.
- 6, 7: About 1/2 of the respondents used Pascal on both competition days;
about 1/5 used C,
and about 1/4 used C++;
only one competitor indicated to have used more than one programming language;
none switched between days. - 8...14: The FreePascal IDE was used by more than 1/3 of the competitors;
Turbo Pascal IDE by more than 1/4 (some used both FP and TP IDE);
RHIDE by almost 1/3;
Turbo C++ IDE was hardly used;
Vi by about 1/10;
Emacs by about 1/5;
as other editor Notepad was mentioned most often. - 15: Just over 3/4 of the respondents indicated that they had used some form of debugging aid, mostly the integrated debugger of an IDE.
- 16: Many used some form of calculator;
also mentioned are scripting, including one case of perl. - 17...21: Web services were generaly easy to understand, except that Test was considered less clear.
- 22...26: The perceived response time of web services averages at medium, with Submit/Test more at the slow end.
- 27...31: The majority seemed to like the web services, but there are also clear signs of dislike.
- 32...37: On the whole, all tasks were considered relatively easy to understand, with MOBILES as easiest.
- 38...43: More than 2/3 of the respondents rate TWOFIVE as very difficult for finding an algorithm;
MOBILES, SCORE, and DOUBLE end in the middle;
IOIWARI is considered slightly easier, and DEPOT slightly harder. - 44...49: Writing a program is considered hard for TWOFIVE (though not as pronounced as for finding an algorithm);
MOBILES, IOIWARI, SCORE, and DEPOT end up around the middle;
DOUBLE is clearly considered easy in this respect. - 50: DOUBLE is mentioned as task liked best by almost 1/4 of the respondents,
followed by SCORE (almost 1/5), IOIWARI (1/6), and MOBILES (1/8);
TWOFIVE and DEPOT each get (almost) 1/10.
Consequently, every task had its fans. - 51: TWOFIVE is mentioned as task liked least by 45% of the respondents;
MOBILES, IOIWARI, SCORE, DOUBLE, and DEPOT get around 1/10. - 52: Less than 1/4 of the respondents is subscribed to the IOI Mailing List.
- 53: More than 1/5 of the respondents provide further comments.
