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The logo of the International

Mathematical Olympiad.

International Mathematical OlympiadFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is an annual six-problem, 42-point mathematical olympiad for pre-collegiate students and

is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads.[1] The first IMOwas held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except in

1980. About 100 countries send teams of up to six students,[2] plus one

team leader, one deputy leader, and observers.[3] Ever since its inceptionin 1959, the olympiad has developed a rich legacy and has establisheditself as the pinnacle of mathematical competition among high schoolstudents.

The content ranges from precalculus problems that are extremely difficultto problems on branches of mathematics not conventionally covered atschool and often not at university level either, such as projective and complex geometry, functional equations andwell-grounded number theory, of which extensive knowledge of theorems is required. Calculus, though allowed insolutions, is never required, as there is a principle at play that anyone with a basic understanding of mathematicsshould understand the problems, even if the solutions require a great deal more knowledge. Supporters of thisprinciple claim that this allows more universality and creates an incentive to find elegant, deceptively simple-lookingproblems which nevertheless require a certain level of ingenuity.

The selection process differs by country, but it often consists of a series of tests which admit fewer students at eachprogressing test. Awards are given to a top percentage of the individual contestants. Teams are not officiallyrecognized—all scores are given only to individual contestants, but team scoring is unofficially compared more so

than individual scores.[4] Contestants must be under the age of 20 and must not be registered at any tertiary

institution. Subject to these conditions, an individual may participate any number of times in the IMO.[5]

Contents

1 History

2 Scoring and format

3 Selection process

4 Awards

5 Penalties

6 Current and future IMOs

7 Notable achievements

8 Media coverage9 See also

10 Notes

11 References

12 External links

12.1 Official

12.2 Resources

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History

See also: List of International Mathematical Olympiads

The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. Since then it has been held every year except 1980. That year, it was

cancelled due to internal strife in Mongolia.[6] It was initially founded for eastern European countries participating in

the Warsaw Pact, under the Soviet bloc of influence, but eventually other countries participated as well.[2] Becauseof this eastern origin, the earlier IMOs were hosted only in eastern European countries, and gradually spread to

other nations.[7]

Sources differ about the cities hosting some of the early IMOs. This may be partly because leaders are generallyhoused well away from the students, and partly because after the competition the students did not always staybased in one city for the rest of the IMO. The exact dates cited may also differ, because of leaders arriving before

the students, and at more recent IMOs the IMO Advisory Board arriving before the leaders.[8]

Several students, such as Teodor von Burg, Lisa Sauermann, and Christian Reiher have performed exceptionallywell on the IMO, scoring multiple gold medals. Others, such as Grigory Margulis, Jean-Christophe Yoccoz,Laurent Lafforgue, Stanislav Smirnov, Terence Tao,Sucharit Sarkar, Grigori Perelman, and Ngo Bao Chau havegone on to become notable mathematicians. Several former participants have won awards such as the Fields

medal.[9]

In January 2011, Google gave €1 million to the International Mathematical Olympiad organization. The donation

will help the organization cover the costs of the next five global events (2011–2015).[10]

Scoring and format

The paper consists of six problems, with each problem being worth seven points, the total score thus being 42points. No calculators are allowed. The examination is held over two consecutive days; the contestants have four-and-a-half hours to solve three problems per day. The problems chosen are from various areas of secondaryschool mathematics, broadly classifiable as geometry, number theory, algebra, and combinatorics. They require noknowledge of higher mathematics such as calculus and analysis, and solutions are often short and elementary.However, they are usually disguised so as to make the process of finding the solutions difficult. Prominently featuredare algebraic inequalities, complex numbers, and construction-oriented geometrical problems, though in recent

years the latter has not been as popular as before.[11]

Each participating country, other than the host country, may submit suggested problems to a Problem SelectionCommittee provided by the host country, which reduces the submitted problems to a shortlist. The team leadersarrive at the IMO a few days in advance of the contestants and form the IMO Jury which is responsible for all theformal decisions relating to the contest, starting with selecting the six problems from the shortlist. The Jury aims toselect the problems so that the order in increasing difficulty is Q1, Q4, Q2, Q5, Q3 and Q6. As the leaders know

the problems in advance of the contestants, they are kept strictly separated and observed.[12]

Each country's marks are agreed between that country's leader and deputy leader and coordinators provided bythe host country (the leader of the team whose country submitted the problem in the case of the marks of the hostcountry), subject to the decisions of the chief coordinator and ultimately a jury if any disputes cannot be

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A stage in the process of solving a

problem1 from the AIME, part of

the USA's selection process.

resolved.[13]

