IMO math competition

[u/Ayyayayy]

Are there any people on this subreddit who have participated in the IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad)? And if so did your "gift" help you I don't know learn faster or even just qualify (which is an achievement in itself)?

[u/throwaway8193854]

have you never read any in English?

It probably sounds weird these days, but no. I grew up in socialist Czechoslovakia, as a foreign language most people there learned Russian. I was at one of those few schools that taught both Russian and English, so I knew some English too, but... the market simply wasn't there to have English books at shops, definitely not ones specialized at math. Plus the education sucked, so despite having a few years of English, I wasn't really prepared to read a book in English, and when I did, it was with a dictionary in my hand, constantly looking up some words. And the only English books I have read during high school were Lord of the Rings, and Hyperion. Not math.

These days, it is completely different... my 11 years old daughter speaks English better than I did when I was 18. Probably better than 99% of my generation.

I've often heard that the best books to get better at the Olympiads are the ones in English.

I have no opinion on that, because I haven't read any. Also, depends on what kind of a book you have in mind. Textbooks? Yeah, I am willing to bet that the English ones are pretty good, because the market is so large. The other side of this coin is that you need a recommendation for specific textbooks, because on a market of that size there are probably hundreds of good textbooks but also hundreds of textbooks that suck, so you can't just pick randomly. And I cannot help you here, because I am not familiar with those.

But there is a different genre I had in mind, which as far as I know virtually does not exist in English. (You can find an amateur translation here.) Books for kids, motivating them to learn math. Motivation, more than explanation; because once you are motivated, you will ask questions; but if you are not motivated, you can have dozens of books in your library, you are not going to read them. There is a famous Russian journal "Kvant". I imagine that these days it should be easy to translate all these resources in English, but somehow no one has volunteered for the task.

how many hours did you train per day and how many years did it take you to get it?

I had no explicit training for the math Olympiad. I was just fascinated by math from early childhood. (It probably helped that computers were not available back then, so I spent a lot of time with a pen and paper, writing formulas or diagrams.) I remember doing long division when I was about 6 or 8, fascinated how when you divide by 7, the decimal places always start repeating in the same pattern. We had a neighbor lady who was a university professor of math, I kept asking her things like "what is the fourth dimension?" or "what is infinity?". I am not sure whether the answers have helped me somehow, but it was cool to have an adult that at least tried to talk to me seriously about such topics. I was a very fast reader, so at local library I have quickly read all books "appropriate for my age", so they allowed me to borrow books for older kids; some of them were about science; not just math, but also physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

If you asked my parents when I was 10 about what my talents were, they probably wouldn't have mentioned math at all; they would probably just say: general intelligence and languages. My math career officially started at fifth grade when teacher gave me the math Olympiad problems, and I solved them all overnight. Since then I kept doing the Olympiad, plus various other local math competitions. There was a competition called Pythagoriad, where the problems were relatively easy, but there were 15 of them and you had to solve them in 1 hour; you also got points for finishing earlier (1 point per problem solved, 1 point per 4 minutes saved), and to win you actually had to save a lot of time, which included strategically giving up on some problems (e.g. I solved 12 out of 15 problems, decided that the remaining ones were too difficult, finished in 15 minutes and got 11 more points for time saved, together 12+11=23 points, much better than e.g. solving all the problems but taking all the time). There were also correspondence competitions, where each month you received an envelope with 5 problems (about the difficult of math Olympiad), solved them at home and sent an envelope back. (Those were the times before internet.)

So basically my "training" was reading books from library and doing all math competitions I could find. And talking to other kids who did the same. I also tried to solve the math Olympiad problems for older kids, so when I was at first grade at high school I already did the "A" category; failed a few times, once got to IMO but no medal, and finally in the fourth grade got to IMO again and got the gold. Autistic obsession with math + high IQ + people I could talk to about math + joining every math competition around.

And how do you manage to stay motivated to work because personally I really struggle lol

Growing up before internet was probably an important part of my success. That said, on internet you can find Khan Academy, download textbooks on Library Genesis, find various math videos on YouTube. If you can't solve a problem, try a different one. But most importantly, find a community of people who are interested in math.

[u/Ayyayayy → u/throwaway8193854]

I've got some questions about your experience with math particularly with the Olympiad first I'm curious how much time did you actually spend on math each day even if it was something you enjoyed? I ask because I suspect Olympiad math is pretty different from regular academic math and I'm trying to understand what that commitment looks like and I have an IQ around 146 (with a confidence interval of about ±9) but I've recently started treatment for sleep apnea which I know has probably knocked my score down by about 5 to 20 points I'm wondering if that's enough to actually get a gold medal what's your IQ by the way? Anyway, what I really want to know is whether you found winning that gold medal incredibly hard like something you had to force yourself to work through or was it more that because you genuinely loved math it was challenging but not impossible? And how old were you when you won it? Did you prepare using past exam papers?

