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Math

US Wins Math Olympiad For First Time In 21 Years (npr.org) 60

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The United States has claimed victory at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Chiang Mai, Thailand, marking its first win in over two decades. The competition, which pitted top-ranked high school math students from more than 100 countries against each other, saw the U.S. team emerge triumphant after two days of intense problem-solving. NPR adds: The U.S. team last won the Olympiad in 1994. Reports in recent years have raised concerns that American math students are falling behind those in the rest of the world. But, Po-Shen Loh, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and head coach for Team USA, says, "At least in this case with the Olympiads, we've been able to prove that our top Americans are certainly at the level of the top people from the other countries."
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US Wins Math Olympiad For First Time In 21 Years More

US Wins Math Olympiad For First Time In 21 Years

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  • haha "americans"? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by groobly ( 6155920 )

    Haha. I'll betchya dollars to donuts that most of the winners are children of Chinese or Indian immigrants.

    • Genius, if you had bothered to click you'd see the faces and names. 4 of the 6 are looking pretty damned white.

      How many dollars do you owe me now? 12?

      • Genius, if you had bothered to click you'd see the faces and names. 4 of the 6 are looking pretty damned white.

        How many dollars do you owe me now? 12?

        This is what we get when the hatred of Americans and so called "white" people is so ingrained.

        OP is doing a slow boil because he's quite racist in addition to being anti-American.

        Despite the popular narrative, Americans are not stupid racists - our critics are quite often, however. And this winning really pisses them off.

        • This is what we get when the hatred of Americans and so called "white" people is so ingrained.

          Oh blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There is no "ingrained hatred of white people. That's just playing a non-existent victim.

          The OP made an educated guess since both asian and indian people do occupy large portions of such competitions.

          All you did was show white people are the biggest whiners around. There. There's your "hatred".

          • Re:haha "americans"? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by cmseagle ( 1195671 ) on Monday July 22, 2024 @11:40AM (#64646212)

            The OP made an educated guess since both asian and indian people do occupy large portions of such competitions.

            Making an "educated guess" about an individual that presumes that people of certain racial backgrounds have certain characteristics is also known as "racism".

            • The OP made an educated guess since both asian and indian people do occupy large portions of such competitions.

              Making an "educated guess" about an individual that presumes that people of certain racial backgrounds have certain characteristics is also known as "racism".

              Amazing that he went so far out of the way to support racism and show his personal racism in such an example that is proven wrong.

              As I've noted so many times, race is a social construct, one that classifies people by the color of their skin and where they come from. Then classes them as "the other".

              Note his use of race to attack what he consider's "White people": "All you did was show white people are the biggest whiners around. There. There's your "hatred"

              I hate very few people - and no people by

          • This is what we get when the hatred of Americans and so called "white" people is so ingrained.

            Oh blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There is no "ingrained hatred of white people. That's just playing a non-existent victim.

            Make no mistake about it my racist person - I'm not a victim and never will be.

            And you think that your blah blahs negate this? Your intellect is that of a 3rd grade playgound bully.

            The OP made an educated guess since both asian and indian people do occupy large portions of such competitions.

            SO laziness and prejudice are being supported by you.

            All you did was show white people are the biggest whiners around. There. There's your "hatred".

            Frankly, and demostrably, race is the ultimate social construct, We are humans, and we can all reproduce with each other. We are no more different races than white or black horses are different races. When speciation happens, I'll admit there are different races.

            This is not to say that there aren't a lot of racists in the wo

      • Genius, if you had bothered to click you'd see the faces and names. 4 of the 6 are looking pretty damned white.

        How many dollars do you owe me now? 12?

        The members of the winning squad are Shyam Narayanan, David Stoner, Michael Kural, Ryan Alweiss, Yang Liu, and Allen Liu. So, one Indian name and two Chinese names.

        • Oops, those names are from previous years. Serves me right for trusting the original post and its links.

        • Re:haha "americans"? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by xwin ( 848234 ) on Monday July 22, 2024 @03:23PM (#64647098)
          Even if these are names from before, the situation hardly improved. The 2024 USA IMO Team members are:
          - Jordan Lefkowitz, 17 (Connecticut)
          - Krishna Pothapragada, 18 (Illinois)
          - Jessica Wan, 18 (Florida)
          - Alexander Wang, 16 (New Jersey)
          - Qiao (Tiger) Zhang, 16 (California)
          - Linus Tang, 18 (California)

          Jordan Lefkowitz is the only one that can be considered "white". The other are Indian and other Asian descent. Let's face it, Americans hate math and science. Even capable kids refuse to go into the field. They prefer business, marketing and other "soft" subjects when going to college. I know this from first hand experience.
          • It's not racist to mention that other cultures value learning maths. If Indian parents made their kids learn baseball from birth and spent hours a week tutoring them, you'd expect to see more Indian athletes. Why do people ignore the obvious?

