Senior Ben Sklaroff is preparing to represent the United States as part of a group attending the International Linguistics Olympiad in July at Stockholm, Sweden.
After winning the invitational round of the fourth annual National Computational Linguistics Olympiad on March 10, Sklaroff received an official email from the committee last week inviting him to join the U.S. team.
“I believe I will be competing in Stockholm, Sweden as part of the eight-member U.S. team this summer in the International Linguistics Olympiad,” said Sklaroff. “I did way better than I expected on the test. Somehow I ended up with the best score in North America.”
Placing first among all participants from both the United States and Canada, Sklaroff received first place for his score of 85.55 out of a possible 100. Seniors Erika Ji and Nikhil Bhargava and junior Nathan Pinsker also participated in the invitational round, scoring 78.27, 60.06, and 53.54. A full score report, organized by the first letter of participants’ first and last names, can be found here.
While 1118 middle school and high school students participated in the first round, which was open to anyone, only the top 100 highest scorers were invited to take part in the second round of the contest on Feb. 4.
The contest consists of solving linguistics and computational linguistics problems. In the first round, competitors had three hours to attempt to solve seven problems. Tests were graded out of 100 points. Problems from both the first and second rounds can also be found on their Web site.
According to the official press release emailed to participants, students “solved a total of 16 problems, including deciphering the rules for a Pig-Latin-like play language in Minangkabau, the writing systems of Plains Cree, and the Vietnamese classic Tale of Kieu written in Chinese characters.” Prior knowledge is not required.
Ji, Bhargava, and Sklaroff all started in linguistics last year after being introduced to it in the Paly Math Club, according to Bhargava.
“We all decided to take this contest because it seemed interesting,” Bhargava said. “I know that Ben and I first heard about it last year, and Ben did very well, placing in the top five in the open round.”
Added Sklaroff, “I got interested in the competition last year when Lynnelle Ye told the Math Club about it.”
According to Pinsker, Ye had been introduced to the competition by Gunn High School junior Morris Alper, who had competed at the International Linguistics Olympiad in his freshman year and won a silver medal. The first time anyone from Paly took the competition was last year.
Sklaroff, one of a few Paly students to advance to the second round last year, took many practice tests this year to prepare for the competition.
“They have many past tests online which I worked on for practice,” Sklaroff said. “There are tons of stuff online about the basic structure of obscure languages around the world that is helpful to read. But the most important preparation is practicing logic by taking tests from past years.”