International Math Olympiad 2014 results are in! (India fails again)

[Wagner]

It's also a huge waste. So many Chinese students prepare for this, take classes for it, only to likely miss even getting a spot on the olympiad team. There are much better ways to end up at top universities.

Not true. Training for the olympiad is a fantastic way to build problem-solving skills and can be bridged into an introduction to advanced college-level math.

 

[anyrandom]

I don't know what op want to prove by opening this thread but nobody in India knows about this International math olympiad.

Here in India people only care about getting good marks and cracking Competitive exams like JEE,AIEEE,PMT and AIIMS etc...

And I bet a person who can solve Joint entrance exam problem can easily solve this math olympiad thing.
It's just nobody in India is interested.
I've been using internet for almost 8 years and I've myself heard about this international olympiad thing from a fake a$$ chinese pretending to be an American.

one of the reason i have decreased my visits to this forum.....lots of fake people here and they will totally depress you.

 

[angeldude13]

one of the reason i have decreased my visits to this forum.....lots of fake people here and they will totally depress you.

Depress me???
It takes much more to depress or even troll me.
I've was a regular visitor here.
Trolled some turks and bongs so hard that some bong international mod banned me.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Both the youngest students ever to get perfect SAT scores are Indian.
Rediff On The NeT: 12-Year-Old Who Scored Perfect SAT Score
Wants To Remain A 'Regular' Kid
California boy, 14, gets perfect score on SAT - NY Daily News

SAT is a very easy test.
Math Olympiad is very difficult, even PhD math students have trouble with the problems.

Terence Tao - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This guy is the youngest Math Olympiad winner in history. Also a Fields Medalist.

It's also a huge waste. So many Chinese students prepare for this, take classes for it, only to likely miss even getting a spot on the olympiad team. There are much better ways to end up at top universities.

It is not a waste of money to spend a lot of time to get very good a math.

Math skill is a great asset for the rest of your life.

 

[Devdas]

SAT is a very easy test.
Math Olympiad is very difficult, even PhD math students have trouble with the problems.

Terence Tao - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This guy is the youngest Math Olympiad winner in history. Also a Fields Medalist.


It is not a waste of money to spend a lot of time to get very good a math.

Math skill is a great asset for the rest of your life.

Except the best mathematicians aren't necessarily the best olympiad students and vice versa. These olympiads have very specific types of problems. Being able to solve them nowhere near guarantees success in mathematics or academia in general.

 

[Charon 2]

Wow I'm surprised that Turkey isn't worse than I thought.

 

[mahesh.]

There is talent every where in the world. Be it Africa EU America, Latin or South Asia. Math and Talent are not a patent for a particular genes or country. It requires efforts and organized system to unearth talent and train them. Or it should be heavily publicized and known and matter to the common public to generate interest.

An average middle class Indian parent will send son/daughter to IIT-JEE than Olympiad coaching, because it matters in next level college education. Still its a shame that we did not make at least TOP 20.

 

[IsaacNewton]

There is talent every where in the world. Be it Africa EU America, Latin or South Asia. Math and Talent are not a patent for a particular genes or country. It requires efforts and organized system to unearth talent and train them. Or it should be heavily publicized and known and matter to the common public to generate interest.

An average middle class Indian parent will send son/daughter to IIT-JEE than Olympiad coaching, because it matters in next level college education. Still its a shame that we did not make at least TOP 20.

I agree, India didn't do well not because of social Darwinist theory of Indian's gene, more likely the education system as well as Indian culture.

If it weren't for Asian Americans in the US, I'm sure US would ranked the same as UK. Most people (even college educated) in America can't do very basic math like fractions.

Except the best mathematicians aren't necessarily the best olympiad students and vice versa. These olympiads have very specific types of problems. Being able to solve them nowhere near guarantees success in mathematics or academia in general.

Perhaps, but there is a pretty big correlation. All the best mathematicians at Berkeley, MIT, Princeton excelled at math competitions when they were younger.

 

[proka89]

International Mathematical Olympiad

 

[mahesh.]

I agree, India didn't do well not because of social Darwinist theory of Indian's gene, more likely the education system as well as Indian culture.

If it weren't for Asian Americans in the US, I'm sure US would ranked the same as UK. Most people (even college educated) in America can't do very basic math like fractions.



Perhaps, but there is a pretty big correlation. All the best mathematicians at Berkeley, MIT, Princeton excelled at math competitions when they were younger.

What has culture got to do with math. You mean education system?

In this case I will blame heavily on media too for not publicizing this type of news where we suck. Except when they boast about silly spelling bee competitions won by Indian origin students.

 

[karan21]

Success at the IMO is a great credential for the top world colleges. Almost all Serbian team members, end up at Harvard, Oxford, MIT...

You realize more Indians make it to Harvard and Mit that any other country in the world expect China.

 

[IsaacNewton]

What has culture got to do with math. You mean education system?

In this case I will blame heavily on media too for not publicizing this type of news where we suck. Except when they boast about silly spelling bee competitions won by Indian origin students.

Culture has a lot to do with math. Many American students are bad at math because it is "not cool" somehow. Also the way it is taught might discourage students from studying math because they think it is boring.

 

[Wagner]

Except the best mathematicians aren't necessarily the best olympiad students and vice versa. These olympiads have very specific types of problems. Being able to solve them nowhere near guarantees success in mathematics or academia in general.

There is nonetheless a strong correlation between IMO success and a successful career in mathematics:

The skill sets necessary to excel in mathematical problem solving and mathematics research are not identical. Research requires the stamina to work on problems over extended periods of time without knowing whether solutions even exist; the competi- tions discussed here require the ability to solve difficult problems known to be solvable under timed conditions. Thus, some world-class research mathematicians exist who attempted, but did not excel in the Putnam, IMO, or its qualifying examinations. Nevertheless, a high correlation exists between exceptional ability in mathematical research and problem solving since both require outstanding mathematical intuition and creativity along with the interest in devoting considerable time and effort toward acquiring extensive knowledge in the field. Numerous Putnam Fellows have gone on to receive the Fields Medal (the so-called Nobel Prize of Mathematics) or the Nobel Prize in Physics. Some who never quite achieved Fellow status have also been awarded Nobel Prizes. Eight of the eighteen Fields medalists from 1990 through 2006 were IMO gold or silver medalists in their youth, with Grigorij Perelman, who recently resolved the Poincaré Conjecture, having achieved a perfect forty-two in the 1982 IMO.

And that's without mentioning all the IMO medalists who don't win a Fields Medal, but do obtain prestigious jobs in academia, engineering, etc.

 

[M_Saint]

with our shi**y education system still we ranked 53 ? wish we had nice education system which would lead us on top

@Armstrong #75

The rate of the deterioration is alarming and one of the participants from CTG Collegiate School has revealed that it's all by his own efforts that brought him thus far. Math, physics are the purest of science and GOVT needs to provide incentives for briliant minds of those subjects.

 

[IsaacNewton]

There is nonetheless a strong correlation between IMO success and a successful career in mathematics:



And that's without mentioning all the IMO medalists who don't win a Fields Medal, but do obtain prestigious jobs in academia, engineering, etc.

Hi Wagner, are you a mathematician? You seem quite in tune with the math culture.