            • There are some Indian parents that put their kids into cricket, soccer and baseball, but for the more spectacular sports, there is the issue of physical size and strength. Most of Asia has been very poor for very long while America/Europe has been very rich for very long, people from those countries have simply evolved to be/remain smaller in stature over the past 1000 years regardless of their current wealth to conserve energy and food. This was once the case in Europe too, in the Middle Ages, the average

    • In other words, Americans.

    • Re:haha "americans"? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Monday July 22, 2024 @10:50AM (#64645982)

      Haha. I'll betchya dollars to donuts that most of the winners are children of Chinese or Indian immigrants.

      You could always click on the link, to see if your claim is correct.

      4 were what people could call "white", a "black" guy, an indeterminate guy, and a guy of likely Indian or Pakistani heritage.

      So looks like your claim is busted.

    • So immigrants aren't Americans now? Can you explain for the class your definition of what makes someone an "American"? Bonus points if you can do it without sounding like more of a racist than you already have.

      • 'So immigrants aren't Americans now?'

        Aren't ALL Americans immigrants, besides Amerindians, which just came a bit earlier?

        • On another site an interaction between an ethnic Italian and Chinese guy is described. Italian guy calls the Chinese âoeimmigrantâ. Chinese guy: My ancestors built American railway lines in 1860. Your ancestors came 50 years later.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xwin ( 848234 )
        The point is not that these kids are not American. The point is that the parents of these kids are likely to be first generation immigrants and brought their respect for science with them. The children of these children will likely grow up with American disdain for science so the winning streak is likely to end.
        Math and science education is abysmal in US public schools and is not getting better. Instead we are lowering standards.
        • Maths Olympiad doesnâ(TM)t require an overall good education system, it requires that the very few extremely talented kids get good support. Supporting maybe the top 100 is enough.

          Now what you _do_ need is that the normal school system recognises these kids and at least notifies someone so they can get more support.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Wolfier ( 94144 )
      Are you looking for people acting similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org] ? They look legit immigrants (I.e. true Americans) to me.
    • If it's a white math champ, you'll praise him as both talented and hardworking. If he's a descendant of Asians, you'll only mention talent. If he's a black kid, you'll say some unhinged bullshit about DEI or wokeism or affirmative action.

      And if someone has Asian features, you'll probably just assume they're an immigrant or an immediate descendant of one, even if their ancestors came here before yours.

      One thing's for sure: People like you will never be competitive in anything but embarrassing your fa
  • 1994 to 2024 isn't "21 years".
  • America is just fine in its top-most anything. The issue is what the average person or one in mixed circumstances can expect. What kind of math education does a C student in a typical school receive from a typical teacher? What kind of support does a straight-A student get in a bad school? How well do supposedly "good" schools support their "bad" students? That's the strength of a nation's academic skills, not weirdo geniuses.

  • Why the article points to a 2015 article? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lobotomy656 ( 7554372 ) on Monday July 22, 2024 @11:06AM (#64646058)
    Is it me or is something wrong here?

    • No, it's not just you. That's why the win was said to be 21 years after 1994. Were the article from this year, we'd have expected it to say 30 years instead.

      I know Slashdot is always a bit behind the latest, which is fine, but posting articles nearly a decade later is stretching the definition of "news".

    • Probably the scraper bot got a link from somewhere and whoever decided to post it as news never bothered to read the article or check the date... or maybe some new AI something was used and it hallucinated and pointed to a 10 year old article.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      what, you think there's a tine limits on dupes around here?

      why, there could be *dozens* by now!

    • You are completely correct, but I checked the results from 2024 [imo-official.org] and it was won by USA. Best result since 2019, in which USA shared the first place with China.

  • USA won this year too (Score:4, Informative)

    by rbet ( 5159081 ) on Monday July 22, 2024 @11:25AM (#64646138)
    The article linked is from 2015 but team USA won this year as well. https://maa.org/news/usa-first... [maa.org]

  • The 2024 team won too (Score:3)

    by Da_Big_G ( 3880 ) on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:13PM (#64646356)

    Here's the link to the 2024 win: https://maa.org/news/usa-first [maa.org]... [maa.org]

    tfa is to the 2015 win.

    • Also the official scoreboard https://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2024

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cyberax ( 705495 )
      Almost all of the contenders are likely children of immigrants.

      This is exactly what the US is supposed to be about. Get the brightest and the most driven people.

  • This happened in 2015.

    What is going on?

  • "Math is a cross between art and law. Law is about the reasoning and proving. And the art is because what we're trying to prove are statements that are somehow elegant," he says. "That's where the artist decides what is art."

    Thus sayeth Head coach Po-Shen Loh

    WTF? Law makes up the rules as it goes along. Art? No rules.

  • China didn't do their best this year (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's not so much US winning as China not doing their best. If you look at historical results there are years (like 2022) where China team scores maximum possible points, i.e. all 6 persons on the team score maximum points on all 6 problems.
    This year they were not so good.

    US is just doing the same as always. US only beat China by 2 points.

  • Seems there's a large disparity in the results for advanced math based on the student's race. The solution? Eliminate advanced math.

    I wish I was joking.

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