History
Since the mid-1960s, problem-solving competitions in linguistics for secondary school students have been taking place at various locations around the world. In Russia, the Moscow and St Petersburg Linguistic Olympiads are credited with inspiring hundreds of young talented scholars to choose linguistics as an academic major and profession. Presently (2009) there are national contests in Bulgaria, the Netherlands and several other European countries, and the USA. There is also an International Linguistic Olympiad in which students from many countries compete, as well as dozens of local competitions held in individual towns and schools across Europe and the USA.
In 1998 the first US Linguistics Olympiad was held at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, in 1998. 18 students participated the first year, 88 participated the second year, and 67 participated the third year of this local pilot program. From 2001 to 2006, the program existed as an informal, web-based educational activity known as the Linguistics Challenge.
The two US teams in each year won several awards at the ILO in 2007 and 2008. Each year, one of the two US teams won a gold medal (or first diploma) in the team contest. In addition, several team members won individual medals.
Read more about this topic: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
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—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)