IMO 2010 results (North-Korea disqualified?)

On July 13 2010 21:25 ooni wrote:
I liked to call Team USA, Team Asia. Click the team members to see why.

On July 13 2010 21:25 ooni wrote:
I liked to call Team USA, Team Asia. Click the team members to see why.

On July 13 2010 21:27 jello_biafra wrote:

Same goes for the Australian team though

On July 13 2010 21:31 Onlinejaguar wrote:
So basically any country that is a multicultural society has asian's in this competition.

On July 13 2010 21:43 DragonDefonce wrote:
I wonder how smart North Korean kids are. Then again, they are probably being taught by Kim Jungil through an invisible cellphone so they must be geniuses.

On July 13 2010 21:38 samachking wrote:
Hahahahaha

How the hell did Kuwait get only 2? Incredible.

China is so good. Too bad all of those who competed are going to be shipped to the US anyways.

On July 13 2010 21:25 ooni wrote:
Didn't know Kazakhstan were good at math. O__O Oh Borat how you ruined my view of the world.

On July 13 2010 21:28 ooni wrote:

Forgot New Zealand

OMG
http://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=18700
So proud to live in an island called Australia right now. So proud, no joke.

On July 13 2010 22:04 moon` wrote:
Wow.. there's a competition for this?!

Props to math nerds! :p Btw, how did the North Koreans cheat? Like, with formulas tucked under their pants or something?

On July 13 2010 22:32 Malgrif wrote:
I read the first 5 words of a questions and i knew, without a doubt, that i'll never be able to solve one of these questions. makes me sad =(

On July 13 2010 21:25 ooni wrote:
I liked to call Team USA, Team Asia. Click the team members to see why.
.

On July 13 2010 22:07 Jibba wrote:

Kazakh students:


I actually didn't realize it either, until I saw a BBC International report on the TV and they all looked East Asian. :O

North Korea was disqualified for cheating at the 32nd IMO in 1991 for the first time in the history of IMO.

On July 14 2010 00:05 BlackJack wrote:


Lol I recognize a name on that team

Apparently he is good at spelling too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRZNQ06kWyc

On July 14 2010 04:28 Klockan3 wrote:
I love the fact that Korea all scored 0 on problem 5, shows that their instructor forgot to teach them the technique needed for that problem... The problem isn't even that hard.

Edit: I solved problem 1,5 and 6, don't want to bother with the geometry ones and I don't get anywhere on problem 3. Having taken a ton of maths courses really helps, the first problem is trivial then.

I guess what these countries do is to teach their participants a lot of number theory and geometry so that they can solve these questions, since that is all this.
Anyone know how to solve number 3? Probably something simple I just don't see right now.

On July 14 2010 04:51 Amber[LighT] wrote:


Wouldn't be surprised if he was autistic :/

On July 14 2010 04:51 Amber[LighT] wrote:


Wouldn't be surprised if he was autistic :/

On July 14 2010 05:08 Hamster1800 wrote:
Man I didn't make IMO Well I probably would have failed the geometry problems anyway.

On July 14 2010 05:13 ]343[ wrote:
Been spending a little time on #5, which supposedly Terence Tao (Fields medalist-top prize in the world in math) claims is the hardest problem on the whole thing... I got up to 5*2^(5*2^55-1) heh? that's still way smaller than 2001^2001^2001 though D:

On July 14 2010 05:45 Klockan3 wrote:

If you go by how many that solved the problems the difficulty of the problems goes like this:
6>3>5>2>1>4

Knowing too much makes it hard to gauge how hard the problems are.

On July 14 2010 06:05 StRyKeR wrote:
kakaka Russia got us this year.

In 2005 we squeezed them out for 2nd place by a single point.

On July 14 2010 06:07 ]343[ wrote:


:D wait that was the year before Brian Lawrence too... Eric Price and Mildorf got golds?

On July 14 2010 06:05 StRyKeR wrote:
kakaka Russia got us this year.

In 2005 we squeezed them out for 2nd place by a single point.

On July 14 2010 06:09 EtherealDeath wrote:
Oolala time for some geometry fun. I remember for my high school geometry class we had to present a problem and work out a solution as a "final" of sorts, so I pulled some random IMO problem. It took quite a bit longer than expected -_-

On July 14 2010 06:17 Empyrean wrote:


Whoa, you did IMO problems for your high school geometry class? :<

The closest I ever got to the IMO was being one question away on the AIME (given my AMC score) to qualify for the USAMO T_T...never got an A in math in high school though :/

Stats major in college haha.

On July 14 2010 04:28 Klockan3 wrote:
I love the fact that Korea all scored 0 on problem 5, shows that their instructor forgot to teach them the technique needed for that problem... The problem isn't even that hard.

Edit: I solved problem 1,5 and 6, don't want to bother with the geometry ones and I don't get anywhere on problem 3. Having taken a ton of maths courses really helps, the first problem is trivial then.

I guess what these countries do is to teach their participants a lot of number theory and geometry so that they can solve these questions, since that is all this.
Anyone know how to solve number 3? Probably something simple I just don't see right now.

