← Back to context

Comment by PokemonNoGo

5 days ago

> level performance on the world’s most prestigious math competition

I don't know which one i would consider the most prestigious math competition but it wouldn't be The IMO. The Putnam ranks higher to me and I'm not even an American. But I've come to realise one thing and that is that high-school is very important to Americans...

4 comments

PokemonNoGo

Reply
sealeck  4 days ago

The Putnam and IMO are quite different. I would suggest the IMO is probably harder...

  • kevinventullo  4 days ago

    I would disagree; the IMO depends only on late middle school/early high school level mathematics (geometry, gcd, functions) while Putnam typically depends on late high school/early college-level mathematics (integrals, limits, matrices).

    • sigbottle  4 days ago

      Well I come from the competitive programming sphere, and I would say that IOI is harder than ICPC.

      When you don't know that many things, that's when creativity shines, and there are some truly genuinely shocking IOI problems.

      ICPC (well, in recent years they've gotten slightly better) is pretty well known as a knowledge-heavy implementation contest. Many teams get the experience that they mind-solved a lot more problems but couldn't implement them in time. Typing up the maxflow template for the 25th time for a series of collegiate-level but ultimately standard reductions isn't that inspiring.

      My favorite problems are those you can derive from basic techniques but come up with scaffolding that is truly elegant. I've set some of them myself, which have stumped some famous people you may know :)

      ---

      I guess my point is that I can see people feeling about Putnam the same way.