Registration for the international sports programming championship “Yandex.Algorithm” is open
Conversation between Alexander Kostinsky and Elena Kolmanovskaya, Ilya Segalovich and Yuri Polyak
Alexander Kostinsky: Millions of people around the world search for information on the Internet. To make their task easier, powerful search engines. However, when you request a more or less famous surname or a significant event, a literally avalanche hits you unnecessary information. How to select useful ones from it? Is it possible to learn how to search the Internet effectively? It turns out that there are people who search for information on the Internet surprisingly quickly and efficiently. Is it possible to determine the best of them?
It turns out that it is possible. Yandex has already held the Internet Search Cup twice on the Russian-language Internet. More than a thousand people took part in the competition, and tens of thousands followed him.
In our today's broadcast, organizers Elena Kolmanovskaya, Ilya Segalovich and Internet search specialist Yuri Polyak will talk about the Cup.
Alexander Kostinsky: What is the Internet Search Cup?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: The Internet Search Cup is a competition for those who love the Internet, for those who, out of duty or interest, search for information on it. This is a competition that was invented by Yandex.
Ilya Segalovich: The point is that there is computer games, there are computer games using the Internet, there are intellectual computer games using the Internet, and some of them are played in a competitive manner.
Alexander Kostinsky: What tasks were given?
Ilya Segalovich: There is such a job - searching on the Internet. It is daily for people who are constantly on the Internet. For them, it is part of normal activity, much like typing texts on a computer or, at a very everyday level, peeling potatoes. The skill itself is simple, but it also needs to be acquired. There are experts in this skill. And so we wanted to understand whether this is really a skill, whether this is really some kind of art in which there is average level and there are achievements. The task was to cut off everything unnecessary. This was not supposed to be a competition in erudition, it was not supposed to be a competition in typing speed on a computer. This should be a competition in exactly what is commonly called “Internet search”.
Yuri Polyak: I would also like to say that here, in addition to the person who is searching, there is another important element - the search engine itself. The best results are achieved when a person the best way uses the capabilities of a search engine. Ilya was absolutely right about skills, ability, high level work with these machines, but this is rare. As you know, more than 70% of queries according to the statistics of the same search engines yield hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of possible links in response. The Russian Internet Search Cup competition teaches you to formulate a question exactly this way, taking into account the features of the search system, so that the answer is visible, informative and, if possible, correct.
Alexander Kostinsky: Competitions were held twice, what exactly were they called?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Russian Open Cup for Internet search.
Alexander Kostinsky: Any person could participate in them, from America, from China?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: We formulated it this way: anyone who speaks the Russian language and keyboard can take part in this competition.
Alexander Kostinsky: And how many of these were there?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: About a thousand each time.
Alexander Kostinsky: This is a lot, these are real big competitions.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: We think so too.
Ilya Segalovich: In general, more people registered. It is customary to register on the Internet. There is a feeling that if you don’t register, you’ll miss something and they won’t give you a prize. Therefore, both times four or five thousand were registered. But in reality there were about a thousand people who physically took part, answered questions, hoping to win this cup.
Alexander Kostinsky: What did they hope to win other than a wonderful cup?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: We had such a position that the main thing that a person wins here is honor and title. Therefore, the winner of the cup received the title - “The man who found everything.” And then, as the cup progressed, the prizes themselves were formed. We didn't specifically look for them. The first time there were prizes: a flat monitor, video cameras, I don’t remember, something else. At the second cup we already had big sponsors and the first prize there was a trip to Formula 1 in Monaco.
Alexander Kostinsky: Apparently there was some kind of selection system? Which? Olympic or something else?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: We have three tours. Everyone participates in the first round. The first round consists of 20 questions, each question is given three minutes to answer. Accordingly, it takes an hour. We usually play the first round of 6 or 7 games because different people convenient to play different time days and on different days of the week. Moreover, each participant has the right to participate in at least all games, and the score is based on the best result. After the first round, the first hundred places advance to the second round. The second round took place over two days. This is again done in order to compensate for time zones so that the cleaners have the opportunity to go to work or to an Internet cafe. And then the first eight places that won after the second round go to play in the finals. The final is always full-time.
Ilya Segalovich: Our task in the first round was to make it as wide as possible. A lot of people are in different time zones, some in America, some in Vladivostok, some in Moscow. It is impossible to satisfy everyone in one second. Therefore, we conducted many tours and came up with a system to equalize their chances. Plus, the first round was ideologically aimed at typing speed, and the second at erudition. First we looked for those who know how to search, and then among those who know how to quickly search for those who know how to think quickly.
Yuri Polyak: Now is the time to give examples of some questions, especially since Ilya has already said that the questions were chosen very carefully, and strict requirements were placed on them. They should not be banal, they should not be overplayed. And finally, they must allow for a reasonable, short answer.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: And what’s also important is that copying a question into the search bar does not provide an answer. Still, a person must think about what and how to ask.
Alexander Kostinsky: Have you checked this before?
