USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

I think the reporting from The Guardian a few days earlier,[1] mentioned in this article, provides some good perspective on the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) from across the Atlantic Ocean from this Washington Post report.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/15/us-wins-harde...

congratulation...I see a hedge fund career for many

South Korea, according to the article.

A good proportion of maths olympians go into mathematics in academia rather than into industry. Industry does need problem solvers, but maths olympians develop creativity and a sense of elegance and beauty as well. Industry requires efficient solutions to technical problems, more than elegant or beautiful ones, at least relative to what is possible with full academic freedom.

I hope not. When I did math Olympiads (including the IMO) I was presented with a false dichotomy of pure math or finance. This is really unfortunate because finance in general does not use very deep math. A tiny number of people might use SDEs but by now the techniques are standard and boring anyway. Furthermore, even mainstream economists doubt that this sort of finance has positive externalities. The amount of resources that go into finance is just way out of proportion to what seems necessary for price discovery.

In contrast, all of the science and engineering disciplines can make use of very interesting math. Not deep compared to research math, but used in a much more interesting way than in finance. E.g when you study the statistics of markets, you are just playing a game, and don't care that much about external reality per se. On the other hand if you study the statistics of DNA or gene expression, you are doing real science.

I think the best advice to a young person studying math is what was given to me at the age when I was doing the IMO (and interestingly, after I graduated by someone else): Don't neglect statistics.