Belgian Results

[Peter]

These were the results of our national team

BEL1 0 1 0 7 0 0 8 Honor (Maarten De Boeck)
BEL2 2 7 0 7 3 7 26 Silver (Guolong Li)
BEL3 0 1 0 0 0 7 8 Honor (Stijn Vermeeren)
BEL4 2 1 1 1 1 0 6 - (Francois Crucifix)
BEL5 3 1 1 2 0 0 7 - (David Frenay)
BEL6 2 7 6 2 0 2 19 Bronze (Francois Gonze)
TOTAL 74

This is a strange IMO. These are not common results for belgium... we have more points on 6 than on 1

[Anh khoa]

I saw this on another topic :

[Peter]

Ok, updated thank you.

[Stijn]

Hey all,

I'm back in our cosy 'Belgenlandje', with my Honorable Mention, especially honorable because I achieved it on the 6 .

Why our score on the problem 1 is low? Well, our team scores quite bad at both geometry problems. But the 1 certainly wasn't the easiest question on the exam (even the yury rated it 3rd-easy after 4 and 2). Look at China: even they have a 4 and a 0 (!) on the first problem, so don't blame us for scoring bad on this one .

Myself, I didn't have any clue on how to attack these problems. But in general, I'm much better in things like combinatorics than in geometry, and I didn't train very much on IMO-level geometry questions. That shows...
I should've been able to solve the second problem, it was very easy to do, but unfortonately, I didn't have the good point of view on it.
I had a nice strategy on the 3, a bit similar to the special price solution, but there was a big error in it, so I got 0 on that.
The 4: it was not difficult, but I didn't think of applying Fermats Little Theorem. Actually I should be a bit ashamed of that, because I wrote an 'eindwerk' (school paper) on prime numbers, which included FLT . But I just haven't applied FLT enough in olympiad problems to see the clue to the solution of the 4.
And then the six: to the horror of Bart (our leader) I wrote eleven pages, but I included a correct 7-point solution. In fact the problem wasn't that difficult. I was just looking immediately in the correct direction, the solution was a lot work, but I never lost track of it. In fact my solution can be simplified: I did it modulo 15 instead of modulo 5 . But it still is a nice solution, I'm very proud of scoring a 7 on this on . And I spoke to Arne (Smeets): he did the test himself and solved all problems BUT the 6, which makes me even prouder of it .

The rest of the team did well, and we're all happy. David didn't score as good as espected (he had bronze last year), but he doesn't seem to mind. David trained not so much this year aparently, and he just had two bad days. Francois Crucifix is a bit disappointed because he was equal with another person for the selection, only he made the team, now he's somewhat sorry for the other who didn't get selected, not scoring many points. But these are just little negative notes that are overwhelmed by our satisfaction with the result. Ok, a bit less points for Belgium than last year, but we have more points than The Netherlands, more than ('Arne's') South Africa... That Flanders beat Wallony is nice too, but doesn't matter that much.

Today on the airport in Mexico city I spoke to Ukraines Sergii Slobodianiuk. He participated (like me) for the first and only time, and he just made a perfect score . That was really like 'oh, wtf, that's really a different level!'. That just seems so inpossible to me . I'm just very happy with my mention, so I didn't come home empty handed today. The result was great, the experience probably even greater!

If you want me to tell more, just ask me things!


BTW: I was very surprised to hear FIVE people talking to me: "Hey, you're Stidgn (sic) from Mathlinks isn't it?". Wow, I'm only around here for 2 months, I've posted not even 40 messages, and people already know me! The power of MathLinks!

Another little thing: Who are you, Anh khoa?

[Anh khoa]

[Stijn]

[Anh khoa]

[FrançoisG]

Yes, i think if you work a lot, you have a good chance to be selected in two years

[Stijn]

Hi François, welcome to the forum and congratz again with your bronze!

[Arne]

Wow, I am impressed by the number of Belgians flooding Mathlinks I remember being one of the first Mathlinks users and the only Belgian on the forum!

Congratulations Francois, especially with Q3, well done.

I am definitely going to try to take Guolong to a gold medal. I am thinking about increasing the amount of training/coaching I have been giving him, don't know how yet, but he doesn't live that far from me... He has got two more years and I am going to do everything I can!

Glad to hear that there are some very good people coming from the French-speaking sides. On the Dutch speaking side we also have some VERY young people doing well. I hope we can get at least two silver medals next year (Guolong and Francois). We'll see, I hope I will be involved with the trainings.

[Peter]

[Stijn]

I don't really know any JWO participants well, but at least Bert (JWO first prize, also at stage) should be able to do some nice things in de next years.

Goulong himself is so confident (you may as wel say arrogant) to EXPECT a gold medal next year ("otherwise I would note have improved and that would be bad"). He thinks he is capable of everything and sets very high targets, but the point is: he just achieves these targets anyway! He was saying he wanted to score more than 50% (his classmate were laughing at him because he "failed" (-50%) at the physics olympiad), but he just DID it.
And this anekdote about Guolong: he had a solution for problem 1, and after the second test Bart already told him he would get a 7 for that. But Guolong repied: "No, can't be, the solutions is wrong." Coordination: 0. Guolong was right, apparently it was a solution many people had, but there was a problem with it only being valid for all angles of the hexagon > 90° of something like that. He noticed it, Bart not. Can you imagine!
He was also the first to point out my error in my problem 3-solution.
He tends a bit to behave like a child sometimes, but he's a math genius, who will score gold at least in two years.

Oh, BTW, Francois: Arne is good enough to be his own personal coach!

And Arne, are you back in Belgium now?

[Stijn]

Oh yes, another anekdote about Goulong: Goulong was so much paying attention at the medal ceremony, he didn't even notice his own name was called. Francois had to hurry him to the podium!

And another astonishing anekdote: Maarten got a Gold Medal! In fact: he both got a Honorable Mention AND a Gold Medal. At least, that was mentioned on one of the diploms! He just honorfully distroyed the Gold Medal diplom, but there should be a picture of it.

[FrançoisG]

I think that Guolong was really nervous, and that's why he didn't hear his own name , but it's sure he's someone special .

[Anh khoa]

[Arne]

Well, Guolong is definitely brilliant but I think he doesn't always have the necessary technical knowledge in for example geometry and inequality problems. I don't always have the flashes of inspiration he has but I believe I have a very deep knowledge of geometry, inequalities and so on which he doesn't have. I hope I can work on that with him, because IMO is not only about brilliant ideas but also about mathematical background and knowledge. I guess that is why I didn't get gold last year and why he didn't get gold this year... But I am sure I can teach him a lot and I'll do everything I can. It will be a lot of hard work though. I gained a lot of coaching experience by training the South African IMO team for three weeks (setting and marking tests, lecturing (mainly geometry), ...) and of course I have some correspondence training with some Belgian students as well.

And there are a few very young promising mathematicians in Flanders indeed - I am talking about Bert and Alexander Lemmens, for example (they are brothers). I remember the 2004 prizegiving: Bert was in grade 7 and Alexander in grade 8 (or the other way around) and they both did very well in the competition for grades 9 and 10.

I have a few ideas about detecting mathematical talent in Belgium at an early stage and training people (and so does Stijn). We didn't start our project yet but we will see how it goes.

No, I am not back in Belgium yet, I am flying tonight.

[Quick]

OK, since 2005 is some kind of Einstein's year, let's relativize a few things...

[Stijn]

It's well-known that Guolong hardly writes anything down .

But, Quick, who are you actually, you seem to be even better up to date than me.

[Arne]

I guess you are our deputy leader Philippe?