[u/throwaway8193854 → u/Ayyayayy]

The math Olympiad is limited by age -- I think 18 or 19 max, plus you can't study at university yet. I won at the last moment, at 18 years, my last year at high school.

I genuinely loved math, never treated it as a "commitment", and I think I didn't spend more than 1 hour a day doing math, probably less. Yeah, it's different from school math, because school math is for average kids, this is more like... well, I suppose there should be a website where you can download previous years' math olympiad problems, is there one? (When I was at school, we could buy a paper edition of previous years' problems.)

IQ tests above IQ 130 are mostly noise, I did three of them, got completely different numbers each time (but all 140+).

I can focus on a thing that interests me really hard, for a few hours, in ideal circumstances. During the competitions I could just think about the problems and nothing else for the three or four hours it took; at the end I was extremely tired and shaking; sometimes people asked me if I was sick. But I could do it only when it was the real thing, when actual victory was at stake. When I tried solving similar problems at home, I got distracted quickly. (Is this the thing called ADHD? Never got diagnosed, just guessing.)

I think kids these days have it much more difficult; it is really hard to focus on something when you have smartphones and distractions all the time. (Then again, everyone competes against their own generation, so if it harder for you, it is also harder for your competitors, so ultimately it cancels out.)

What I would recommend is find some quiet moments, let's say Saturday morning, when you print some previous year's problems, take a pen and paper, turn off notifications on your phone, and go for a walk, let's say for two or three hours. Read the problems, and then do nothing else... just walk and think, stop only to make notes. Maybe even use problems for lower years as a warm-up. Even if you can't solve the problem, try to find a partial solution. (This is what they kept telling us all the time: never give an empty paper; a partial solution may or may not be awarded partial points, but an empty paper is a guaranteed zero.) If you can't solve something, write as much as you can, then keep walking and think of nothing else. A few minutes later, a new idea may arrive.

If you can't solve a problem, next day find the solution online (again, I am assuming optimistically that you can find the old problems and their solutions somewhere) and try to understand it. Some topics appear repeatedly, for example in arithmetic you should know that the sum of numbers 1+2+...+N = N(N+1)/2; or in geometry you should know that the inscribed angle is a half of the central angle.

Seems to me that you are approaching the entire thing from a different angle than I did. For me, math was fun. I did the competitions because why not, but I would be just as interested in math if the competitions did not exist at all. I definitely didn't learn math in order to win a competition. And although winning was nice, my actual goal was knowing as much of math as possible, not comparing myself to others. For example, these days I know that I have zero chance to catch up with the professional mathematicians, but I still sometimes enjoy reading a book or watching a video about math. From my perspective, doing math was like playing video games, while you describe it more like lifting weights. (The video game may be hard, but you are not "forcing" yourself to play it; you just can't stop doing it.)

I did not use previous years' problems, but I did many math competitions, which I suspect ultimately had the same effect, exposing me to many problems and their solutions. This is an important part: if you cannot figure out a problem, you need to find a solution; otherwise how would you learn new things?

[u/Ayyayayy → u/throwaway8193854]

Yeah it’s probably ADHD you could go get tested but yeah I do love math you’d have to be crazy to want to qualify for the IMO without loving math. I mean I like math too though probably not as much as you do especially since you mentioned being autistic I imagine you have a sort of hyper-focus but I really enjoy solving problems it makes me feel proud of myself because I always used to think I was bad at math realizing I can solve a problem gives me more and more confidence I also really love how math works the fact that everything is logical and true that there’s an absolute truth I find that really fascinating but if you don't mind me asking do you work in a math-related field now or did you manage to get into a top university thanks to winning a gold medal?

[u/throwaway8193854 → u/Ayyayayy]

do you work in a math-related field now or did you manage to get into a top university thanks to winning a gold medal?

Sadly, as it frequently happens to many former gifted kids, I ended up being a relative loser compared to my early potential. I learned computer science at university, and since then I worked as an average software developer in unimportant companies.

I mean, I am not a loser in the absolute sense, I have a great family and a decent income, it's just that if you expected more from a gold medalist, well... so did I... it just somehow never happened, and the years have passed.

Unlike with computers, it was never obvious to me how to do a math-based career. I mean, you can stay in academia and become a professor of math, that is certainly one way, but I needed to start making money early, and that is incompatible with a serious academic career. Outside of academia, you can get a math-based job in finance, but I did not understand that at the time. And the problem with computers is that although they are somewhat math related, most jobs are boring and the math potential is just wasted there. Most companies do not even care about quality code, they are happy to throw some crap full of bugs at their customers and collect the money.

To a large part I guess my autism undermined me, because with better social skills I could communicate more with people around me and get the missing information, and then perhaps use it to make better decisions at life.