Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

palladiummag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 251 posts

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#91

Post by lo_zamoyski »

Epa095 wrote: post #83
xyzzy123 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if national averages actually matter very much beyond being a vanity statistic? While it's good to have a generally more mathematically capable population, you would expect most actual "progress" (papers, discoveries, things built) to be made by the outliers. I guess there's another layer tho in 2025 where, assuming they are rational, you wouldn't necessarily expect their efforts to benefit Romania.

In a global economy I think a good national average is more important than the peaks. The genius invention will spread, and there is significant value in having a population which can utilise it. As another example, if cancer is cured tomorrow it won't necessarily be the country which found the cure which will be cancer free first, but the one with the most competent doctors, able to use and apply the cure.

I would first caution against reducing education to the practical and the economic. Education is much more, and much more important, that just that.

Second, I would caution against the trope that invention is some exclusive province of the "genius".

That out of the way, we can look to network effects. Consider that a populace with high literacy will permit more of the kind of collaboration that has literacy as a prerequisite, while one with low literacy and a few outliers won't. The outliers are constrained in how much they can collaborate, and collaboration is essential to scientific and economic development.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#92

Post by cyberax »

devmor wrote: post #24
cyberax wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a BS saying because it's so easy to find counterexamples. Let's try to use the number of child deaths, for example. By your saying, trying to do that is bad. Because governments probably will somehow resurrect dead children to look good at this metric. Right?

No, but it is easy to see how reporting the death of children could be withheld - say for instance, if this metric had penalties associated with it.

Then it becomes a different metric.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#93

Post by mittensc »

ddalex wrote: post #82
svat wrote: post #59

A fun fact surprisingly not mentioned in the article, and which I thought would be topical at this time, is that the Romanians apparently love their math olympiads so much that they recently elected as their president an International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) medalist. The current president Nicușor Dan had perfect scores at the IMO both times he participated (one of only 12 students so far with a perfect score in…

Sure, but that's not why he was elected president. Well, not directly. His Olympiad results led to him getting a doctorate at Sorbonne, which led to him speaking french, which led to impressing Macron who threw France's weight into supporting Dan. It was a power move to replace the German influence with French influence (previous praesident was ethnic German)

That's a really naive and wrong take.

He is popular, he was elected mayor of Bucharest.

He led a lot of anti corruption efforts for a very long time. (founded USB/USR)

He is smart (as you noted by olympiad, speaking multiple foreign languages)

He is religious as well (pretty important aparently)

All his opponents were much less competent.

A PSD candidate will never be president in a two term election unless the counter candidate is worse (because of iliescu and corruptiob)

The AUR candidate really is a russian puppet and not that smart either, he's mostly there for the 30% vote extremists always get and which were taken by georgescu first time. It's a shame he got far and shows how much influence external actors can have over facebook/tiktok etc.

The USR candidate that managed to squeeze through first time has no charisma and was a backup since Nicusor refused the first time...

So what else is left?

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#94

Post by nottorp »

zerr wrote: post #87

I believe the original intent of such Olympiads was to test how pupils equipped with only standard school education would tackle non-standard puzzles. Eventually this turned into pupils attending special schools, having coaches, doing such non-standrdad puzzles all day long during their studies in order to win medals. A leetcode grind all the way down.

Just like the physical Olympiads :)

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#95

Post by a0-prw »

pillefitz wrote: post #88
PunchTornado wrote: post #81

The author is Jordan Lasker (also known by internet handle Crémieux). Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics. On X and Substack, Lasker is known for compiling charts on what he calls the "Black-White IQ gap"

Are his arguments sound, though?

In the middle ages, theologians had sound arguments for how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#96

Post by somenameforme »

laserbeam wrote: post #68

As a Romanian who has been very involved in Olympiads as a kid, I can tell that most of this is accurate. I’ve also lived in Denmark at university for several years and can contrast educational systems from first hand experience. The sorting the author describes absolutely DOES happen in Romania. Exactly as he describes it, “getting into a good school” is incredibly important for students and parents here. I’d also l…

The practical issue which so many people don't seem to want to acknowledge is that students are different. I have taught and there are some students that simply lack either the intelligence, discipline, interest, or some other aspect that makes it literally impossible for them to ever receive anything beyond a basic education. You could give them 10 on 1 specialized instruction from the the most competent/interesting/engaging teachers and tutors imaginable, and they're still just not going to excel.