Selection process

Main article: International Mathematical Olympiad selectionprocess

The selection process for the IMO varies greatly by country. In somecountries, especially those in east Asia, the selection process involves several

difficult tests of a difficulty comparable to the IMO itself.[14] The Chinese

contestants go through a camp, which lasts from March 16 to April 2.[15] Inothers, such as the USA, possible participants go through a series of easierstandalone competitions that gradually increase in difficulty. In the case of theUSA, the tests include the American Mathematics Competitions, theAmerican Invitational Mathematics Examination, and the United States ofAmerica Mathematical Olympiad, each of which is a competition in its ownright. For high scorers on the final competition for the team selection, there

also is a summer camp, like that of China.[16]

The former Soviet Union and other eastern European countries' selectionprocess consists of choosing a team several years beforehand, and giving them special training specifically for the

event. However, such methods have been discontinued in some countries.[17] In Ukraine, for instance, selectiontests consist of four olympiads comparable to the IMO by difficulty and schedule. While identifying the winners,only the results of the current selection olympiads are considered.

In India, the students are subjected to a test called AMTI, region-wise and then some of then are selected forRMO (Regional Mathematics Olympiad). Selected Students are subjected to INMO (Indian National MathematicsOlympiad), from which nationally 35-36 children are selected. They are subjected to a rigorous camp, from which6 are selected to represent India at IMO.

Awards

The participants are ranked based on their individual scores. Medals are awarded to the highest rankedparticipants, such that slightly less than half of them receive a medal. Subsequently the cutoffs (minimum scoresrequired to receive a gold, silver or bronze medal respectively) are chosen such that the ratio of gold to silver tobronze medals awarded approximates 1:2:3. Participants who do not win a medal but who score seven points on at

least one problem receive an honorable mention.[18]

Special prizes may be awarded for solutions of outstanding elegance or involving good generalisations of a problem.This last happened in 1995 (Nikolay Nikolov, Bulgaria) and 2005 (Iurie Boreico), but was more frequent up to the

early 1980s.[19] The special prize in 2005 was awarded to Iurie Boreico, a student from Moldova, who came upwith a brilliant solution to question 3, which was an inequality involving three variables. Boreico was one of onlythree students to achieve a perfect score for that paper.

The rule that at most half the contestants win a medal is sometimes broken if adhering to it causes the number ofmedals to deviate too much from half the number of contestants. This last happened in 2010, when the choice wasto give either 226 (43.71%) or 266 (51.45%) of the 517 (excluding the 6 from North Korea — see below)

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Members of the 2007

IMO Greek team.

From left to right, Gabriel Carroll,

USA, Reid Barton, USA, Liang Xiao,

China, and Zhiqiang Zhang, China, the

four perfect scorers in the 2001 IMO

held in the USA.

contestants a medal,[20] 2012, when the choice was to give either 226 (46.35%) or 277 (50.55%) of the 548contestants a medal, and 2013, when the choice was to give either 249 (47.16%) or 278 (52.65%) of the 528contestants a medal.

Penalties

North Korea was disqualified for cheating at the 32nd IMO in 1991 and the 51st IMO in 2010.[21] It is the onlycountry to have been caught cheating.

Current and future IMOs

See also: List of International Mathematical Olympiads

The 51st IMO[22] was held in Astana, Kazakhstan, July 2–15, 2010.[23]

The 52nd IMO[24] was held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, July 13–24,

2011.[25]

The 53rd IMO[26] was held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, July 4–16, 2012.[27]

The 54th IMO[28] was held in Santa Marta,[29] Colombia, July 18–28,

2013.[30][31]

The 55th IMO will be held in Cape Town,[32] South Africa in July 2014.The 56th IMO will be held in Thailand in 2015.

The 57th IMO will be held in Hong Kong in 2016.

The 58th IMO will be held in Brazil in 2017.

Notable achievements

See also: List of International Mathematical Olympiad participants

Five nations have achieved an all-members-gold IMO with a full team:

China, 11 times: in 1992, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004,

2006, 2009, 2010, and 2011;

Russia, 2 times: in 2002 and 2008;United States, 2 times: in 1994 and 2011;

Bulgaria, 1 time: in 2003;[33]

South Korea, 1 time: in 2012.

The only country to have its entire team score perfectly on the IMO wasthe United States, which won IMO 1994 when it accomplished this,coached by Paul Zeitz, and Luxembourg, whose 1-member team got aperfect score in IMO 1981. The USA's success earned a mention in

TIME Magazine.[34] Hungary won IMO 1975 in an unorthodox waywhen none of the eight team members received a gold medal (five silver,three bronze). Second place team East Germany also did not have a single gold medal winner (four silver, fourbronze).

