Sample problems

Judge the material yourself

Every question on this page is original, written for Olympiad Vault. None is copied from a past competition paper; past papers belong to their organising bodies and the full courses link to them under each body's terms. Answers mark instantly in your browser: nothing you type here is sent anywhere.

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Maths and Informatics, marked instantly

Real code

Informatics coding tasks, run in your browser

The BIO is a programming competition, so try real code. These two tasks run Python in your browser (powered by Pyodide) and check your function against test cases. If in-browser Python cannot load on your network, a fallback lets you compare your program's outputs with the expected ones.

Coding task 1: sum of evens

Write a function sum_evens(n) that returns the sum of all even numbers from 1 to n inclusive. For example, sum_evens(10) should return 30 (2 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 10).

def sum_evens(n):
    # your code here
    return 0

Press "Run the tests" when your function is ready.

Expected outputs. sum_evens(10) → 30; sum_evens(5) → 6; sum_evens(1) → 0; sum_evens(100) → 2550.

Coding task 2: count the vowels

Write a function count_vowels(s) that returns how many vowels (a, e, i, o, u, either case) are in the string s. For example, count_vowels("hello") should return 2.

def count_vowels(s):
    # your code here
    return 0

Press "Run the tests" when your function is ready.

Expected outputs. count_vowels("hello") → 2; count_vowels("sky") → 0; count_vowels("Olympiad") → 3; count_vowels("AEIOU") → 5.

Tutor-led tracks

The tutor-led tracks: sample style questions

These are examples of each competition's format, clearly labelled sample style. In the full courses, the questions are written and marked by each track's vetted specialist tutor, not by the founder.

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