Talk:International Mathematical Olympiad

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Good article International Mathematical Olympiad has been listed as one of the Mathematics good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
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[edit] Number of medals

According to the article, "Not more than half of the participants will receive medals." This guideline was disregarded in 2006, since forcing it would have meant an extremely low percentage of medalists (very many competitors being tied at a critical score). Somebody who writes better English and is more familiar with Wikipedia might please note this in the corresponding part.

[edit] Revert War in Malaysia section

Come on, please stop the irresponsible actions of reverting to your wish, anonymous wikipedia users. I agree to the points there, but please don't try to erase the truth (to the person who persistently erase the government bias part), or be overly biased when it comes to venting the frustrations (to the person who deleted the parts of inadequate training and the uninspiring mathematical curriculum). --changyang1230 17:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

The disputed section:
Generally, no one knows the team's exact selection criteria since the exam results in the training camps are not disclosed. However, it is known to the public that the team must consist of a certain number of Bumiputeras. There have been many cases where even the top three in the OMK were not selected as one of the trainee to represent the country.
Additionally, private school students are not allowed to participate in the International Olympiad training camps in Malaysia.
These explained why it's often that Malaysia government does not send good contestants to IMO. In fact, this is one of the reasons that Malaysia never get a desirable results in IMO, apart from the inadequate training and the uninspiring mathematical curriculum in the country.
The section was added to the article again today by an anon. I deleted a part that was not neutral point of view, and added a citation needed tag for the other paragraphs. However, this is the same situation as some months ago (see edit history), and then no citation was added so the section was removed. So the section is probably original research and not verifyable, and thus against Wikipedia policy. I will allow the section in for one week, and, if no source is provided, I will remove it enirely. --Stijn Vermeeren 19:24, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
(User:Borisblue even didn't give it a week and removed it. --Stijn Vermeeren 09:33, 10 September 2006 (UTC))


Get a life.

Some students are too competitive, the only thing they want is to participate in as much competition as they can, to bloat up their resume (and ego). Math olympiad is insignificant in the real world, even in mathematics. Not being able to represent your backwood high school or your country is *not* the end of the world.

High school students and teachers place an exaggerated sense of importance on Olympiad problems. Do not be too hung up on the toy problems, and work your way to be a real mathematician instead. (Yes, some former olympiad contestants grew up to be fine mathematicians, but I bet they stopped doing toy problems after a while). Contrary to what people say, math olympiad is not a window to mathematical research, it only makes you more acquainted with mathematical rigor in a very elementary way. Fixation with doing elementary math problems is counter productive in the long run.

Want some advice? Learn some real math: real and complex analysis, number theory (not only the olympiad stuff, learn also the noninteger topics: fields, algebraic NT, galois, etc), geometry (Euclidean is too trivial, try Algebraic Geometry), Point Set / Differential / Algebraic Topology, also learn some computer science and physics, preferably some economics and statistic. That would smooth your way through college and beyond. Don't give me that platitude about doing `only real math', that paradigm went out of fashion after G. H. Hardy died.

People who does mathematics as a hobby never got very far: they just do olympiad problems for hours on end, jubilating after solving a tough problem, got hung up on "mind games" like chess or bridge, read a lot of pop math book a la Gardner, got interested in trivial stuff like recreational linguistics and doing puzzles. Doing those things are fine, but believe me, you are far from being a good mathematical student.

That being said, quit whining -- hit the nearest bookstore and get some real college math textbooks. Learn, go to college, and put the trivial olympiad maths aside. Nobody can stop you. Nobody validate their academic career by olympiad competitions anyway. That's not that big of an achievement, trust me.

an anon is violating WP:NPOV and making original research (WP:ISNOT) __earth (Talk) 06:12, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


I really do not understand why you are discussing the need for olympiads here. You can debate whether or not they do it for fun or money but that goes for all sports, are you questionning competitions in general? Anyway, this is not the place. If you see something on wikipedia that is incorrect say so, but don't try to rid the world from olympiads on the wikipedia disccusion page

Don't feed the trolls. Temperalxy 22:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers below ten (a grammatical point)

I'd like to remind everyone that small numbers, up to ten or twelve, are normally spelt out: it is considered correct. Because this article concerns the workings of the IMO, not any mathematical proof or explanation, this case does not qualify as (anywhere even kind of close to) an exception. So, I'd like to ask why my changes were reverted. (Without objection on or before 31 January, I will restore those changes.) Neonumbers 03:17, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I have restored those changes. Neonumbers 10:05, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notable achievements

Reid Burton is not the only one who obtained four gold medals, Christian Reiher (Germany) did so too, in the years 2000-03 and he also won a bronze medal in 1999, so he is the most successful participant so far. I was with him in Tokyo three years ago. See German math olympiad site for verification. I don't know how to formulate it properly, so I didn't change it. Peter Eberhard, 7 April 2006

[edit] Notable past participants

The section "Notable past participants" looks redundant with the "hall of fame" section.