Ilya Segalovich: Each question, not only was it prepared, it was checked, points were given to it, these points were averaged to compensate for the difference.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: All games of the first round had to be equal, otherwise someone would get an advantage, and this is wrong.
Ilya Segalovich: I don’t know how interesting it is to talk about the requirements, I remember them offhand. It shouldn't be very boring. There should not be twenty questions like what is the area of Nicaragua, what is the area of Guatemala, what is the area of Congo? Secondly, it shouldn't be trivial. We had this idea. That erudition questions should not be 100%, they should be as few as possible. And questions about real facts from real life there should be more of them. This did not always work out, but this was the general trend.
Alexander Kostinsky: A person should not know the answer, but find it on the Internet.
Ilya Segalovich: Yes, there are questions that are impossible to know. Classic example. What is the name of the elephant in the Kiev zoo? It's impossible to know.
Alexander Kostinsky: Have you ever had this question?
Ilya Segalovich: Yes, I was.
Yuri Polyak: Or hardly anyone knows how many chickens are eaten annually at the beer festival in Munich.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: What is the gestation period for a hippopotamus? What was the name of the founder of Philips? What is Ivan Susanin's middle name? By the way, this is a rather difficult question. His middle name was Osipovich. What is the name of the daughter of the 125th Emperor of Japan?
Ilya Segalovich: What was the name of Pavlov's dog? My favorite question.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Why did Spain buy Russian vodka at the beginning of the twentieth century?
Yuri Polyak: And for what?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: For attaching malaga.
Alexander Kostinsky: Was Malaga weak?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Certainly.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Moreover, it must be said that the tours differed slightly in the formulation of the task. If the first round is a speed game and the task is to find the answer on the Internet. If this answer is on the Internet, and as an answer the person had to write the answer itself, and the page where the answer was taken from. If the answer exists on the Internet, then it is accepted. At the same time, he may be incorrect regarding the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Yuri Polyak: But there were different variants Glen Miller's military rank, or answers to the question of how long Mr. Ulyanov sat in the hut.
Ilya Segalovich: We accepted different options. It’s really not so critical if someone called him a colonel, translating the word colonel, and someone called him a major general, it’s a matter of translation inaccuracy, we accepted that. But there was a problem with Fomenkov’s sites, there is such a wonderful scientist or non-scientist, I don’t know, who has his own story.
Alexander Kostinsky: Did people get their information from there?
Ilya Segalovich: Because they have proliferated on our Internet. If you count historical sites, then thirty percent are sites of followers of Fomenko’s teachings. They went online and that's why they have a lot of this nonsense.
Alexander Kostinsky: And their Everest is 15 centimeters high?
Yuri Polyak: Relatively speaking, yes.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: For them, Everest coincides in name with the fact that, relatively speaking, it is not a mountain, but a depression.
Alexander Kostinsky: Julius Caesar lived with them with Prince Igor and they fought for Constantinople.
Ilya Segalovich: And in general this is the same person.
Yuri Polyak: And they went together to drink tea with Genghis Khan.
Just a little aside, I want to say. These cup questions are valuable methodological manual for those teachers who teach Internet search. Let's say, Associate Professor Fedotov from St. Petersburg gives his students the following task: based on the search cup questions (not limited, of course, to three minutes) to find everything possible options and choose the most reliable one.
Alexander Kostinsky: Five thousand registered, a thousand actually played, and from these thousand you selected a little more than a hundred people.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Approximately 120.
Alexander Kostinsky: And what happened next?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: 120 people played the second round. The second round is structured as follows: some text is given. Usually these are three texts per different topics. About biology, about music and about something else. This is a text with missing passages. It looks something like this: “Among the plants of the family...(which?) the most famous are, in particular, medicinal ones, in particular...(name?), containing a valuable type of chemical compound...” and so on. I had to fill in the blanks with an internet search. But here the pages were not required. Erudition could work here.
Alexander Kostinsky: And for how long?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: There were three questions, three of these different texts. Each one was given half an hour.
Yuri Polyak: Three topics. But 120 concepts had to be inserted.
Alexander Kostinsky: It's not easy at all.
Ilya Segalovich: It's very difficult. I don't choose half of these questions.
Alexander Kostinsky: What are there people searching for better than you on the Internet?
Ilya Segalovich: Undoubtedly. There are amazing guys there.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Firstly, both times these questions were compiled for us by Anatoly Belkin, who is the commander of the intellectual club “Not for nothing”, this is a person who plays “What? Where? When?” And he always makes up very interesting questions, which are designed in such a way that you first need to read the text, then catch the thread by which it unwinds, and filling out the initial fields makes it easier to fill out the next ones. Secondly, unlike the first round, there is still a concept here - the correct answer. Here it is not enough to find on the Internet. These questions are designed in such a way that, like solving a good intellectual problem, people get pleasure simply from the solution process.
Alexander Kostinsky: And based on the results of these second round tasks, how many people continued to fight?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: We build a complete picture of the winners. The first eight winners are invited to the final, but we have six more next people We invite you to simply attend the final. And at the finale among these six randomly ninth place in the final is up for grabs.
