Dear IOI Colleagues,
Due to a technical problem with the database containing the scores, used to
generate the ranking of students for medal allocation, a few students were
given incorrect medals at the closing ceremony. This was discovered on
Saturday evening, when several students reported that they believed they had
been given too high a medal.
As a result of the error, 7 students received too low a medal (4 receiving
bronze rather than silver, and 3 receiving nothing rather than bronze) and 6
students had been given too high a medal (3 receiving silver rather than
bronze, and 3 receiving bronze rather than nothing). The error affected the
scores of additional 26 students but did not change their assigned medals.
The correct student scores were given on the individual mark sheets
distributed after each competition day.
An emergency meeting of the IC was held late on Saturday, with the Chair of
the Host SC and the Chair of the ISC. The priority of the meeting was to
ensure that no student was penalized by the earlier mistakes. It was clear
that those students who received too low a medal should receive their correct
medal. It was also decided that those who received too high a medal would not
automatically be stripped of their medals, but will be allowed to change their
medal if they wish; some students have already indicated such a desire.
To ensure the correct allocation of medals, boundaries were recreated using
the corrected scores for all students. This placed the lowest gold at 385,
the lowest silver at 314 and the lowest bronze at 219.
The issue of the published score table was further discussed and it emphasized
that those students who had been incorrectly given a higher medal should not
be prejudiced in the future by having their scores highlighted in the table in
any form. Since it had been decided that those students would not
automatically be stripped of their medals, it was decided that they should be
listed in the corrected table with the scores originally used to allocate
their medals.
These decisions were unanimously approved by the IC members present at the
meeting.
To summarize, the published scores will be the corrected
table with the exception of the 6 students who had been given too high a
medal. The 13 students with incorrect medals will be contacted (or were
contacted while still in Mexico). The 7 students who received too low a medal
will be given their correct medal. The 6 students who received too high a
medal will not automatically be stripped of their medals, but will be allowed
to change their medal if they wish. Appropriate certificates will be issued
for all medal changes.
The GA will understand a prompt decision needed to be reached for the benefit
of the affected students. There will be an opportunity at the start of
IOI'2007 for the GA to discuss and, we hope, approve the decision. On behalf
of the organizers, I offer my apologies for this unfortunate situation and any
inconvenience or disappointment it may have caused.
Zide Du
President of the IOI