U.S. Wins First Place at International Mathematics Competition in Hong Kong | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Wins First Place at International Mathematics Competition in Hong Kong

maa.org

89 pointsausjke31 comments

Two facts:

1. Among the top 12 math students there are only 3 that are not Chinese-origin, and they're all chosen for the IMO team, a bit like AA everywhere to stay politically correct, which is fine. -- I heard about this but could not find the list to verify.

2. Two players in IMO team are having F1 visa, that means they're actually Chinese high school students that are studying in USA recently. This is very debatable, many disagree on this practice, and the physics, chemistry Olympiad do not have the same practice because this practice does not represent/honor/encourage the real math talents from US.

Wow. To be fair though, USA has been a top contender at IMO for decades, including the legendary 1994 team (all Americans, including a future Googler and the creator of "Did you mean...?" search suggestion Noam Shazeer) that got perfect scores [1]

That said, it's true that many of USAMO/IMO top contenders are fairly recent immigrants, born overseas and moved to the US at a young age, but that just embodies the spirit of the United States: it's founded on a constant influx of immigrants and their desire to prove themselves.

[1] https://www.imo-official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=...

Relevant HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4584656

Looking at legal immigration woes of H1B from India and China - USA policy makers should really think hard about the their stupid policies where H1Bs are tied to their employer to stay legally in the country even after being on H1B for several years. Waiting in GC line for 10+ years is a joke and cruel. USA succeeds despite this. There is no political will to provide any job portability. Obama's executive directive has been watered down by special interests who don't want EAD to be provided to immigrants H1B + I140 (second stage of GC).

These regressive legal immigration policies don't make USA great and show the spirit of America in good light. It feels as if, corporations and special interests like high skilled indentured workers hurting both americans and immigrants alike.

Agree. Here is a White House petition urging for better job portability for people on H-1B stuck in decade-long long GC backlog: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/no-respite-highly-... . Please consider signing if you feel strongly about this.

That's such a myopic view of immigration. Countries are delighted that the US isn't causing a massive brain drain in the 3rd world. It's why US immigration is so difficult for skilled workers, and for the less skilled it's often based on green card lotteries and things that don't just skim the top talent from less fortunate countries.

At the same time the US tries to make it very easy for people to come for the short term - so that they can experience our way of life and maybe build some cultural bridges and mutual understanding.

The US isn't anti immgration for xenophobic reasons. Even very talented students are sent back to their countries, not because they couldn't contribute to the US and be great future citizens, but because it would be unethical for the government to do that on a large scale

I've never heard this argument, but it honestly sounds extreme. We are going to force people to leave because other countries need good citizens? And you think that is the US government's rationale?

Do you have a source?

I absolutely think that lots of these people would only be able to achieve their goals in America, and their home countries could not come close to what America can offer them. On top of that, the brain drain issue in other countries is not going to be solved, or even close to that, with the small number of people that get rejected h1b's each year. It honestly sounds out of place that we don't let people themselves decide what would give them the greatest happiness.

As a small side comment: What about people who are legitimately scared about going back to their country, because of conflict or their sexuality being unaccepted or the like? All of these people are in the same bucket currently, from what I understand. Is it greedy of America to offer them an opportunity here, or is it more important that we are giving them shelter away from their country?

People that are scared seek asylum I think?

I think the smartest people in a country can be very formative of that country's future. Doesn't take a lot of people to form whole industries.

I don't have a source for you, but that's how I'm understood the policy. How else can you explain that there are green card lotteries for random people in other countries while PhD students are sent home after they get their diplomas? (and I'm talking engineering students, not Art History PhDs... people that will clearly "pay off")

I understand your arguments, but they're individualistic and end up leaving the world a worse place. If there was some kind of global free movement of people the 3rd world would never develop. I mean in a sense even in the US you have a problem that a lot of places probably are loosing their top talent constantly - even if they have good schools and good local governance.. the ambitious ones probably don't stay in Alabama - they likely go to NYC or SF or Washington. The only equalizing force is that people want to stay close to family and close to their culture.

Avoiding sucking in the smart people from other countries, so we don't brain drain them is not the reason for US immigration policies. We have policies that work the other way, to encourage people with advanced training to come here - for example, higher education puts you in different groups for green cards.