Alexander Kostinsky: What tasks were there in the finals then?
Ilya Segalovich: We tried to make the final as varied and interesting as possible. IN in this case we wanted to understand what kinds of searches there are, why they are done, and formulate them different tasks. For example, our classification, which coincides with the international one, is as follows: there are navigation queries, queries in which a person simply needs to get into desired point(for example, find the website of an organization or person). In navigation queries there is one answer, a person needs to get to one point, find one Internet address, he does not need a list. Next type request - transactional. Relatively speaking, when a person needs to decide commercial task: buy tickets, sell a computer, exchange an apartment. In this case, generally speaking, a person does not need an address; moreover, he knows what he is asking about. He knows perfectly well what types of apartments and computers there are, his task is to find several offers and choose the best among them. Task number three is the most common when a person needs to find any information at all. You need to give a meaningful answer to the question. Very often the answer lies not on one page, but on several.
Alexander Kostinsky: What is this type of request called?
Ilya Segalovich: This is our information request.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Organizationally, the third round looks like this. First, all nine people play all-around. They have three tasks. The first task takes 20 minutes or half an hour, then the second task, then the third task. Then the results are summed up, three winners are identified, and three winners run the race of the winners. Each time the final takes place in an Internet cafe. There is a line of computers there. The line is charging. A person receives a question on the first computer, as soon as he gets the correct answer, he receives a password to enter the next one. And so he moves along a line of six or seven questions and it is very clear who is in what place.
Alexander Kostinsky: Whoever crosses the finish line is the champion?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: "The Man Who Found Everything"
Alexander Kostinsky: Who was the winner in the first competition?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: In the first cup, “The Man Who Found Everything” was Anton Nosik, second place went to Alexey Charykov and third place to Kirill Savitsky, and in the second cup, Vladimir Stepanov, a man from Moscow, from the newspaper “Vesti”, became the champion, and the guys took second and third places from St. Petersburg Anton Gubanov and Georgy Glazov.
In the second cup, we chose a route problem as a transactional problem, and it looked something like this. You are Santa Claus, who needs to leave the city of Veliky Ustyug Vologda region come to the city of Uryupinsk, Volgograd region. You must arrive before zero on December 31st, otherwise you won’t have time to distribute the gifts. Accordingly, what is the latest moment you can leave Veliky Ustyug?
Yuri Polyak: Naturally, the winner is the shortest route in time, with all the schedules of buses, trains, etc. attached.
Ilya Segalovich: The task is to provide Santa Claus with the laziest time possible, so that he can rest properly, get enough sleep and go out at the very last moment.
Alexander Kostinsky: And at the last second he gave gifts to everyone.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: We played the final in December, so it was very natural to have a problem about Santa Claus.
Yuri Polyak: By the way, one or two of the eight participants solved this question, unlike another question when it was necessary to find all Napoleonic marshals or all cities with McDonald's eateries.
Ilya Segalovich: Information questions turned out to be more interesting. In the first draw, it was necessary to find as many facts as possible from the biography of a certain person, and in the second cup, there was a task, continue the list, Murat, Ney.
Yuri Polyak: That’s okay, but what if you need to find the names of Volga ships?
Ilya Segalovich: This is actually not difficult, the difficult question was about the colors of the geological map. It turned out that there is only one page on the entire Russian Internet, which lists the colors of the card.
Alexander Kostinsky: Not one of your first cup winners was a second cup winner. It's not exactly Formula 1, where Schumacher wins all the time. Did the same people participate in the second cup or did they not make it?
Ilya Segalovich: And they played, and participated, and were in the finals. About half of our second cup finalists were finalists in the first.
Yuri Polyak: The eights intersected.
Ilya Segalovich: The eights overlapped very much.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Charykov was in the finals, he just didn’t make it into the medal race. The winner of the second cup, Stepanov, was fourth or fifth in the first final.
Alexander Kostinsky: When you hosted this final, you got to know 15 people from the first final and an additional 5-7 people from the second final. What can you say about these people?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: These people are distinguished by their ability to concentrate. Still, it is a great skill to spend time on a constant, consistent solution to a problem. In particular, among the people who play the cup there are a lot of what-where. It's quite natural because it's close.
Ilya Segalovich: Lena, I'm sorry, but these are, to one degree or another, professional people in Internet searches. Anton Nosik, a man who has been in Russian Internet, another participant is a graduate student in a field that requires constant search. This is a patent search. All people are absolutely familiar with computers. Watching Charykov hit the keys is a pleasure, it’s fantastic.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Alexey Charykov, actually a musician, graduated from the conservatory.
Alexander Kostinsky: Is he just playing on the keyboard?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: It looks something like this.
Ilya Segalovich: They are absolute computer professionals, superbly erudite guys, and they do a lot of searching on the Internet.
The problem for us is team play. When ten people sit down and are responsible for one. This is much more convenient and faster, especially in the second round, when you need to fill in many fields and all fields are visible at the same time. I begin to answer the second half of the question, you answer the first, my friend Aunt Klava from the second floor picks up an encyclopedia, Sasha, a friend from the sixth entrance, takes out four dictionaries, and so on. We certainly couldn't ensure complete cleanliness.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Therefore, the final is full-time.