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Several individuals have consistently scored highly and/or earned medals on the IMO: Reid Barton (United States)

was the first participant to win a gold medal four times (1998-2001).[35] Barton is also one of only seven four-time

Putnam Fellow (2001–04).[36] In addition, he is the only person to have won both the IMO and the International

Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).[11] Christian Reiher (Germany), Lisa Sauermann (Germany), Teodor von Burg(Serbia), and Nipun Pitimanaaree (Thailand) are the only other participants to have won four gold medals (2000–03, 2008–11, 2009–12, and 2010-13 respectively); Reiher also received a bronze medal (1999), Sauermann asilver medal (2007), von Burg a silver medal (2008) and a bronze medal (2007), and Pitimanaaree a silver medal

(2009).[37] Wolfgang Burmeister (East Germany), Martin Härterich (West Germany), Iurie Boreico (Moldova),and Jeck Lim (Singapore) are the only other participants besides Reiher, Sauermann, von Burg, and Pitimanaaree

to win five medals with at least three of them gold.[2] Ciprian Manolescu (Romania) managed to write a perfectpaper (42 points) for gold medal more times than anybody else in history of competition, doing it all three times he

participated in the IMO (1995, 1996, 1997).[38] Manolescu is also a three-time Putnam Fellow (1997, 1998,

2000).[36] Evgenia Malinnikova (Soviet Union) is the highest-scoring female contestant in IMO history. She has 3gold medals in IMO 1989 (41 points), IMO 1990 (42) and IMO 1991 (42), missing only 1 point in 1989 to

precede Manolescu's achievement.[39]

Terence Tao (Australia) participated in IMO 1986, 1987 and 1988, winning bronze, silver and gold medalsrespectively. He won a gold medal when he just turned thirteen in IMO 1988, becoming the youngest person to

receive a gold medal.[40] Tao also holds the distinction of being the youngest medalist with his 1986 bronze medal,

alongside 2009 bronze medalist Raúl Chávez Sarmiento (Peru), at the age of 10 and 11 respectively.[41]

Representing the United States, Noam Elkies won a gold medal with a perfect paper at the age of 14 in 1981.Note that both Elkies and Tao could have participated in the IMO multiple times following their success, butentered university and therefore became ineligible.

Media coverage

A documentary, "Hard Problems: The Road To The World's Toughest Math Contest" was made about the

United States 2006 IMO team.[42]

And a BBC documentary titled Beautiful Young Minds aired July 2007 about the IMO.

See also

Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad

International Mathematics Competition for University Students (IMC)

International Science OlympiadList of mathematics competitions

Notes

1. ^ "International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO)" (http://olympiads.win.tue.nl/imo/). 2008-02-01.

2. ̂a b c "More IMO Facts" (http://imo.wolfram.com/morefacts.html). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

3. ^ "The International Mathematical Olympiad 2001 Presented by the Akamai Foundation Opens Today inWashington, D.C." (http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2001/press_070401.html). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

4. ^ Tony Gardiner (7-21-92). "33rd International Mathematical Olympiad" (http://www.imo-register.org.uk/1992-

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report.html). University of Birmingham. Retrieved 2008-03-05.

5. ^ "The International Mathematical Olympiad"(http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/home/schools/gifted_children/olympiad.pdf) (PDF). AMC. Retrieved 2008-03-05.

6. ^ Turner, Nura D. A Historical Sketch of Olympiads: U.S.A. and International The College Mathematics Journal,Vol. 16, No. 5 (Nov., 1985), pp. 330-335

7. ^ "Singapore International Mathematical Olympiad (SIMO) Home Page"(http://sms.math.nus.edu.sg/Simo/Simo.aspx). Singapore Mathematical Society. Retrieved 2008-02-04.

8. ^ "Norwegian Students in International Mathematical Olympiad"(http://blog.medallia.com/2006/07/norwegian_students_in_internat.html). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

9. ^ (Lord 2001)

10. ^ Google Europe Blog: Giving young mathematicians the chance to shine(http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2011/01/giving-young-mathematicians-chance-to.html).Googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com (2011-01-21). Retrieved on 2013-10-29.

11. ̂a b (Olson 2004)

12. ^ (Djukić 2006)

13. ^ "IMO Facts from Wolfram" (http://imo.wolfram.com/facts.html). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

14. ^ (Liu 1998)

15. ^ Chen, Wang. Personal interview. February 19, 2008.

16. ^ "The American Mathematics Competitions" (http://www.unl.edu/amc/). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

17. ^ David C. Hunt. "IMO 1997" (http://www.austms.org.au/Gazette/1997/Nov97/hunt.html). AustralianMathematical Society. Retrieved 2008-03-05.

18. ^ "How Medals Are Determined" (http://imo.wolfram.com/scores/howmedals.html). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

19. ^ "IMO '95 regulations" (http://olympiads.win.tue.nl/imo/imo95/imo95reg.html). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

20. ^ "51st International Mathematical Olympiad Results" (http://official.imo2011.nl/year_individual_r.aspx?year=2010). Retrieved 2011-07-25.

21. ^ "International Mathematical Olympiad: Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (http://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=PRK). Retrieved 2010-07-17.