On July 14 2010 05:13 ]343[ wrote:
I got up to 5*2^(5*2^55-1) heh? that's still way smaller than 2001^2001^2001 though D:

On July 14 2010 06:16 Klockan3 wrote:

Russia however do not have 50% Asians in their team...

On July 14 2010 06:29 Klockan3 wrote:

Sort of a spoiler since it shows in which way you are doing it wrong but
+ Show Spoiler +

On July 13 2010 21:21 StRyKeR wrote:
China had a girl on the team. Beast!

On July 14 2010 06:38 dybydx wrote:


u mean beauty?

On July 13 2010 21:25 ooni wrote:
I liked to call Team USA, Team Asia. Click the team members to see why.
EDIT: Didn't know Kazakhstan were good at math. O__O Oh Borat how you ruined my view of the world.

On July 14 2010 06:33 ]343[ wrote:


ah I was suspecting something like this was possible... but I still don't see how to get that *keeps trying*

On July 14 2010 06:23 blankspace wrote:


http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=644&t=356076

Idea is to use perfect square condition to mess with p-adic valuations and then find g(n+1) = g(n)+1.

On July 14 2010 07:05 n.DieJokes wrote:
Whoa, Iceland is 2m 4f. Nice
Edit: Also, holy shit this thread. I don't even understand your answers to these problems let alone the problems themselves. How far above the typical highschool curriculum are you guys going? Who even teaches you this?

On July 14 2010 07:19 Klockan3 wrote:

Thanks, now I got it. I haven't taken any number theory so I am not really used to stuff like that, but just having taken a lot of maths still helps a lot since you got experience in proving things. They don't really test that hard things on these competitions from a grad school perspective.

When I was in that age I hadn't even heard about most of the words used in there so I think that it is has mostly to do with people who studies a ton practicing the narrow subjects which comes on these. Kinda like the guy who practiced 2 years for the spelling contest as shown in the youtube clip.

The deal is that you can't test in the curriculum since then everybody will know what to do, so they take problems which are possible to solve using mostly logic and high school maths but which would normally be considered too advanced for high school students. The problem with that is that there isn't an infinite amount of different kinds of things you can test on which relates to what you know in high school, so the contestants just sits and trains on everything which can appear on the test.

On July 14 2010 07:06 radiatoren wrote:
I am not sure if it is still true for IMO, but previously the problem has been that each person has a certain amount of time to come up with an answer. Since at least chinese has each sign represent a word it is much faster for them to write the answer. In a 4 hour test that could mean quite a lot of extra time, not having to write it out in a western language.

Therefore it is not only because China has the best mathematical student, but also because they can write the answers in chinese.

Now you mention that a lot of teams have participants with asian names. Might be people with the ability to write in an asian language. I am not clear about recent rules but that was the case in 2002 when i participated in a preliminary for fun.

On July 14 2010 07:36 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:


What in the world are you talking about...?

On July 14 2010 07:50 blankspace wrote:
@Klockan
Yeah there are things like random inequalities and highly contrived problems on these tests. To do well requires a lot of training. The geometry tested is a lot more than in normal us curriculum but maybe not so much compared to some european or asian countries that do more geometry. It's a lot harder to do well on an actual time pressured test as well, easy to run into dead-ends and get screwed for example.

Are in you grad school for math? Even for math majors these problems can be quite hard. Just look at the scores of the putnam which is mostly taken by math ppl. The scores are really low even though many of the problems would be considered easier than imo ones.

On July 14 2010 08:04 dubRa wrote:
I am so proud of Serbia, Hungary and Romania

On July 14 2010 00:59 alffla wrote:
girl naer the middle with grey top is cute :3

On July 14 2010 07:49 jax1492 wrote:


He is saying i think that the Chinese are good at IMO because writing in Chinese characters makes them quicker to answer.

On July 14 2010 08:53 Azarkon wrote:
Winning something like the IMO is mostly about the system of education and selection. Some countries value this sort of thing; others do not. Just like in SC, it's about how and what you train.

On July 14 2010 07:50 blankspace wrote:
Are in you grad school for math? Even for math majors these problems can be quite hard. Just look at the scores of the putnam which is mostly taken by math ppl. The scores are really low even though many of the problems would be considered easier than imo ones.

On July 14 2010 09:15 JiYan wrote:
where is this hosted? if its hosted in korea this year it would explain the disqualification

On July 14 2010 09:15 JiYan wrote:
where is this hosted? if its hosted in korea this year it would explain the disqualification

On July 14 2010 09:30 Meta wrote:
I have never heard of this competition and browsed their site a bit to learn about the rules, etc. But, I couldn't find any good information. After looking at the questions, do these guys get to use computers or calculators? If not.. then wow. The people that were able to solve these things must be geniuses.

On July 14 2010 08:56 Nehsb wrote:
Yay USA 3rd this year! (Though by one point...) US's team this year has no seniors so hopefully we can get first next year?