Ilya Segalovich: All we could do was cut off the people who were passing by in a group. We analyzed the similarity of answers, for this case we wrote special algorithm, the manner in which errors were made was analyzed, plus we looked at IP addresses.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: By the second cup, we had more accurately formulated the ban on team play, and there was an interesting precedent. We had two people who matched our algorithm.
Ilya Segalovich: Moreover, it is interesting that they made it into this hundred. As they told us later, they found out in 15 minutes that they were in the same organization.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: Matched in the second round.
Ilya Segalovich: They turned on their speakerphones and started helping each other, and we understood it. We realized that they answered the first questions very similarly, but then they became uncomfortable and separated.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: And we honestly sent them a letter that we have strong reasons to believe that this is so, so and so. Please tell me, are we right or wrong? They replied, yes, you guys are right. Indeed, we ourselves are fools, we understand, this later turned out to be inconvenient. We said, sorry, we won't take you to the finals. If you want, come as spectators.
Ilya Segalovich: The situation is tragic, but we had rules, what can you do?
Alexander Kostinsky: You yourself have improved your understanding of what it is good search in the Internet?
Ilya Segalovich: Of course, the sample that we have is very valuable. On its basis, many search engine specialists suggest that we make some kind of corpus, test systems. We think about this all the time, we have it in our work all the time, and we constantly hone and check the quality of the search using the material that we have accumulated. This is very useful for us. About a third of the questions and even more, we wanted more than half of them, are not encyclopedic questions, not for erudition, they are not answered in the encyclopedia. The name of the elephant in the Kiev zoo is not written in any encyclopedia. Whether there is a ticket in the afternoon to Madagascar from Moscow is also not written anywhere. This can only be found out today, now. This information questions, not encyclopedic.
Elena Kolmanovskaya: And who Putin met with and where his next visit is - there are no such encyclopedias.
Ilya Segalovich: Therefore, the Internet is unique, universal remedy, which also includes encyclopedias.
Alexander Kostinsky: When will there be a third Search Cup, if there is one?
Elena Kolmanovskaya: In autumn, late September, early October.
Yuri Polyak: I wanted to ask. Behind this remarkable façade there is probably great job, human resources, money and so on, because this doesn’t come on its own?
Ilya Segalovich: We had to write software that can accept a thousand responses in one second, and it should not crash, and it should be stable, it should be secure. It so happened that at the first cup, our former employee narrowly missed making it to the finals and took ninth place. He, thanks to his old password, or knowing the password of one of the employees, logged in through the modem pool, gained access to the internal network, found the verification interface, corrected two questions for himself, raised the result by two points and ended up seventh. But the thing is that he didn’t know that we had already sent letters to the first eight. We didn’t post the result online simply because we didn’t have time purely organizationally.
Alexander Kostinsky: That is, a swindler was caught.
Ilya Segalovich: He wouldn't have gotten caught. Pure chance. We began to publish lists and look, my God, the eight were different, we sent invitations to other people. We are simply terrified. They started checking urgently.
Alexander Kostinsky: The main principle of security: networks are broken from the inside, not from the outside.
Ilya Segalovich: We enjoyed this competition. We wanted to have fun, we wanted to please others. It looks like we succeeded. It is clear that this took more than one man-month, especially the first cup, which was made from scratch, the second one is easier. A lot of blood and sweat, but it was fun.
After we did this, immediately after the second round people came to us from Tyumen region, they had a school tournament, after that people from the Moscow community of teachers of mathematics classes came to us, they are formally called something (2nd, 57th, all these wonderful schools), there are a lot of good teachers there. They came to us and said: help us make such a cup.
Alexander Kostinsky: Between these schools?
Ilya Segalovich: No, they organize almost All-Russian Olympiads. We signed up to host the All-Moscow School Championship. It will also begin in the fall. Schools must submit applications approximately according to our formula, but the organization is slightly different. A little simpler questions. Essentially, the first round and race. But there are already two competitions software Yandex has passed.
Alexander Kostinsky: Has the Internet search cup spread to the people?
Ilya Segalovich: The people are coming in full force.
Yuri Polyak: I even came across newspaper articles under the headings “Internet search is a national sport”, “an element of a new national culture” and so on; this is probably some exaggeration, since there were only a thousand participants for millions of users.
Alexander Kostinsky: But five thousand registered.
Yuri Polyak: We saw that this was a purely costly exercise, but the enthusiasm of Yandex became the yeast that awakened the general mass. If there is enough enthusiasm to continue holding the cup, then that’s great. God grant that this movement develops further.
Yandex Cup (Russian Open Internet Search Cup)- a competition for high-speed Internet search, conducted by Yandex since 2001. The winner of the Cup receives the title “The Man Who Found Everything”, the Yandex Cup itself, as well as some prize (in the last cup the prize was not announced). In total, 9 cups were held from 2008; the ninth, according to Yandex, was the last. In May 2009, the Champions Cup took place (other names - Cup Winners' Cup, Cup Winners' Cup).