That's an excellent rejoinder. Indeed, one could say that by allowing recent arrivals to participate, the U.S. is in fact showcasing one of the better sides of its character - and one of its greatest strengths. And though this will inevitably be disappointing to some "native"† students - ultimately it can be seen in a positive light, in that it demonstrates what they can also achieve, given the right degree of determination.

† Being as nearly everyone born in the U.S. is a actually an "immigrant" or a descendent thereof to one degree or another, this term needs to be understood as at best a loose, colloquial designation.

I noticed another Googler on there too. I wonder what market share Google gets of Math Olympiadians. :-)

Migrants prove once again America's greatness.

The USAMO winner list is here:

http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/USAMO_Winners_2016_1....

Apparently the final team was not chosen strictly from the top 12 (Michael Kural and Ashwin Sah were Honorable Mentions).

Could be that they couldn't attend or some other reason.

There are two more tests used for team selection after the USAMO (during the training camp).

Gain of an open society over a closed one?

Also the deputy coach is a Romanian (now also a US citizen).

I am not seeing the importance of those facts. It's like implying that the Denver Broncos are less worthy of a team because no one from the team is from Denver.

It's actually as amazing that Korea beat China. This is only the 3rd time it's happened since both started competing in 1987.

https://cl.ly/1M2O2t1h0p1n

What is it about Chinese schooling/culture vs Korean that makes China have such an edge here?

Wouldn't it be more about a massively larger pool of talent from which to draw?

No. As another poster, compare it to India which is of a similar size, but has a significantly larger gap in results.

I say it's far more related to culture and attitude.

It might not be a schooling thing. China also has far, far more people. The only comparable country is India, and China has consistently out-competed India. I'd be curious why.

The part where East Asian countries seem to consistently dominate the top ranks in recent years with top entries from substantially smaller countries like Singapore and Japan seems to suggest that it's not just a population thing. I wouldn't jump immediately to culture though, because that's a lot of distinct cultures to lump into one bucket.

I'd guess that you could use similar models to those used to predict a country's Olympic medal performance [1] for predicting outcomes at these events. Namely, it's a function of the country's "economic and human resources and the development of these resources".

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/11/predicting-the-winter-oly...

Long school days, intensive training and drilling of exercises, exposure to 'advanced' math at a younger age, loads of homework, no free time, better disciplined students, and very little life outside of studying - especially in the later few years of high-school for any student interested in gaining acceptance to a decent university.

Basically, it is Chinese in China vs Chinese in the US in Chinese Hong Kong.

https://www.quora.com/What-explains-the-Chinese-domination-a...

The tonal pitches in the Chinese language really help with mathematics. In Chinese, numbers are much easier to remember because the language has an extra layer of communication - Read: Which numbers correspond to which Chinese tones?. This is a completely foreign concept in most western languages and it works like this: each word's meaning can change based on what intonation one uses for it. There are 5 different tones. So the word ba, for example, can have 5 different meanings depending on which intonation one uses. (to read more you can read here http://www.wku.edu/~shizhen.gao/... ) Each number has a certain intonation as well. So when Chinese people want to remember a string of numbers, they can just remember the "tune" of that string of numbers. This sounds (pun intended) fascinating. Can any Chinese speaker here expound on this concept?

The citation refers to the existence of tones. The rest of the quoted text is from the author's observations as a language student.

Tones don't provide an extra layer of communication, they're part of the natural pronunciation. Fluent speakers think about tones about as much as English speakers think about long/short vowels.

Even with that aside, the author's idea that tones can be a natural mnemonic device of sorts has some logical problems. Yes, one might use tones as an additional memory anchor, but you'd still need to memorize the actual number along with the "tune", and you could do the same in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ

Given the number 5316742918 (typical length of a phone number), you'd need to consciously go back and digit-by-digit take note of the tones. If you convert and hum the "tune", it'd go something like this: u--\--\\u-- or, numerically, 31141144311.*

This requires conscious effort to convert and memorize already, but now we have no way to convert back to the original value as the tune could refer to any of 442,368 different numbers.

*Tones map to digits as follows:

1: 1, 3, 7, 8

3: 5, 9

4: 2, 4, 6

This is International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) not to be confused of International Mathematics Competition (IMC) which is a college level math contest (http://www.imc-math.org.uk/)

Not surprised with the results, since leader teams are switching places with each other in top for decades... The most surprising fact for me is that www.imo-official.org is still not translated neither to Chinese, nor to Korean.

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