On July 14 2010 09:59 synapse wrote:
I (and supernovamaniac) actually know In Sung Na on the USA IMO team.
He goes to our school's math team

On July 14 2010 10:13 9diov wrote:
This brings back memory. I have two classmates who won silver and bronze medals for Vietnam team back in 2005.
And to explain why team China, Russia or US are good, you need to take into account the selection round before coming to IMO. (Check out this book:
http://www.google.com/search?q=china mathematic olympiad)

Even in Vietnam, the last round to select the team is more difficult than the IMO itself.

The Chinese contestants go through a camp, which lasts from March 16 to April 2.[14] In others, such as the USA, possible participants go through a series of easier standalone competitions that gradually increase in difficulty. In the case of the USA, the tests include the American Mathematics Competitions, the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, and the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, each of which is a competition in its own right. For high scorers on the final competition for the team selection, there also is a summer camp, like that of China.

On July 14 2010 10:43 Wangsta wrote:
holy crap, that chinese guy got 100% on every question...

Contestants must be under the age of 20 and must not be registered at any tertiary institution.

On July 14 2010 09:30 Meta wrote:
I have never heard of this competition and browsed their site a bit to learn about the rules, etc. But, I couldn't find any good information. After looking at the questions, do these guys get to use computers or calculators? If not.. then wow. The people that were able to solve these things must be geniuses.

On July 14 2010 10:26 Klockan3 wrote:
Haha, US and China even make them go to math camp beforehand!

On July 14 2010 09:49 Muirhead wrote:
Who spread Starcraft to MOP? I'd like to think I had at least a little bit to do with it

On July 14 2010 08:56 Nehsb wrote:
EDIT: @Azarkon: Yeah, if you have enough training you can solve #6 in 2 minutes, but a lot of problems still require some creativity (though those problems tend not to appear on the IMO as much as other olympiads like the Russian one.)

On July 14 2010 11:38 hixhix wrote:
Look at this guy

http://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=3789

On July 14 2010 12:52 DTK-m2 wrote:
I know one of the kids on the USA team.

Low D/D- on iCCup, but A+ gosu at math.

He gets like 90 APM using his laptop's little Trackpoint Style Pointer, though. No mouse, I kid you not.

On July 14 2010 13:00 [AhunGrY]MelOn wrote:
hello i raped math in 10th grade until ]343[ shoved starcraft up my ass

On July 14 2010 12:56 reza wrote:
TL ..lets try solving this shit..BRING IT ON !!!!!!!!!!!!

On July 14 2010 13:07 Z3kk wrote:


Ahaha, I'm pretty sure TL won't be able to solve these without considerable time and effort. TL is awesome, but it's comparable to asking TL to defeat the reigning world chess championship.

We have extremely talented chess players (as we all know), and we probably also have very talented mathematicians, but keep in mind that the IMO's problems weren't even solved by some of the world best math geeks (who, in all likelihood, had devoted their entire lives up to that point on extremely difficult math). Would be fun to try, though.

On July 14 2010 13:14 ]343[ wrote:


i'm pretty sure there are a number of people in this thread who already know how to solve all the problems... just saying. (plus, given like 20 hours, a few others could too). you might underestimate how many top math students are in this thread LOL

On July 14 2010 06:16 Klockan3 wrote:

Russia however do not have 50% Asians in their team...

On July 14 2010 13:31 gogogadgetflow wrote:

Racist much?

On July 14 2010 07:05 n.DieJokes wrote:
Whoa, Iceland is 2m 4f. Nice
Edit: Also, holy shit this thread. I don't even understand your answers to these problems let alone the problems themselves. How far above the typical highschool curriculum are you guys going? Who even teaches you this?

On July 14 2010 00:05 BlackJack wrote:


Lol I recognize a name on that team

Apparently he is good at spelling too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRZNQ06kWyc

On July 14 2010 15:03 flamewheel wrote:

My roommate's a genius~

On July 14 2010 13:07 Z3kk wrote:

Ahaha, I'm pretty sure TL won't be able to solve these without considerable time and effort. TL is awesome, but it's comparable to asking TL to defeat the reigning world chess championship.

On July 14 2010 17:15 Dave[9] wrote:
Holy shit problem 5 looks incredibly interesting but incredibly hard

On July 14 2010 17:15 Klockan3 wrote:

Not at all really, these guys aren't the champions of maths as noted in that they got both an age and education limit and using the combined knowledge of ~10 average math majors should allow you to solve all of these in a manageable time without having any sort of special talent.

I mean I would have gotten a better score than most of those in that competition (Getting more than 2 answers is better than most) but then I am almost done with what is equivalent to a maths master so it isn't fair to pit me against them.

It is all about algorithms, when you understand that it is quite easy.

On July 14 2010 15:08 ThePurist wrote:


ROFL this guy is just too awesome LOL he was grilling that chick for saying that shit wrong

On July 16 2010 08:58 Mykill wrote:
well Canada sucks but im from Taiwan which is kinda like china. so win!
this should also be called competition instead of olympiad since those are supposed to be held once every 4 years. or in old days 6 years. this is annual ><

On July 14 2010 00:05 BlackJack wrote:
Apparently he is good at spelling too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRZNQ06kWyc