The essence of the game [ | code ]
Yandex Cup
The idea of the Cup is that participants compete in their ability to quickly find answers to questions on the Internet.
The Cup takes place in three rounds: two in absentia and an in-person final. Anyone who has registered on the Cup website can play in the first round. In the first round, six games are played according to the schedule, and a player can take part in several: best result. The game lasts one hour and consists of 20 questions, alternately replacing each other; thus, three minutes are given to find the answer. The response must include a link to the page containing the response and the actual text of the response itself. In this case, the participant’s answer does not have to coincide with the answer of the organizers: the main thing is that it is indicated on the found page. During the game, the participant can use any search engine. For each correct answer the player receives one point. It counts Best game first round.
100 players with greatest number points, as well as all players who scored the same number of points as the player in hundredth place. The second round consists of two parts; were held in different Cups Various types games. In the VI Cup, for example, the second round consisted of “Object Search” and “Lists”. Each part consisted of six tasks and lasted 30 minutes. In “Object Search” the player had to find the text or image of a given document, and in “Lists” he had to continue the list given by the organizers, giving, if possible, complete lists of elements.
8 players - the winners of the second round - advance to the finals. The 9th player is determined by drawing lots among the players who took the next 20 places in the second round. The final consists of two parts: the all-around and the winners' race. The all-around competition in the latest cups consists of three games of 5 tasks, each lasting 15 minutes: searching for pictures, websites of organizations and objects for downloading (software, music, videos, etc.). Based on the results of the all-around competition, three super finalists are determined.
The Cup draw takes place in the format of a winners' race. The three finalists play for the first places: they answer questions sequentially, and you can gain access to the next question only by answering the current one correctly (in the IX Cup and the Champions Cup, the rules of the race have changed: access to the next question is also given after three minutes).
Scores in the Cup [ | code ]
Starting from the IV Cup, separate competitions are held:
- Regional. Based on the results of the first round, the player who showed the best result in his region is awarded (if there are at least 20 players from the region). An additional indicator is the total time in the game spent searching for answers.
- Junior. A separate classification for players under 18 years of age (which does not prevent them from participating in the general classification at the same time). Based on the results of the first round, 20 juniors who showed the best results advanced to the finals. In the VII Cup there was no final for juniors.
- Command. It was held only once in the V Cup. Teams consisted of three people; The three teams that showed the best results in the first round advanced to the finals.
Winners [ | code ]
| Overall standings | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cup | Year | Winner | Prize |
| I | Anton Nosik (Moscow) | LCD Monitor Samsung SyncMaster 770TFT | |
| II | Vladimir Stepanov (Moscow) | A trip for two to the Formula 1 championship in Monaco | |
| III | Alexander Sobolev (Moscow) | Laptop Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo | |
| IV | Mikhail Yutsis (Rehovot, Israel) | Peugeot 206 car | |
| V | Alexey Charykov (Moscow) | Skoda Octavia car | |
| VI | Igor Makhanyok (Minsk, Belarus) | 502 thousand rubles | |
| VII | 601 thousand rubles | ||
| VIII | Denis Fursov (St. Petersburg) | 701 thousand rubles | |
| IX | Maxim Sidorov (Tolyatti) | no prize | |
| Cup Cups |
Alexey Charykov | no prize | |
| Junior standings | |||
| IV | 2003 | Maxim Adrov (Nizhny Novgorod) | Sony Ericsson T68i phone |
| V | 2004 | Daniil Kvashennikov (Moscow) | Nokia 6670 phone |
| VI | 2005 | Anton Somin (Minsk) | Communicator Samsung i700 |
| VII | 2006 | Grigory Gankin (Samara) | there was no final final |
| VIII | 2007 | ||
| Team competition | |||
| V | 2004 | Team of the Mariinsky Theater (St. Petersburg) | Video cameras Panasonic NV-GS15GC-S |
Since 2007, “People who found everything” in past Cups cannot take part in the final game. Unofficially, this change in the rules was called the “Makhanka amendment.”
In May 2009, the Cup Winners' Cup was held, in which seven of the eight previous champions took part. The cup was won by Alexey Charykov.
Regional and other Cups[ | code ]
In addition to the Yandex Cup itself, various regional Cups are held with the support of Yandex. The first regional competition was the Netrix Cup in Israel, held in July-August 2003. It was followed by school and general cups in various cities of Russia: Makhachkala, Saratov, Novosibirsk, Kirov, St. Petersburg and many others, as well as in Minsk (Belarus), Lvov (Ukraine) and Menlo Park (California, USA). In February 2006 and March 2007, the Institute of Humanitarian Education (IGUMO) held competitions for applicants with the main prize - admission and free training. At the same time, Yandex held a school team cup. And in December 2006, the first non-Russian-language Search Cup was held in Norway - Norgesmesterskap i søk.
Search competitions are held on the Cup website, in which anyone can take part at any time. The test consists of ten randomly selected questions; its result does not affect anything.
