Discovering Competitive Programming (USACO)

Competitive programming, in particular USACO (USA Computing Olympiad), is gaining popularity in recent years as the importance of computer science is being recognized in education and at work. This year, we saw a 40% increase in USACO participation.

Although traditionally mostly high schools students are participating in USACO contest, we are seeing a trend of younger students taking part in the contest in recent years. Computer Science is a unique subject in that it teaches a new way of problem solving and a new way of thinking - known as Computational Thinking. It’s advantages for students to be exposed to this new way of thinking at an earlier age.

Compared to math competition, programming competition is relatively new. As a result, many parents have questions about USACO: what is it and whether and when should their children participate. How is training for USACO different from learning a programming language or taking a computer science class at school or online? What are the core competencies required for competitive programming? How to train for USACO (or other programming competition)? What are the benefit of training for and participating in USACO?

In this workshop, we will answer these what, why, and how questions. We will work on some examples to help give students a “taste” of USACO. We will also discuss our approach for training students for competitive program with a strong focus on computational thinking and on developing students’ problem solving skills.