--84 kg 16:11, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IMO 2008

The 23 June 2007 88.17.131.183 changed "The 49th IMO will be held in Granada, Spain in 2008" to "The 49th IMO will be held in Madrid, Spain in 2008", but both the official IMO site http://www.imo-official.org/host_list.asp and the 2007 IMO site http://www.imo2007.edu.vn/index.php?module=ViewNewDetail&NewId=41 say that it will be held in Granada. Do anyone know where it will be held? SuneJ 15:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lists

Should the lists be siphoned off into another article? They clutter up the article. I propose "List of previous winners of the International Mathematical Olympiad". Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 22:43, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I just did. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 02:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Failed "good article" nomination

This article failed good article nomination. This is how the article, as of February 14, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: I feel that the article should have contained more information on the subject. Granted, there was some information on the subject, however, not enough information was given.
2. Factually accurate?: The article passes this criteria
3. Broad in coverage?: I felt that the article, again, should have contained more information on the subject area.
4. Neutral point of view?: The article passes this criteria
5. Article stability? The article fails in this aspect, as it has some information, but can still use more information to support the subject
6. Images?: The article fails this criteria, as it has one small logo on the subject, and has no other images to enhance the article


When these issues are addressed, the article can be renominated. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it have it reassessed. Thank you for your work so far. Happy Editing, Dustitalk 20:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)



[edit] GA reivew

This article is quite good in places but it has some missing gaps problems.

  • The lead needs to recap what is in the main body in a comprehensive manner. It should not introduce new information that is not in the main body.
  • Currently, the article includes some rules and regulations type info and a little bit of history that is only included in the lead and not in the main body.


  • Article seems to contradict itself when it says that "for high school students" - My understanding from being involved in science olympiads as a former student is that people who have finished high school but have not started university because they are taking a year off can do these things - I know some Australian students who finished high school and represented Australia the year after when they were on a break.
  • Article needs more of a history section. There are a few books documenting IMO history around the place (relativiely obscure) but most countries also produce IMO problem books and guides to train their students (that are published and sold). There should be information of how the IMO spread from a little competition to its current state. It is very well known that all of the Olympiads started in eastern Europe as a competition among the Warsaw Pact countries and gradually spread into the non-communist world to its current state. There are also a few stats tables I believe lying around the place that have all the combined country scores. Certainly the Australian website has them all since 1981.
  • Where exactly is this Australian website you speak of?
  • The info about the hosts is recentist as it only lists the locations for the IMO in the immediate future. The host info should also note the spread of the host countries, ie, how it used to be always hosted in Eastern Europe and has now spread across the world etc.
  • Y Done However, that's been added to the "past IMOs" section instead, as it seems more relevant to that section. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 02:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


  • Has the curriculum expectations changed over the years - has the syllabus policy being changed? Has the format changed?
  • In many's opinion, it has gotten harder, but it's never explicitly stated, so that would qualify as original research. Other than that, I can think of nothing. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 02:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
  • The curriculum should be described in more detail


  • Article should point out that calculators are not allowed.
  • The article does not seem to show how seriously some countries take the competition, especially communist and cold war type rivalries. The article points out that there is a camp in the US for the selected team, but in the Asian countries it only notes that the there are several difficult exams when for a student in China or Russia, the process is more than a year long and involves multiple camps. The other thing is that Olympiad students in communist-bloc countries have been groomed for multiple years in advance, often by being identified at the young age and being sent to specialist maths/science schools.
    • I can't find sources for such claims. I would appreciate it if you shared where you acquired this knowledge. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 02:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
  • The internal selection section is too US-centric and should discuss a wider variety of countries and their varying attitudes to the IMO. It would be good if some figures were available for the budget allocation to various countries IMO budgets if possible.
  • References need to be fully filled out with date of publications, publisher, author, etc
  • The article says that IMO is officially an individual competition and that team totals are not official, yet the article goes on to talk about countries "winning" IMO
  • Article says that PRC and Russia both won IMO with six golds in 2002. Did they tie?
  • Articles says that PRC and Russia are the others apart from Bulgaria, however it then says that US also did it in another sentence. So this needs to be rephrased.
  • It seems undue weight to talk about Bulgaria so much when it appears that China have won a lot more. Having said that, more information about all countries would be preferably to cutting down on Bulgaria
  • It would enhance the article if the statistics for #countries participating, gold medal tallies and so forth can be found and a graph created and put into the article
  • The first paragraph of "Notable achievements" should be removed. There is no need for a intro sentence which resembles an abstract to tell what is coming up.
  • It appears in the old days that eight students were in a team, per the note about Hungray winning 5S,3B in 1975. This evolution in the competition structure needs to be discussed.
  • The hyphens should be replaced with commas. If you say 1997-2001, it would normally mean all years in the range, whereas in this article, it doesn't mean that.
  • Some history of the changing world order in the IMO should be included. IIRC, some of the eastern European countries have had a downturn since the fall of the Berlin Wall.