And then on the other end of the spectrum there are kids who will proactively read, on their own, through e.g. their math textbook, understand everything with no difficulty, and basically get nothing academic out of their education (beyond that which they'd get from simply having the books) unless one engages in extreme 'differentiation' which is an educational buzzword that is basically just glorified in-class 'filtering' that imposes a massive workload on teachers, creates inequity within the classroom itself, and is really just quite dysfunctional.

And so the typical results of trying to give an advanced education to everyone is that you end up pulling the top down, rather than lifting the bottom up. This is even more true because the bottom is also often disproportionately filled with students who have extreme behavioral problems often alongside families who just don't particularly care about their education, while the top is rarely disruptive except for the smart-ass type who's generally just trying to get some giggles rather than being actively hostile.

---

I think seeing things as a teacher makes you view things radically different than you do as a student. You're probably one of those overachiever types given your comment, and perhaps you feel that you worked a bit harder, maybe were a bit interested in the material then your peers or whatever. But I can assure you - that's generally not it. There are kids that try hard, even some that get things like multiple in-home tutors, and they still just can't excel no matter how hard their parents, or they, try.

---

Edit: Just found this [1] interesting Wiki page. You can see the list of countries, by gold medals in the last 10 Olympiads. In order of medals: USA, South Korea, Thailand, Russia, Vietnam, UK, Iran, Canada, Singapore, China.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_medal_cou...

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#97

Post by ido »

koolba wrote: post #47
ecshafer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with you. Children are adaptable and will rise to the challenge. The west too often prefers to think children are capable of nothing, and have them wallow in an intellectual void.

It’s not just intellectual challenge that parents are unwilling to entertain. It’s part of a wider problem of avoiding any and all confrontation. The moment a child shows any disinterest, the activity is shut down. It’s why you have a generation of kids that only eat chicken fingers and french fries. The average parent is unwilling to even teach their children to eat and enjoy actual food. Why bother when you can jus…

> It’s why you have a generation of kids that only eat chicken fingers and french fries.

I’m 42 years old and something like this was already said about kids when I was a child (I suspect it was like that before my time as well). Children’s palate develops with age and so does their taste.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#98

Post by oytis »

cinntaile wrote: post #74
ecshafer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with you. Children are adaptable and will rise to the challenge. The west too often prefers to think children are capable of nothing, and have them wallow in an intellectual void.

While I think the west is a huge generalization, I don't think the west thinks children are capable of nothing. It's more about letting children be children and play. Rather than forcing them to "work" almost constantly from a very young age. I don't really envy the school systems that force kids to work very hard from an early age to get into a fancy university. From what I understand it's usually school systems wit…

Having been through a post-Soviet school system, it's not about rote memorization, at least not in maths. The point is spending as much time with a problem as necessarily, without having a predefined algorithm, until it cracks. It's such a useful skill and satisfying experience that I feel sad that some children are denied it for the sake of psychological comfort.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#99

Post by trallnag »

Kudos wrote: post #72
generationP wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NB: None of what you are saying is confirmed by the WP page you are citing.

None? > Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics.

So talking about eugenics in a positive way equals racist commentary?

I have a genetic mutation (de novo) that leads to a disability and that I don't want to pass on. Natural approach: Die, due to the lack of therapeutic modalities. No chance of offspring. With the help of medicine, I am alive. Now, to prevent passing on mutated genes but still have children, I could use something like IVF and reproductive genetics. This is textbook eugenics(?)

Obviously I disapprove of the stereotypical eugenics of the century. Ranging from Germans murdering disabled children to Danes forcing Greenland women on birth control.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#100

Post by roncesvalles »

pillefitz wrote: post #88
PunchTornado wrote: post #81

The author is Jordan Lasker (also known by internet handle Crémieux). Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics. On X and Substack, Lasker is known for compiling charts on what he calls the "Black-White IQ gap"

Are his arguments sound, though?

The problem with all IQ and race correlations is that you can never actually remove the effects of prenatal and childhood nutrition, socioeconomic differences, quality of education etc. Indeed, if you stabilize them, the differences go away. And that's still saying nothing of the culture-neutrality of IQ tests themselves.
Post reply on HN