2024-07-21
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Surprise! In the ultimate showdown of the global Mathematical Olympiad, the 65th IMO, the Chinese team missed the first place in the group by 2 points...
The defense failed and the "five consecutive championships" came to an end.
This time, six Chinese athletes won a total of five golds and one silver, with a total score of 190 points, ranking second in the team, behind the US team.
The Chinese team has won the first place in IMO 24 times in total; for the past five consecutive years, the Chinese team has sat on the throne of team championship, which is comparable to the dominance in table tennis.
But now, the throne has changed and the "China Second Team" has taken over.
Unfortunately, among the six Chinese players this year, there is the fourth Chinese player to achieve a perfect score in IMO (full score for two consecutive years) after Luo Wei, Fu Yunhao and Wei Dongyi:
Shi Haojia is from Hailiang Senior High School in Zhuji City, Zhejiang Province.
He won the gold medal with the highest individual total score in this IMO and was also the only player to score full marks.
In addition, the Indian team ranked fourth for the first time (ninth last year), and the Swedish team had one silver, three bronze and two honorary awards, and all six players won awards after a long time, which attracted considerable attention.
Well, let’s take a look at the details of this year’s IMO.
This year's IMO was held in Bath, UK, with 609 contestants from 108 countries competing fiercely for two days, about 4.5 hours each day.
A total of 54 gold medals (gold medal line 29 points), 121 silver medals (silver medal line 22 points), 145 bronze medals (bronze medal line 16 points), and 170 honorary nominations were produced.
In the end, the United States, China, and South Korea won the team championship, runner-up, and third place respectively.
The champion American team scored 192 points, and won 5 gold and 1 silver.
Among them, Jessica Wan is the only female player in the US team. She is from Florida Virtual School. From 2021 to 2024, Jessica Wan has won the EGMO gold medal four times in a row.
The results of the 6 contestants are as follows:
The runner-up Chinese team scored 190 points, and won 5 gold and 1 silver.
The 6 contestants are:
Shi Haojia: Gold Medal, Grade 12, Hailiang Senior High School, Zhuji City, Zhejiang Province (the only one with a perfect score)
Xu Qiming: Gold Medal, Grade 1, Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone Foreign Languages Senior High School
Wang Chunji: Gold Medal, Grade 12, Shanghai High School
Deng Zhewen: Gold Medal, Grade 1, Hubei Wuchang Experimental High School
Wang Xianbang: Gold Medal, Grade 12, The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China
Ye Yuxing: Silver Medal, Grade 1, The Affiliated High School of Renmin University of China
The results of the 6 contestants are as follows:
The third place team South Korea scored 168 points, and harvested 2 gold and 4 silver.
The results of the 6 contestants are as follows:
This year, the Chinese team lost the first place due to objective external reasons.
Judging from the official results, the fifth question was difficult for a large number of contestants.
On the fifth question, five players from the American team scored 7 points and one player scored 0 points.
Three players from the Chinese team scored 7 points, one player scored 1 point, and two players scored 0 points.
Many netizens found that not only did some Chinese team members stumble on this question, but many contestants also performed poorly on question 5.
Robert Boshen, former head coach of the US team, mentioned that IMO also pays more and more attention to the contestants' ability to solve problems creatively. For example, Question 5, which has attracted a lot of discussion this year, is a combination question that does not follow common sense and requires everyone to use their creativity to solve it.
Many contestants may be at a loss for a moment because they are too accustomed to regular training. On the contrary, contestants who are good at using mathematical thinking may find this problem particularly easy to solve.
In addition to the "surprise" in the title, the opponent this time is also very strong.
Like the American team that ended China's five consecutive championships, Alexander Wang won the IMO gold medal with a score of 41 (out of 42) last year, and he is only 16 years old this year.
Jessica Wan has won the gold medal in the European Women's Mathematics Marathon EGMO for four consecutive years.
Qiao (Tiger) Zhang, recipient of the Ramanujan Spiritual Scholarship and 2024 RMM Gold Medal.
