> high school/early university maths problems should not have been a stretch at all for it
This is a ridiculous understatement of the difficulty of getting gold at the IMO.
This is a ridiculous understatement of the difficulty of getting gold at the IMO.
It's really hard.
See my other comment. I was voted the best at math in my entire high school by my teachers, completed the first two years of college classes while still in high school. I've tried IMO problems for fun. I'm very happy if I get one right. I'd be infinitely satisfied to score a perfect on 3 out of 6 problems and that's nowhere near gold.
Many of them are also questions that eventually end up with proofs or solutions that only require very high level understanding of basic principles. But when I say very high I mean like impossibly high for the average person and ability to combine simple concepts to solve complex problems.
I'd wager the majority of Math graduates from universities would struggle to answer most IMO questions.
You've broken this guideline repeatedly in this thread. Can you please not do that on HN?