  • The article does need a copyedit and a common theme is that conjunctions and articles are missing.
  • Shouldn't you mention other things like the existence of the opening and closing ceremony, government education ministers and presidents/prime ministers opening/closing the IMO (to show that it is taken seriously). That the students are taken on tourist activities when they are not competing??
  • Is there information about the bidding process, organisation, # of volunteers and so forth? It might be difficult
  • The first mention of Reiher and Margulis seems out of place. Should it not be put into the notable students section?
  • I am surprised that you did not mention Vladimir Drinfeld in the IMO alumni who won Fields medal. Then again, perhaps it is because I studied some of his work that I have an inflated perception of his impact in the mathematical world but he seems hard to ignore. Same for Perelman
  • Hm. I see the ext links section has a lot of stats that you can use to track the history.
  • Page numbers for the books are desired.
  • A lot more info should be provided about the actual mathematics of the contest
    • Well, I've added a bit more about the curriculum. Are example problems warranted? Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 02:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Best regards, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I was writing a review for this article and noticed the edit conflict - since Blnguyen is reviewing this, I'll just drop some few comments that I noticed in the first look here and then leave:

  1. per WP:Lead, please summarize the content of the article in the intro so that it can stand alone as a summary of the whole article.
  1. In the intro it says:"Teams are not officially recognized" -- But this is unofficially always done. It might be good to add this if it can be sourced.
  1. The article reads: "Each participating country, other than the host country, may submit suggested problems to a Problem Selection Committee provided by the host country, which reduces the submitted problems to a shortlist."
I think it should mention that the shortlist is selected by the host country and if the country's team is strong in a topic, they put hard problems in the shortlist; and conversely if their team is weak in a topic, they choose easy problems.

Good Luck, --Be happy!! (talk) 03:06, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

  • What exactly is the basis for the statement "if the country's team is strong in a topic, they put hard problems in the shortlist; and conversely if their team is weak in a topic, they choose easy problems"? Nousernamesleft says the article's "reflective of their own team's skill" (which I take as a being short version of the previous statement) is cited "in the ref after the sentence" [1]; the reference for that paragraph is a xiv+740-page book (this links in to the need for page numbers for citations, mentioned above), and I checked the introductory material in the book (but not the rest of the book) without finding a basis for that statement before I added the citation needed tag that was removed. As far as I can see, there's just one paragraph on page 2 discussing the problem selection process, with no mention of any biases involved. (For a longer discussion of shortlist selection, which doesn't touch on this suggestion of bias either, see [2]. Note the international nature of recent problem selection committees.) Joseph Myers (talk) 21:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
This is indeed the case because the 40 problems are chosen by the host team in an arbitrary manner. If say all the combinatorics problems in the shortlist are easy, then the obviously the hardest among them would be easy as well. They may not officially say it but everybody knows this. --Be happy!! (talk) 05:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
"Everybody knows this" is not enough to clear the verifiability threshold. In fact, Joseph is questioning the statement and I also would like to see some evidence for it. Such accusations need some kind of proof. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:07, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I've now explicitly tagged the statement in question {{dubious}}. The discussion I pointed to has Imre Leader saying something very different about 2002: "we just eliminated the unsuitable questions, and what was left was the shortlist". Joseph Myers (talk) 11:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Blnguyen, and thanks for the review. I have a couple of problems with some points, though:

  • "References need to be fully filled out with date of publications, publisher, author, etc" - not necessary according to WP:CITE.
  • "Article says that PRC and Russia both won IMO with six golds in 2002. Did they tie?" Why does that explicitly have to be mentioned? Country rankings aren't even official.

Other than that, I'll try to fix your (rather lengthy) list of concerns. Cheers, Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 22:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It's mentioned twice that there was no IMO in 1980. This raises the question: Why? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:12, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Mongolia didn't manage to hold it, see e.g. [3] (sorry, not a good source for citing in the article). Joseph Myers (talk) 13:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out. I found a pretty good source for that on JSTOR; I'm going to insert it into the article now. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 22:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I'll only put it in the main text, actually, since the lead should be concise. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 22:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GAN on hold

Here we are again! I'm going to assume that most of Blnguyen's content stuff is dealt with and look at prose, since he probably knows more about this than me!

  • Internet references are poorly formatted. Please utilise {{cite web}}, or at least include a publisher and accessdate
  • "Since then it has been held every year except 1980" --> "It has since been held annually, except in 1980" (or something like that...don't start sentence with "since then" is the main issue)
  • The Past IMOs section should come first after the lead, and should probably be titled "History" or "Overview" since that's what it is
  • "with each problem being worth seven points,"
  • "and maybe observers as well" - just say "and observers" (and no brackets)
  • "especially eastern Asian ones" --> "especially those in eastern Asia"
  • You don't need to wlink the countries in the Selection process section
  • Remove the 2006 mention from the bullet point in teh Awards section, since it's mentioned lower in prose
  • Wlink dates (per WP:DATE) in Current and future IMOs section
  • "a mention in TIME Magazine." - magazine titles should be in italics, and you need a citation for appearing in TIME
  • Most of the unofficial external links aren't needed

Leave a note on my talk page when done. Cheers, dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 01:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Passed. Nice work! dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 00:06, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Best wishes. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 00:31, 30 March 2008 (UTC)