22. ^ "51st IMO" (http://www.imo2010org.kz/). IMO2010.org. Retrieved 18 September 2010.

23. ^ "2010 IMO" (http://www.imo-official.org/year_info.aspx?year=2010). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

24. ^ "52nd IMO" (http://www.imo2011.nl/). IMO2010.nl.

25. ^ "Australian Mathematics Trust" (http://www.amt.canberra.edu.au/amocprog.html).

26. ^ "53rd IMO" (http://www.oma.org.ar/imo2012/). Retrieved 24 August 2011.

27. ^ "53rd IMO 2012" (http://www.imo-official.org/year_info.aspx?year=2012). Retrieved 17 July 2012.

28. ^ "54th IMO" (http://www.uan.edu.co/imo2013/). Retrieved 26 May 2012.

29. ^ "The 54th IMO will be held in Santa Marta" (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Imo2013/389020491143375?sk=info). Retrieved 26 May 2012.

30. ^ "The 54th IMO will be held in Colombia" (http://official.imo2011.nl/year_info.aspx?year=2013). Retrieved 2011-06-22.

31. ^ "The Program of 54th IMO" (http://www.uan.edu.co/imo2013/en/information/program). Retrieved 2012-06-27.

32. ^ "The 55th IMO will be held in Cape Town"(http://www.facebook.com/MathematicsFoundation/posts/291139430956184). Retrieved 3 June 2012.

33. ^ "Results of the 44th International Mathematical Olympiad"(http://www.mmjp.or.jp/jmo/imo2003/contents/results_all.txt). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

34. ^ "No. 1 and Counting" (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981185,00.html). Time. 1994-08-01.Retrieved 2010-02-23.

35. ^ "IMO's Golden Boy Makes Perfection Look Easy"(http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/293/5530/597). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

36. ̂a b "The Mathematical Association of America's William Lowell Putnam Competition"(http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

37. ^ "International Mathematical Olympiad Hall of Fame" (http://www.imo-official.org/hall.aspx). Retrieved 2009-07-18.

38. ^ "IMO team record" (http://www.unl.edu/amc/e-exams/e9-imo/imoteamrecord.shtml). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

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38. ^ "IMO team record" (http://www.unl.edu/amc/e-exams/e9-imo/imoteamrecord.shtml). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

39. ^ (Vakil 1997)

40. ^ "A packed house for a math lecture? Must be Terence Tao"(http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/13/news/math.php). Retrieved 2008-03-05.

41. ^ "Peru won four silver and two bronze medals in International Math Olympiad"(http://www.livinginperu.com/news/9641). Living in Peru. July 22, 2009.

42. ^ Hard Problems: The Road to the World's Toughest Math Contest (http://www.hardproblemsmovie.com/), ZalaFilms and the Mathematical Association of America, 2008.

References

Xu, Jiagu (2012). Lecture Notes on Mathematical Olympiad Courses, For Senior Section. World

Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4368-94-0(pbk)

Lee, Peng Yee (2013). Mathematical Olympiad in China (2009-2010). World Scientific Publishing.

ISBN 978-981-4390-21-7(pbk)

Xu, Jiagu (2009). Lecture Notes on Mathematical Olympiad Courses, For Junior Section. World

Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4293-53-2(pbk)

Olson, Steve (2004). Count Down. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-25141-3

Verhoeff, Tom (August 2002). PDF The 43rd International Mathematical Olympiad: A Reflective

Report on IMO 2002 (http://www.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/publications/imo2002report.pdf). Computing Science

Report, Faculty of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, Vol. 2, No.

11

Djukić, Dušan (2006). The IMO Compendium: A Collection of Problems Suggested for theInternational Olympiads, 1959-2004. Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-24299-6

Lord, Mary (Monday, July 23, 2001). "Michael Jordans of math - U.S. Student whizzes stun the cipher

world" (http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=4818783&site=ehost-live). U.S.

News & World Report 131 (3): 26.

Saul, Mark (2003). Mathematics in a Small Place: Notes on the Mathematics of Romania and

Bulgaria. AMS

Vakil, Ravi (1997). A Mathematical Mosaic: Patterns & Problem Solving. Brendan Kelly Publishing.p. 288. ISBN 978-1-895997-28-6

Liu, Andy (1998). Chinese Mathematics Competitions and Olympiads. AMT Publishing. ISBN 1-

876420-00-6

External links

Official

Official IMO web site (http://www.imo-official.org/)

Old central IMO web site (http://imo.math.ca/)

Resources

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MathLinks Olympiad resources (http://www.mathlinks.ro/resources.php) - IMO problems and solutions,IMO Shortlists, IMO Longlists and one of the largest collection of Olympiad problems in the world.

The IMO Compendium (http://www.imocompendium.com/?options=gl)

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