Examples of tasks [ | code ]
From the first round:
- Name the father and son who received the Nobel Prize together.
- At what time, according to superstition, is it not customary to start a game? sports game, the supplies for which Alan Shepard took with him to the Moon?
- Give the department phone number civil defense And emergency situations Uryupinsk.
- What is used to lubricate the sore limbs of Stylodipus Allen G.?
From the second round:
Search for an object:
- Image of a machine making noises for Hindu ceremonies.
- Schedule of work of the State Duma of the Russian Federation on November 29, 2002.
Lists:
- Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Chernyshevsky...
(and other ships of the same series)
- Awards of V.V. Putin
Notes [ | code ]
We talk about the fact that “everything can be found” in Yandex throughout this book. Indeed, you can find here, if not everything, then very, very much. But can everyone find this “everything”? How to check the authenticity of a statement taken by Yandex as its slogan? Only on “living people”. The easiest way is to organize a search competition. This is what was done for the first time in 2001, when the first “Yandex Cup” in search was held (Fig. 11.5). This competition became an annual event, and in 2006 the 7th edition was held (in the first year of the Cup's existence, two competitions were held).
The idea of the Cup is that participants compete to find answers to questions asked in the Internet. The competition is held between people who speak the same language (group of languages) - otherwise it is very difficult to prepare “equilibrium” questions. Any search engines or directories can be used for searching. The competitions themselves can be held either remotely (in absentia) or in person. In the Yandex Cup, both options are usually combined: the first stages are held remotely, and the final is held in person.
The game consists of a set of questions asked sequentially. To answer each question there is a certain time. The questions are designed in such a way that finding the answer does not require knowledge of any languages other than the language of the game. However, the correct answer itself may be a word foreign language or number, date. The search competition is an individual game with a head-to-head competition. Each player must play independently. If teams are eliminated, the scores of all players on the team will be voided. Unfortunately, similar situations problems arose during competitions, and even good players had to be removed from the game.
There are different games - text recovery, transactional, navigation, informational, biographical, product, object searches, winners' races. Over the years, all of them were used in one way or another at different stages. For example, the “Winners' Race” game was the final one at the first Cup. This is how Natalya Khaitina described this stage “hot on the heels”:
It was a race in the full sense of the word. Each player was offered a row of 7 computers. When answering a question on the first computer, the player received a login password next computer. Thus, it was possible to follow the progress of the race from behind - it was not at all virtually visible how each of the players moved towards the finish line. ( http://www.netoscope.ru/ news/2001/05/29/2429.html).
During the first Cup, not only search competitions were held, but also a short story competition dedicated to Internet searches. The winner of this competition was invited as a spectator to the final game. These stories were combined into a cycle and called "Hunting Stories." Among their authors were the first persons of Yandex - Arkady Volozh and Elena Kolmanovskaya ( http://first.kubok.yandex.ru/huntgon.xhtml). And the winner of the first “Yandex Cup” in search was Anton Nosik - he, like the winners of the following Cups, was called “The Man Who Found Everything” (Fig. 11.6).
Competitions were often accompanied by additional competitions, in which anyone could take part. For example, a game was played to search for words that present the greatest difficulties in writing (the game “Ochepyatka”). As I expected, the first place among the published “difficult” words was the word “agency” - how much they love to leave out the letter “t” in it! But I didn’t expect at all that the word “advertising” would come out in second place.
Or the game "Bookvoyed". The goal of the game is to find the most frequent word, which is any part of speech in any form, starting and ending with the given letters. The more letters there are in a word and the more often it occurs, the more points are given for it.
What types of questions are there? Here are examples of what was given in the form of tasks for the V Cup:
Image search - photograph of a bridge near the village of Dubna on a dismantled railway in the Tula region;
Search for the official website - the official website of the musical group, in the technical rider of which there is an item about the temperature on stage (for open areas) not lower than +10 °C;
Thinner number 4.
On one of the pages dedicated to the Cup, the following question is given: “What was the circulation of the book published in 1995 - a cycle of poems by Timur Kibirov based on the memoirs of Volodya Ulyanov’s relatives and friends about the childhood of the future leader?”
The fastest answer was given by participant of the IV Internet Search Cup Pavel_krsk. The time he took was 21 seconds. Deciding to see if I could find the answer so quickly, I tried a search. Generated a request Kibirov +! cycle +! Ulyanov, and after a couple of seconds I received a page of links. The first link led to the page of the Bookstand of the publishing house Ivan Limbach ( http://www.bookkiosk.ru/product_info.php?products_id=210), where in the description of Timur Kibirov’s book “When Lenin Was Little” the circulation was indicated - 3000 copies, 1995. I didn’t record the time, but I don’t think it exceeded 30 seconds (Fig. 11.7).
It's quite simple. You just need to know a little how to use the Internet and formulate the right questions. And this is available to anyone who would like to try their hand.