Linus Tang, RMM Gold Medal 2024.
(From left to right: Jessica Wan, Alexander Wang, Tiger Zhang, Jordan Lefkowitz, Carl Schildkraut (vice-captain), Krishna Pothapragada, Linus Tang)
Because the Chinese content of the American team is too high, many people jokingly call it the "Chinese Second Team."
The man behind the scenes made an indelible contribution to the US team's success.
That is the former head coach Luo Boshen, who led the team to win four team championships in ten years and revitalized the entire US National Mathematical Olympiad team.
△Image source: Quanta Magazine
Although Luo Boshen is no longer the head coach this year, he still organized the MOP (Olympic Mathematics Summer Training Program) at the invitation of the American Mathematical Society. The six participating players were selected by him personally.
Other national teams are actually on the rise as well.
For example, India, which won the fourth place for the first time, is impressive.
This time they won four gold medals, while they only ranked ninth in the last session.
There are also teams like Singapore ranked 6th and Mongolia ranked 16th.
However, although the Chinese team lost its sixth consecutive championship, there were also surprises and points worth paying attention to.
For example, Shi Haojia from Hailiang High School, who was the only one to receive full marks this time, also received full marks in the Olympic Science Competition last year.
He became another Chinese athlete to achieve full marks in both IMO Olympiads after Luo Wei, Fu Yunhao and Wei Dongyi, and he is only 16 years old this year.
According to previous reports, Shi Haojia completed junior high school mathematics courses at the age of 9, and at the age of 10, he made his mark in the Yingchun Cup National Primary School Mathematics Competition and won the gold medal.
His competition coach, Zhang Xiaoming, who is also the principal of Hailiang High School where he studies, commented:
If there is any characteristic about him, it is that his driving force for learning comes from his love for mathematics rather than other external things.
Sometimes when he encountered a very difficult problem, he would not sleep until he had solved it.
Two months ago, mathematician Shing-Tung Yau's assessment of China's current level of mathematics caused great controversy.
When he visited Huazhong University of Science and Technology and delivered a speech entitled "The Current State and Future of Chinese Mathematics", he said that any powerful modern country must rank among the best in mathematics achievements. Countries such as Britain, France, the United States, Russia, and Japan all have very high levels.
Chinese mathematics has not yet reached this achievement.
In his speech PPT, Qiu Chengtong was even more outspoken:
China's mathematics today has not yet reached the level of the United States in the 1940s。
But Qiu Chengtong also mentioned the reasons for this judgment in his speech.
On the one hand, the United States began sending students to Europe to study mathematics in 1880, and later absorbed a large number of mathematicians.
In this way, in less than 150 years, it quickly became the world's center of mathematics.
On the other hand, there are various obstacles and difficulties in the country as shown in the figure.
Therefore, modern Chinese mathematics is in a critical situation.
In fact, this is not the first time that Shing-Tung Yau has publicly said something similar.
In many of his public speeches over the years, he has mentioned that modern Chinese mathematics still lags behind the world's cutting-edge.
For example, we are still facing the situation of talent loss and shortage.
For example, "China currently places more emphasis on applied mathematics, and the development of theoretical mathematics needs to be strengthened. The latter requires a painful and isolated thinking process."
However, after Qiu made this statement this year, he was rarely criticized by many non-mathematical researchers, who believed that he was boosting others' ambitions and undermining his own prestige.
Some opponents used China’s long-standing dominance in the IMO as a response.
Now, in the face of the latest results, in addition to re-examining the sternness of Mr. Qiu, we also need to be more realistic.
Also, a high score of 190 and second place in the world are still very good results. Congratulations to all the contestants, and the future is promising.
Finally, I attach this year's IMO topic. Friends who are interested can try it~
Reference Links:
[1]https://www.imo-official.org/year_info.aspx?year=2024
[2]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0ois6AvN69aZB36lzxA9ww
[3]https://maa.org/news/usa-first-at-imo/
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