Top 10 Countries

[Yossarian]

[Yossarian]

[khuong]

The first thing I would like to say that I do not absolutely want to have have problems with all of you..Simply, IMO is a game, where high school students of all countries..the stronger you are, the better chances you have to be there in the top ten!

For Fedor Petrov, I think you are wrong! The result clearly reflected the strength of the team in each year! If you say so, how about the score you obtain during your all time study? Would you tell your teachers that you deserve to have a higher score than what you receive? I believe that you can't! ) Right?

For Valentin Vornicu, I am sorry to type large font 'cause I think you are near-sighted..I never think that this country is smarter than the other! Anyway, you do not have to teach me about this..For the internet access, let me tell you that, as far as I know when I visit Vietnam, Internet in this country is just popular in great cities like Hochiminh and HANOI. Most VIETNAMSE students winning gold medals thorughout the past 25 years are very poor..they win by their own capabilites not by any technologies or computer..believe me!

[Soarer]

what valentin means, i believe, is that in the past, students cannot access training materials freely. Maybe for teams like China, Vietnam, the leaders can give them many many problems for practice. But for other participants, say for an example, a normal Hong Kong boy cannot access many materials. For me, I can't find much problems suitable for imo level before i found kalva and mathlinks. Team leaders don't give us problems enough to brush up certain type of skills or maybe in a general sense, to get a silver/gold medal. I think that's why some other countries are weaker although the students are not really worse than those in stronger countries.

[Fedor Petrov]

[shobber]

[Valentin Vornicu]

[Soarer]

[Yossarian]

[Yossarian]

[khuong]

[Soarer]

I simply can't agree what you have said. China is such a strong team for so many years. But then, think about their training systems. They have a CMO. They then have a training camp for such a long period. They keep on doing problems during that period. Then think about Hong Kong. We only has a once-a-week futile training sessions, which keep on repeating what has been taught in the previous years. In the past we can't even conveniently access past imo questions. So how can I get good results?
Of course, talent plays an important role in the results of imo. But if a country has a good training system, it can surely fully unleash all the potential of the students there.

Concerning some points you have mentioned,
"even in Bukina Faso (Africa), as I visited there 7 years ago, you can find them in 3 book stores even though their team never participated!)"
7 years ago I cannot find any good imo-level math book in Hong Kong bookstore. The case is not as good as you expect.

"Remember again, this is a competition on how you understand and solve the problems not on 'memorizing those meterials'! There's clearly a gap between 'knowing something' and 'solving something completely'. "

What if we don't even have the chance to "memorize" it? Of course we won't try to do so, but just imagine, how can we solve a problem that can be solved by inversion if we haven't even known what inversion is?? Take me as an example. Before I come to mathlinks, I don't know what muirhead is. I don't even know what Schur is. I haven't seen any real-time application of majorization. Then how can I master those skills well?

Of course I don't have the right to intervene your affinity towards Vietnam, but I only want to tell you that not every country can have so many imo training materials early on. If a country can access many materials in early years, the students of that country can of course be more able comparing to other students. However, concerning the natural flair of students, I don't think that varies much from place to place.

[Stijn]

I also disagree with khuong.

[Valentin Vornicu]

[marko avila]

i agree with valentin and i think everyone does here. i mean come on¡¡ training is essential in terms of success in the imo. i agree in what you say about the theorems i mean students can definitely discover these theorems in order to help solve the problems at hand but i think you have to think in the time factor, students having no training could definitly solve the problems but it would take them much more time to solve it as they would to discover some tools that with training would not have to be discovered , just applied¡¡¡ and in turn would not have time to solve problems. so again you have another reason to say that your opinion is wrong

[manuel]

hmm i agreethat training materials are important (for the same reason marko said: time)
but... i mean.. if you love math, you have a sense of research, not only problem solving, but developing your own questions and developing your own method on how to attack it.. and i think SOMETIMES (in some cases) olympiads can destroy the sense of research and the sense of love to math. for example, many olympiad students have becaome so technical in solving problmes that this has corrupted their creativity and when working with a problem instead of thinking and solving the problem their own way looking for a beautiful work of art they just try 'dumbassing' or remembering old problems that look like this kind of problem. and excesive OLYMPIAD training can affect this research sense (that is what math really is... when the human mind challanges logic through original questions). so instead of looking and reading for OLYMPIAD training students justhave to look for MATH (articles, papers, results, books, inclusively olympiad books, problems) .. it doesn't matter if it is important for olympiads or not.. just look for math and produce math!
so i think that olympiads can be really harmful for the math world sometimes..
although i see olympiads as a way of strengthening you math basis in general areas, and things that u must know.. and i like olympiads a lot!!!! and i like training for olympiads too!! i love to do problems, to see results, etc... but i don't do this to do well in olympiads.. it is because i love math. i do it because of curiosity. remember that you must LOVE math more than olympiads.. and hopefully this way of thinking will make me more efficent in olympiads and in my future research... because i will never get tired..never! i will solve my olympiad problems because of my great curiosity and love for math!! not because i want to win a medal.. and i think that cursiosity and love can lead u more tu succsess than the desire to win . and i am afraid to say that many people in this site love more olympiads because of winning medals than olympiads because of math.. and this will clearly affect their future math research (if they dare to be pure mathematicians )

[Peter]

True manuel. It is indeed proven that training too much on a small area is sometimes devastating for the other areas. But I think most people are far away from 'too much'. Some may be there, but in general I think sites like this cause major improving to your math skills, also in reasearch perspectives. Afterall, you're busy with math and that also helps a lot in research.

I think however those "areas" you're talking about are defined by the field you're working in, and not by the fact that it's olympiad. When I solve analysis/matrix problems -far from olympiad stuff right?-, I encounter many 'easy/stupid/ugly' problems, which I dislike but which I can solve, and also harder problems, which I admire but cannot always solve. I mainly like the problems because they're hard, because they challenge me and - yes also - because I can solve them while most others cannot.
That is also partially what makes problems beautiful, their level. If you're challenged by , I think you have a serious problem.

If you mean by olympiad the IMO stuff, that what can be attained by just high school education, and just keep going further in that, then indeed you are right, you will reach a limit above which it doesn't help you any further. But if you mean problem solving in general I think you're wrong. Look in the college section, these are math problems that are much closer to nowadays mathematics, and who is great at them? The smart people with good education. Just like in the olympiads. If there would not have been olympiads, if there would not have been sites like this, if there would not have been IMO, etc... how much of them would have studied maths? Not me at least. Maths = boring conic intersections, that's the maths we see before we decide what to study!

[MysticTerminator]

[manuel]

you'r right peter. olympiads show people a glimpse of what real math is.. and friends that where into olympiads..
but i am a bit different because i started very interested in combinatorics and started researching in combinatorics without beggining to train in olympiad problems.. i was lucky to take some grad, courses on graph theory,, and i become like really strong in combinatorics.. but really weak in other areas like, geometry and algebra.. but .. now i've been this year traning hard and learning a lot of nice new stuff from other areas, and seeing things that are important for me to know..so i am working with every olympiad area right now to see if i can succeed in next year's imo..
but yes

[Peter]