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Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

palladiummag.com

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Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#51

Post by chatmasta »

patel011393 wrote: post #30

I would like to point out for context that the author, Jordan Lasker, is a eugenist derided for shoddy science, falsely using university affiliations, and racist commentary. I do not write this to contradict particular claims in the article above, but @cremieux should be read cautiously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Lasker

He should also be derided for terrible writing. It's not until the 24th paragraph (of 30 total) that we encounter something resembling a thesis.

> With all the pieces on the board, the key to Romania’s Olympiad success is three-fold: put the best students in the same classrooms, put the best teachers with the best students, and then incentivize schools, teachers, and students each to win Olympiads.

This could have been much shorter, but then the reader might notice the abject lack of supporting evidence for these central claims. I don't blame the author for burying them at the end.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#52

Post by constantinum »

TL;DR

"With all the pieces on the board, the key to Romania’s Olympiad success is three-fold: put the best students in the same classrooms, put the best teachers with the best students, and then incentivize schools, teachers, and students each to win Olympiads."

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#53

Post by chatmasta »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #45

Author aside I thought this was a very interesting answer to a question I didn't know I had. I had been thinking that sending my children to a school with high achievers could leave her at a relative disadvantage but this data would seem to say otherwise. I wonder if this conflicts with Malcolm Gladwell's observations on one's relative ranking when it comes to college matriculation (that its more important to be at a…

What is the answer that you found? All I see is a marginally defensible claim in the 24th paragraph. I stopped reading after that, although there were only a few paragraphs left.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#54

Post by chatmasta »

kazinator wrote: post #16

The education system is stratified, keeping high-achieving students together, promoting them to schools with good teachers, etc. OK, so then why don't the situations given in the elaborate description then show up in the statistics, like the "fat right tail" that isn't there? It's because the students sent to olympiads are statistical outliers, too few in number to skew statistics. The system acts to identify and fos…

Idiot author aside, even if the students were outliers being sent to the Olympiad, that would not explain the consistent performance over decades. Relative to the size of the country, and compared to the other dominant nations, the outliers seem disproportionate.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#55

Post by f33d5173 »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #4

This is a very interesting topic and the article seems quite thorough. But I have trouble interpreting the crucial "School and track sorting can bolster or bust academic achievement" plots: The y axis is labelled "Graduation score percentile", but it has negative numbers on the scale. How are these values being corrected? The series for 1-school towns on the left plot is basically flat; am I supposed to believe that,…

It says "effect" of school sorting. So the "graduation score percentile" must be the change in percentile due to school sorting.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#56

Post by chatmasta »

patel011393 wrote: post #29
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.

Yes, a numerate population as assessed by national averages matters. A more numerate population reasons better about economic policies and may vote more wisely. Numeracy is closely tied to the ability to work in a variety of occupations. If we consider probability and statistics, the implications are especially salient.

A numerate and literate population matters for many reasons, but in theory it’s possible to field a strong team for the Olympiad despite an abysmal national average literacy level. Just look at North Korea for example. They’ve got a “fat right tail” of sophisticated hackers but on average their literacy is terrible.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#57

Post by avs733 »

_alternator_ wrote: post #50
avs733 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet another possibility is that Romania has an undersampled ethnic group that overperforms, but whose schools aren’t tested very well. The only group this might be is Romanian Jews and using them as an explanation is problematic for two reasons. The first is that there are too few to realistically explain Romanian Olympiad performance. The second is that we know the identities of Olympiad participants from Romania,…

The general vibe of this magazine: support mainstreaming of eugenics ideas (and now eigenicists), the ubermensch / great man theory of history, and other ideas that we’ve largely shied away from for the last 75 years.

And cloak it in layers of language so that a quick read doesn’t catch it. It’s like human prompt poisoning.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#58

Post by matesz »

scotty79 wrote: post #43

I think Poland is in very similar spot, often punching above its weight in software and math. My own amateur explanation is that Polish language is pretty complex and very particular about correct words and word forms. So Polish kids get a good training in keeping track of details of notations just by learning their native language.

And then there is China - remember that IOI for instance accepts 4 people from each country.

After all it all comes down to individuals. In Poland, there is famous informatics high school teacher who is credited for producing most IOI/IOM medalist per high school pupil in the world I believe.

They have special training program there. Another thing is to actually find geniuses, obviously. And if you don’t believe in geniuses, meet Jake - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OR36jrx_L44

For example, Jakub Pachocki (director of engineering of OpenAI) who graduated this high school, actually was on the verge of getting F from maths in his previous high school, because of problems being to easy I believe. Then they made the transfer where he could finally thrive. Interestingly, he wanted to do phd in 2 years in University of Warsaw, but people there didn’t want to allow it just because so they lost him - he went to do his PhD at Carnegie Mellon.

To summarise, from what I understand formula would be something like genius + great, inspiring and allowing teacher(s) + special personalised teaching programs + supportive environment.

Also don’t assume that these outliers are testament to the level of education of general population.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#59

Post by svat »

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 each of their ≥2 participations [1]). In fact at IMO 1988 he was one of only 11 students who solved the famous/notorious “Vieta jumping” problem [2], which eluded even Terence Tao (who, to be fair, was participating at only 13 years old!).

The Wikipedia section of “Notable [IMO] participants” has three sections: “Mathematicians”, “Computer scientists”, and “Other”, with Dan being the sole entry in the last one. :) [3]

[1]: http://imo-official.org/hall.aspx?column=perfectscores&order...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vieta_jumping&old...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Internati...

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#60

Post by jmspring »

alephnerd wrote: post #37
jmspring wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a lot to read. I’m no longer in my 40s. Grade school - in San Jose - gifted and talented classes were classes at the school not a separate school. Sadly education has evolved where schools teach to the norm rather than acknowledging people have different strengths and weaknesses. It does not require separate schools, it needs funding and more importantly, someone good at math needs to be able to work with oth…

I agree with you! Give students the ability to test out of classes and/or dual enroll in community colleges, BUT make sure they are all still in the same school meeting and greeting and bumping into each other. Dumbing down curricula is a bad move, and preventing students from being able to test out or take classes earlier is also a bad move. But segregating students into different schools based on academic ability i…

The funny thing, I went to five schools, 3 different districts across Bay Area cities. All had accommodations for different levels. High school, I ended up at UCSC my freshman year with enough credits from transfer in (from high school school) and my first quarter as a junior. Most were community college courses friends and I were interested in separate from school.

My step daughter, I hear her curriculum and shake my head (my BS was in computer engineering and computational chemistry), I could not help with the bs “common core” forced on her.

Thankfully she settled into the ability to have college courses in her last year.

It’s ridiculous how much of a push there is “standardizing” the skills of individuals. When their strengths should be encouraged.

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