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USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

washingtonpost.com

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Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#71

Post by bnegreve »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #28
nemoniac wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations to Ukraine and Bosnia-Herzegovina for being the only countries to send gender-balanced teams of three boys and three girls.

I assume most countries picked the best candidates for their teams, as mathematical aptitude is relatively easy to quantify. If it wasn't the competition would have no meaning. Congratulating Ukraine and Bosnia for this like it's some heroic sacrifice is odd. These girls were the best choice for their teams so they were picked. I don't see much more to it than that.

> I assume most countries picked the best candidates for their teams

The fact that there are statistically significantly more men among the best candidates is already enough to conclude that there was a gender bias. The bias can be in the education or in the selection process, etc.

The fact that Ukraine and Bosnia-Herzegovina have gender balanced teams mean that they have managed to avoid this bias, one way or another but not necessarily though positive discrimination, maybe they simply a more balanced education, maybe they have a more extensive selection process where they retrain the students from scratch before selection etc. Eitheir way, they deserve some credit for that.

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#72

Post by netvarun »

archlight wrote: post #19
nopinsight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore at the 10th with fewer than 6 million people is also quite noteworthy. I wonder how much it has to do with importing talents or talented families from abroad, and how much from training starting at a young age. (I know that Thailand does have a series of math competition for kids starting at grade 3. This was started less than 20 years ago, which helps explain its much improved IMO performance over the last…

Singapore set up NUS high school a couple of years ago to nurture development of students talented in maths and science. I remember a ex IMO coach from was hired from China to prepare for the competition. it is not surprising it stands at tenth place if you have long term plan for it. btw 6 mio people are total population out of which only 3mio are singaporean. but if you are really talented and wealthy, you can quic…

Thanks for posting this. I've always wondered how come we "suddenly" started performing really well in the IMOs.

Considering the fact that until 2011, we had only won ONE gold medal and rarely featured in the top 30.

But from 2011 onwards, have won 10 gold medals and have started to consistently appear in the top 10.

Background: Singaporean who once aspired into getting into the IMO team [this was circa <=2004]. But ended up with a crappy silver medal in the informatics olympiad. Now a washed up, recovering Perl hacker.

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#73

Post by afarrell »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #28
nemoniac wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations to Ukraine and Bosnia-Herzegovina for being the only countries to send gender-balanced teams of three boys and three girls.

I assume most countries picked the best candidates for their teams, as mathematical aptitude is relatively easy to quantify. If it wasn't the competition would have no meaning. Congratulating Ukraine and Bosnia for this like it's some heroic sacrifice is odd. These girls were the best choice for their teams so they were picked. I don't see much more to it than that.

I would congratulate Ukraine and Boznia-Hertzegovina for creating the educational system in which talented girls flourished at the same level as talented boys and so which it came time to pick the the competitors, it was statistically likely that they'd end up with a gender-balanced team.

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#74

Post by wbhart »

madez wrote: post #45
wbhart wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a minor nitpick, some mathematicians see elegance in efficient solutions. It's interesting to get your head around a specific problem and come up with the solution that is optimal regarding some given metric. However, I agree that industry and mathematics are not best friends. That's because mathematicians righteously demand and require a level of freedom and support the industry is not always willing to give beca…

Just to clarify, I meant efficient from the perspective of business, not efficient from the perspective of mathematics. In industry, often a solution which "works", but is neither mathematically "efficient" or "elegant" is "good enough". By and large, industry is trying to generate revenue, not scientific knowledge.

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#75

Post by jcrites »

wbhart wrote: post #8
helmett wrote: post #4

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

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.

In software engineering, elegance is prized and is often related to efficiency in several layers.

At the human layer, one expression of this idea is the principle of least astonishment: "People are part of the system. The design should match the user's experience, expectations, and mental models." (Wikipedia). A system involving people is not efficient if the people are often surprised by its design, implementation, or behavior.

Efficient software solutions also tend to involve elegance. Take Git for example as an improvement over other source control systems. The conceptual primitives that Git is built upon are elegant and recognizing them as the correct basis for source control (along with a strong implementation) resulted in Git's efficiency and power.

Granted, software is different from mathematics, but I find the parallel interesting. I suspect that a mathematician's desire to find an elegant formulation, and appreciation of it, is very similar to the software engineer's.

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#76

Post by gech »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #23
ratsmack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that it would be good if the ones sent were based on a gender balance rather than being chosen on their math ability?

It might be. What if there's a psychological barrier in place in a given society where a given group of people are repeatedly told either directly or implicitly through societal conventions inherited from previous centuries that they don't have the gift for science or maths in particular. In such a context, it would actually be beneficial to send "balanced teams" to such competitions so that it gives a mental boost (…

What if they do worse than the man on the whole in some or many instances? What happens to the image you were trying to create then?

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#78

Post by nopinsight »

archlight wrote: post #19
nopinsight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore at the 10th with fewer than 6 million people is also quite noteworthy. I wonder how much it has to do with importing talents or talented families from abroad, and how much from training starting at a young age. (I know that Thailand does have a series of math competition for kids starting at grade 3. This was started less than 20 years ago, which helps explain its much improved IMO performance over the last…

Singapore set up NUS high school a couple of years ago to nurture development of students talented in maths and science. I remember a ex IMO coach from was hired from China to prepare for the competition. it is not surprising it stands at tenth place if you have long term plan for it. btw 6 mio people are total population out of which only 3mio are singaporean. but if you are really talented and wealthy, you can quic…

Thanks for your reply. From my experience teaching math to gifted students, it takes a lot longer than a couple of years to develop talents at this level though. Starting young (by elementary school) seems to be a requirement.

Perhaps there might have been special tracks and/or competitions to help nurture these kids and their peers for quite a while before the NUS high school was set up?

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#79

Post by Thriptic »

nemoniac wrote: post #14
enimodas wrote: post #9

I looked a bit at the gender distribution for the gold and silver medalists, I would guess only 1 in 10-20 is a girl, most seemed to be from the eastern bloc countries.

Congratulations to Ukraine and Bosnia-Herzegovina for being the only countries to send gender-balanced teams of three boys and three girls.

I can't think of a worse message to send to potential female competitors than "you're only on this team because we needed some women for appearances".

Re: USA tops International Math Olympiad for first time in 21 years

#80

Post by [deleted] »

jazzyk wrote: post #67
DanBC wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pointlessly baity answer and deserves downvoting.

Respectfully disagree. He ridicules the simplistic solutions proposed to certain issues (lack of women in a math competition in this case). In my opinion, it adds a valid (and funny) point - you may agree or disagree with him, but it is not a reason to downvote. Sarcastic - yes, ad hominem - no.

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