Want to test yourself? No problem. You can pass the test at any time of the day or night without any prior registration. Just open the page http://kubok.yandex.ru/zachet.xhtml and answer 10 randomly selected questions, each of which is given 3 minutes (Fig. 11.8). The answers are checked automatically; at the end of the game, each participant who answered at least one question correctly can print out a diploma with their results, having first filled out the form.
Yandex studied which events, people, phenomena, films and even Internet memes aroused the greatest interest among Russians in 2017. The results of the study are presented in nine ratings. TASS talks in detail about the most interesting results of the “search year”.
Events in Russia and the world
In first place in the list of events that Yandex users were most interested in was the terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro, which occurred on April 3. The so-called death groups on VKontakte and the scandal surrounding the film Matilda have been topics of active discussion for several months, which influenced their second and third places in the ranking, respectively. Overall top 10 search queries according to events it looks like this.
Among the Russian events, the top 10 also included: the introduction of a fine for the absence of the “Spikes” sign; FBK activities; hurricane in Moscow, which happened in May; the opportunity to venerate the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and the opening of Zaryadye Park.
Russians were not so actively interested in foreign events this year. The top 10 at the end of 2017 included only queries about the Coxsackie virus epidemic in Turkey and the persecution of the Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar.
Persons
The most active attention of users was attracted to the former opera singer, ex-deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Maria Maksakova. This is largely explained by emigration to Ukraine and the subsequent murder of her husband, entrepreneur and politician Denis Voronenkov.
The most popular man of 2017, according to Yandex search query statistics, was singer Dima Bilan.
The top ten women about whom information was most often sought in the past year also include: singer Yulia Samoilova, who, due to obstacles from the Ukrainian authorities, was unable to represent Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2017; Diana Shurygina, who gained fame after participating in a talk show; TV presenter Dana Borisova; ballerina Anastasia Volochkova. The top 10 is completed by the wife of the French president, Brigitte Macron.
Among the men in whom Yandex users showed the greatest interest are TV presenter Andrei Malakhov, actor and theater director Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, director Kirill Serebrennikov, rapper Face (Ivan Dremin). The only foreigner in the top 10 was French President Emmanuel Macron.
Things and phenomena
The words "cryptocurrency", "spinner" and iPhone X became the most popular queries in this category. The popularity of the topic of cryptocurrencies was affected by the rapid growth of the Bitcoin rate. Spinner toys were actively discussed all summer, and the iPhone X was discussed after Apple introduced its new products. In addition, the top ten things about which Yandex users most often searched for information included three more smartphones: Samsung Galaxy S8, iPhone 8 and updated Nokia 3310.
Sport
The Ice Hockey World Championship became the most popular sports query on Yandex in 2017. It took place in May 2017 in Germany and France. The Russian team took third place, losing to Canada with a score of 2:4 in the semifinals, and beating Finland 5:3 in the match for third place.
In second place in the top 10 requests is the Confederations Cup, held in Russia in June-July. In third place is the Russian Football Championship, which this year provided serious intrigue in the battle for the championship title. After all, despite the fact that on the eve of the season the overwhelming majority of experts called Zenit the favorite, Lokomotiv Moscow confidently leads the championship with a gap of eight points.
In addition, among sporting events, the information about which Yandex users most often searched for was a boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conon McGregor; KHL championship; the football Champions League and the upcoming FIFA World Cup, which will be held in Russia in the summer of 2018.
Movies
In 2017, Yandex users most often requested information about the horror film “It” directed by Andres Muschietti, the animated comedy “Despicable Me 3” and the science-fiction film “Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2.”
Three Russian films were in the top 10 search queries: “Viking” directed by Andrei Kravchuk, “The Last Hero” by Dmitry Dyachenko and “Attraction” by Fyodor Bondarchuk.
Series
Of all Russian television series, Yandex users in 2017 most often searched for information about Molodezhka. The most popular foreign series predictably became Game of Thrones.
The remaining Russian and foreign TV series are ranked as follows.
Internet memes
The word "eshkere", common among rappers, became the most popular meme of 2017. For the uninitiated, it is worth explaining the long path of its origin. This word is a Russian translation of the English word esketit, and it, in turn, is the result of a peculiar pronunciation of the phrase let's get it, which can be translated as “Let's stir it up.”
In second place is Zhdun, a common name on the RuNet for a sculpture by the Dutch artist Margriet van Brevoort. The statue represents a legless creature gray with the head of a northern elephant seal and human hands.
In third place is the phrase “This is a fiasco, bro.” It became popular after its publication viral video, in which a Shiba Inu dog falls into the water. The phrase has become synonymous with failure.
The remaining seven items on this list are also well known to active Internet users. And those who see them for the first time should look for the stories of their origin - each is very interesting.
The format of the event was borrowed from the Yandex company, which holds such championships annually.
Purpose of the event - popularization of the Internet among schoolchildren as a source of knowledge, not entertainment.
The goal of the championship is...
Task: creating a motivating environment for developing interest in computer technologies in education,
stimulating students' interest in self-education,
creating a situation in which students’ creative abilities are most fully realized and the need for computer skills is demonstrated.
