A record setting nine students from the Upper School attended the invitational round of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO), which was held today at San Jose State University.
These students were part of the 200 who were chosen to participate in the invitational round of the NACLO, slimmed down from the 1665 students who took the open round earlier this year. The initial round also had a record number of participants from the Upper School–over 70 students, more than all other years combined.
“I first heard about linguistics when Erik Andersen (12) mentioned the competition during school meeting last year. After trying a few problems, I realized how interesting the subject is,” qualifier Matthew Huang (10) said. “I participated last year and had a great time even though I did not qualify for the invitational round.”
The linguistics club has been attending this tournament since formation in 2006 by Sonia Gillman (’09) and club advisor Dr. Shaun Jahshan. The huge turnout at the NACLO competition this year was widely due to more interest because of club president Erik’s efforts.
“[The increased participation was due to] word of mouth, and Linguistics Club head Erik Andersen doing wider publicity this year. This probably accounted for the more than 70 students who took part this year,” Dr. Jahshan said.
Many students enjoyed participating in the competition, as they find the problems interesting, enjoyable, and challenging. They not only hope to continue participating in the competition in the years to come, but also encourage others to attempt the open round in the future.
“I have always enjoyed logic puzzles and patterns, which drew me into the NACLO. I treated most of the problems as pattern recognition and logic problems rather than actual language problems,” qualifier Vikram Sundar (11) said. “I enjoy participating in the NACLO because unlike the vast majority of competitions, the NACLO consistently produces fun, stimulating problems.”
The top four contestants from the United States will form a national linguistics team, and another team of four may be created depending on how talented the judges deem this year’s participants to be.