Logical Olympiad – record breaking again
The Logical Olympiad has successfully entered its eighth year. To enlighten those who have not heard about the competition yet, Logical Olympiad is a competition in solving logical tasks, organized by Mensa Czech Republic. Acquired knowledge does not play a role in it; the crucial attributes are the ability to think independently, out of the box, creatively, and to be able to make quick decisions. The competition helps uncover hidden talent and to promote Mensa and its activities. The Logical Olympiad consists of several rounds – the first online round is followed by regional rounds and national finals that traditionally take place in the Ball Games Room of Prague Castle.
This year was record breaking again, with respect to the number of participants; after last year’s 49,000, this year’s number was 58,000; the number of participating schools also increased from 2,056 to 2,900. We are also pleased with the increasing support by the teachers, who are not only helping to promote the competition, but also helping to reveal impostors – over 80% of competitors were verified as real pupils by their teachers this year.
The eighth year has brought several changes, the principal of which is increasing the number of age categories. For pre-school children and pupils from the first years of primary schools who cannot deal with textual assignments, non-verbal assignments were prepared, and in several districts, experimental district rounds were organized for pre-school children. Uncovering talent at an early age is undoubtedly very beneficial.
In recent years, we have recorded occasional problems occurring when several hundred competitors were connected at the same time. This year, the infrastructure, including the database upgrade, was well-prepared in advance, so we didn’t experience any outages or long server response times; our IT specialists Juraj Ladický and Tomáš Hladík deserve a great “Thank you!” for that, as well as for many other adjustments to the system.
I would also like to thank Pavla Procházková, Jana Komaňská, and others who participated in the preparation of the tasks. It is definitely not an easy feat to prepare for the umpteenth time original, so far unused, and appropriately difficult tasks.
Pavla Janovská, Míša Kubaníková, Jitka Markesová, Broňa Milinková, and Martina Pokorná deserve our thanks for the communication both with the teachers and participants, for resolving various issues and for their help in evaluating results in the first rounds. Zuzana Poláková must also be acknowledged for the co-ordination and management of many activities.
Of course, I also have to thank all of the regional organizers. For organization of the regional rounds in all fourteen regions, promotion, communication, and for the record-breaking speed of the evaluations, we are grateful to Iva Berčíková, Tomáš Blumenstein, Michal Blümel, Petr Čavojský, Věra Hellerová, Markéta Houšková, Jana Hřebíčková, Marta Kubánková, Hana Kotinová, Lucie Malechová, Eva Sedláčková, Zuzana Šimůnková, Jiří Šmach, Lenka Šnajdrová, and their colleagues.
At the time I am writing this article, the finals are still ahead of us, but I am pretty sure that it will, among other things, thanks to the help of approximately 70 more co-organizers, be a great success again.
I am really happy that Mensa ČR has such a team of devoted volunteers, capable of organizing an event that is the greatest Mensa project worldwide, and is admired throughout the entire Mensa world. I hope that the competition will be similarly successful in the years to come.
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25.11.2015