Time and place:
Registration starts at 9:00 a.m.
Championship time 9-30-12-00,
Championship participants : teams of grades 5-9, 5 people per team.
Form:
computer competitions for information retrieval.
Summing up and awarding .
The championship includes both team and individual competition.
The team championship is determined according to the Olympic system.
The scoring in the individual championship is carried out in each separate round.
Winners and prize-winners are awarded with certificates and diplomas.
Organization of the championship .
To participate, you must submit a paper application to the computer science office using the following form:
Application for participation in the school championship "World of Informatics"
from the ________ class team
p/pParticipant's FI
Team captain_______________________
Round 1 questions
Question 1: What is the name of the author of the painting “The Quartermaster and the Cabman” who holds a leading position in one of the Russian creative unions?
Question 2: What is the name of the third part of Pikul’s book “I Have the Honor”?
Question 3: How many commas are there in the third sentence of the 10th chapter of “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol?
Correct answer: 7
Question 4: Name the capital’s cultural institution with which the R-Style company cooperates in the field of system integration.
Correct answer: Big theater
Question 5: Who (specify title) did Anna Ivanovna Shirai marry?
Correct answer: for the count
Question 6: What three methods famous company does Kari use when working with ERP systems?
Correct answer: Oracle
Question 7: How many petticoats were required for a smart dress in the first half of the 19th century?
Correct answer: six
Question 8: Which Eastern European country's airline operated its first international flight on April 1?
Question 9: Name the person who was US Secretary of the Treasury during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Question 10: How many children (number) did the Serb known as Arkan have?
Correct answer: 9 children
Round 2 questions
Question 1: What is the name of the third part of Pikul’s book “I Have the Honor”?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: "In the performance of duty"
Question 2: The fruits of which bush are used in preparing the dish called “Bernese table”?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: juniper
Question 3: In what year was the entrepreneur born? TV channel On December 26, 2007, stopped its work again in the capital of one of the CIS states?
Your Answer:
Question 4: In what month was the famous Russian actress who died on December 27, 2007 born?
Your Answer:
Question 5: In what year was Walter Scott widowed?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: in 1826
Question 6: When (name the year) did the most ancient attribute existing today appear, day Russian analogue which has been celebrated since 1994 in August?
Your Answer:
Question 7: What is the price (in pounds) of the jewelry Scarlett Johansson is wearing in the photo as Charles Perrault's heroine?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: £165,000 (other link)
Question 8: What is real name Yu. Arbekova - Penza writer?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Kuznetsov
Question 9: What is the date and month of 1941 when the brick factory in Shcherbinka near Moscow stopped working?
Your Answer:
Question 10: How much radio receivers were sold in the United States in 1929?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: $843 million
Round 3 questions
Question 1: Which city is the main city in the historical region of France, in one of the cities of which is Dantes' castle?
Your Answer:
Question 2: How many points does a player get for building a statue in the first world of Tribal Wars?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: 24
Question 3: Who refereed the last match of “Tavriya” in the Ukrainian Football Cup 2005/2006?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Evgeniy Gerenda
Question 4: What is the name of the friend of the person who disappeared in September 2007, who at the end of December 2007 announced the transfer of $1.2 billion to charity?
Your Answer:
Question 5: Which famous company uses three methods when working with ERP systems?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Oracle
Question 6: What is the name of the unfinished novel by Georges Simenon?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Oscar
Your Answer:
Question 8: To which street were Vladivostok resident Boris Pavlenko taken after being tricked into opening the door to his apartment?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Shepetkova street
Question 9: What is the real name of Yu. Arbekov, a Penza writer?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Kuznetsov
Question 10: How many surgeons (number) were there in the Kursk province in 1820?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: 2
Round 4 questions
Question 1: In what year was Walter Scott widowed?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: in 1826
Question 2: What is it called as of June 21, 2007? locality, former capital of the Alash autonomy?
Your Answer:
Question 3: In what year was the politician born who, according to the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, had bank accounts worth 152 thousand 500 rubles at the end of December 2007?
Your Answer:
Question 4: Thanks to what two natural dyes is it impossible main feature the appearance of a fairy-tale heroine, whose name translated from ancient German means “weak, tender”?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: eumelanin and pheomelanin (another link)
Question 5: Name the city, the swamp near which filmmakers led by Andrei Tarkovsky spent about 24 hours preparing for use in film scenes.
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Vladimir
Question 6: Which US university employs the person who, as reported in December 2007, designed the fairy-tale attribute included in the titles of the books by V. Krapivin and A. Belyaev?
Your Answer:
Question 7: What is the name of the song by the group "Kar-men", both words of which begin with the letter "b"?
Your Answer:
Question 8: How many surgeons (number) were there in the Kursk province in 1820?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: 2
Question 9: What is the name of the person who took 1st place in the voting on “Echo of Moscow” in the nomination “Russian scientist of the 20th century”?
Your Answer:
Correct answer: Landau
Question 10: What is the name of Orlovsky shopping mall, opened in 2003 on the territory of a watch factory?
Your Answer:
