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

[tranquilium]

I would like to know the last names of the people who participated from the US.

I am surprise that India did so poorly since the zero was invented in India.


Lose with class and be gracious, why be such a sore loser? If it's possible to study for these tests, Indians will study and prepare too like every other countries.

See post #2, US and Canadian teams are essentially east Asian teams.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

They're drawn from the families of recent immigrants. From a NY Times article:

Recent immigrants, hmm. So they could still have a lot of latent loyalty to their ancestral motherland then.

It could be a very welcome boost to our domestic economy if these bright students were to return home one day.

 

[tranquilium]

GRE GMAT is a joke for Mathematics. Every average Indian student can get a perfect score in math in those exams.

It is more like if you can't get a perfect math score in GRE or GMAT, you really shouldn't be in any graduate program that actual use math. Remember, GRE and GMAT's purpose is to determine if you qualify, IMO's purpose is to determine if you are the best.

I agree, the math in the general GRE test is very simple.

Try the math subject GRE. GRE Subject Tests: Mathematics

Definitely not as hard as math Olympiad but if you could score perfect on that test, then you likely know everything about undergraduate math for a math major.

I believe China did not start participating until 1982. They were quite politically isolated (no Olympics, UN, ect).

I have to disagree that scoring perfect on GRE math requires anyone to know everything about undergraduate math. I am from electric engineering and GRE math is at most as difficult as first or second year math for ECE. I would imagine that math class from math major would be harder than their engineering counterpart.

 

[terranMarine]

Recent immigrants, hmm. So they could still have a lot of latent loyalty to their ancestral motherland then.

It could be a very welcome boost to our domestic economy if these bright students were to return home one day.

I don't know about that, unless there are good opportunities they might return.

 

[IsaacNewton]

It is more like if you can't get a perfect math score in GRE or GMAT, you really shouldn't be in any graduate program that actual use math. Remember, GRE and GMAT's purpose is to determine if you qualify, IMO's purpose is to determine if you are the best.




I have to disagree that scoring perfect on GRE math requires anyone to know everything about undergraduate math. I am from electric engineering and GRE math is at most as difficult as first or second year math for ECE. I would imagine that math class from math major would be harder than their engineering counterpart.

An electric engineering student will know about 75% of the test (doesn't mean he'll score perfect on that 75%). Calculus is 50%, and linear algebra is 25%, but the other 25% are miscellaneous math topics such as group theory, topology, logic, analysis, combinatorics, topics that engineering students are most likely unfamiliar with.

 

[tranquilium]

While what you said might be true, I still think Chinese education is not as good as American and European countries. I mean I met some Chinese students here in USA and often they complain about lack of thinking process in school level.

I met some of these complainers and in my personal opinion, they are just lazy. The actual gripe they have is with the heavy course load, which is the right way to train students. Basically, what you do is to develop your analytical skills and practice them repeatedly in the heavy course load. After solving each problem, your skill becomes a bit better practiced and your analytic skill develops more. The lazier ones hate it, but they can't complain about the heavy course load because Chinese culture believes harsh training, so they settle for "thought process". It is a convenient excuse because it can't be measured and you can argue about it all day without being able to prove or disprove it.

An electric engineering student will know about 75% of the test (doesn't mean he'll score perfect on that 75%). Calculus is 50%, and linear algebra is 25%, but the other 25% are miscellaneous math topics such as group theory, topology, logic, analysis, combinatorics, topics that engineering students are most likely unfamiliar with.

Not really, we have probability and computer architecture courses, which covers all those material.

Edit: I read our later posts and yes, I was referring to the general test. The math subject test is significantly harder and do require better knowledge.

Depends, American primary and secondary education is significantly behind other countries (cite: PISA scores).

America universities are the best in the world in terms of research, papers published, ect, but that is because we imported a lot of brilliant people when the Soviet Union fell.

Right now, we are importing Chinese scientists (and Indians as well) into American universities.

From engineering perspective, the reason for US brilliance in research has a lot to do with infrastructure. Research and technological improvements are iterative processes and you improve the fastest by doing the experiments repeatedly, but you can't do high voltage experiments without having a dedicated high voltage facility and that's where infrastructure comes in. Yes, people are very important, but so are the hardware they work with. This is why Chinese research only begin to catch up in the recent year. We started to have better infrastructure and more resource, hence we becomes better at research.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Not really, we have probability and computer architecture courses, which covers all those material.

Yes, those material should be covered, but i'd imagine that it wouldn't be covered in sufficient detail. Those are semester long classes each.

Also, I think the difficulty of the test lies in your ability to retain all the information from every math class that you took.

As an engineering student, you probably know some basic complex analysis or fourier integrals, but if the test ask you to do some residue computation or solve a wave equation on the spot without the reference from any textbook or google, would you be able to do so?

 

[Jlaw]

See post #2, US and Canadian teams are essentially east Asian teams.

I know the Canadian team are essentially Chinese when I went to school in the 90s and it still is.

 

[tranquilium]

Yes, those material should be covered, but i'd imagine that it wouldn't be covered in sufficient detail. Those are semester long classes each.

Also, I think the difficulty of the test lies in your ability to retain all the information from every math class that you took.

As an engineering student, you probably know some basic complex analysis or fourier integrals, but if the test ask you to do some residue computation or solve a wave equation on the spot without the reference from any textbook or google, would you be able to do so?

While I would say personally I can do it, but I get what you are saying and I did edit my post. The easy one refers to the general test. I didn't take the math subject test because I am ECE major, but it is most definitely more difficult than the general test.

We don't really have dedicated class to some of the subjects like group theory, but we cover them continuously all the way through undergraduate study and continues to cover them in grad school if you focus on control and systems.

 

[IsaacNewton]

While I would say personally I can do it, but I get what you are saying and I did edit my post. The easy one refers to the general test. I didn't take the math subject test because I am ECE major, but it is most definitely more difficult than the general test.

We don't really have dedicated class to some of the subjects like group theory, but we cover them continuously all the way through undergraduate study and continues to cover them in grad school if you focus on control and systems.

If you are an international chinese graduate student, I wouldn't be surprised if you can do it. My chinese classmates seems to be much more knowledgeable than me when it comes to undergraduate fundamentals. They are the type that would come to campus at 8am, do research and study until 8pm, and repeat the next day, 7 days a week.

After winter/summer break, they will have plenty of results to show my adviser, really makes me look bad.

 

[cirr]

Our Indian friends always have excuses。

For anything。

 

[Lux de Veritas]

My country Singapore, is 8th and we have just 75% Chinese out of 4 million residence. Our team are all Chinese.

 

[Wagner]

Problem 3 was a bit harder than usual this year. Only 28 contestants received the full 7 points on it:

Alexander Gunning Australia

Song Yong Choe Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Ferdinand Wagner Germany

Yuji Yamamoto Japan

Justin Lim Kai Ze Malaysia

Jiyang Gao People's Republic of China
Hongming Pu People's Republic of China

Christian Omar Altamirano Modesto Peru

Dong Ryul Kim Republic of Korea
San Ha Lee Republic of Korea
Minhyuk Kim Republic of Korea

Ştefan Spătaru Romania

Maxim Didin Russian Federation
Dmitrii Krekov Russian Federation
Daniil Kliuev Russian Federation
Nikita Chernega Russian Federation

Žarko Ranđelović Serbia

Po-Sheng Wu Taiwan
Hung-Hsun Yu Taiwan
William Ting-Wei Chao Taiwan
Evan Yiting Chen Taiwan

Ahmet Yasin Alp Turkey

Yevhenii Diomidov Ukraine

James Tao United States of America
Allen Liu United States of America

Hồng Quân Trần Vietnam
Thế Hoàn Nguyễn Vietnam
Đăng Hưng Hồ Quốc Vietnam

 

[cirr]

Recent immigrants, hmm. So they could still have a lot of latent loyalty to their ancestral motherland then.

It could be a very welcome boost to our domestic economy if these bright students were to return home one day.

Not necessary becoming mathematicians of cource。

How about financial wizards，nuclear scientists、particle physicists、missile designers、submarine builders，communications experts， among others？？？

Just in response to an Indian‘s “uneasiness” about these youngsters failing to be internationally recognized mathematicians。

 

[mohsinkid]

View attachment 38455

Anyone on PDF can solve these problems?

problem 1 reminds me of calculus.. it maybe solved using limits where n->infinity as the initial and later integrating( l hopital rules) (its been 10 years studied calculus 2 by alan schowsky)