AHARVEST of medals. That exactly was what the Philippines got when its team of student contestants to the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) won two gold medals, two silver medals and two honorable-mention awards on Thursday.
The gold-medal winners are Kyle Patrick Dulay (Philippine Science High School Main) and Farrell Eldrian Wu (MGC New Life Academy).
Silver-medal winners are Clyde Wesley Ang (Chiang Kai Shek College) and Albert John Patupat (De La Salle University Integrated School), while the honorable mention awardees are Shaquille Wyan Que (Grace Christian College) and Vince Jan Torres (Santa Rosa Science and Technology High), Dr. Richard Eden and Dr. Louie John Vallejo said in their report for Go for Gold: Philippine IMO Team Facebook page. Eden and Vallejo are theteam’s coaches.
This is the country’s best finish since it first participated in IMO in 1989. This year’s a total score was 133, improving its rank to 17—from last year’s 36—among 111 participating countries.
This new rank brought the country closer to Southeast Asian powerhouses, like Thailand (12) and Vietnam (11); and ranked higher than the usually strong countries, like Bulgaria (18), Germany (19) and Romania (20), Eden and Vallejo said.
The scores
Ang got a score of 24; Dulay, 29; Patupat, 23; Que, 15; Torres, 12; and Wu, 30.
The cutoffs this year were 29 for gold, 22 for silver and 16 for bronze.
Thus, Dulay and Wu won gold medals; Ang and Patupat won silver medals; and Que and Torres won honorable-mention awards.
The competition
Contestants battled questions at the IMO from four subject areas: geometry, algebra (polynomials, inequalities and functional equations), number theory and combinatorics, Eden and Vallejo said.
Months before the IMO, participating countries submit candidate problems, which were then screened by a committee.
The roughly 30 preselected problems were presented to the IMO jury, composed of the team leaders of each participating country. For this reason, the team leaders had to arrive at the host country earlier than the deputies and contestants, and were forbidden from interacting with them until the end of the exams.
For four days, the jury then deliberated and finalized the six IMO problems, their various translations and marking schemes.
The six problems at the IMO were certainly very difficult that even the easiest was several times harder than the math problems that were usually encountered by high-school students.
The six problems were administered to all contestants for a span of two days, and the three problems in each day were tackled within four-and-a-half hours.
Each question at the IMO was worth seven points. Owing to the difficulty of all six problems, a contestant who completely solved one problem was immediately given an honorable-mention award.
After all the papers have been marked jointly by an IMO committee and the country’s team leaders, cutoff scores for gold, silver and bronze medals were decided by the IMO jury. The total number of medals that were awarded was no more than roughly half the number of participants.
Philippine team
The country’s team was selected from the 20 national finalists of the Philippine Mathematical Olympiad. The finalists were invited to join the Math Olympiad Summer Camp (MOSC), which took place in April and May at the Institute of Mathematics of University of the Philippines Diliman and the Mathematics Department of Ateneo de Manila University.
This year the MOSC trainers were Eden (AdMU), Vallejo (UP Diliman), Jose Ernie Lope (UP Diliman), Ma. Carmen Amarra (UP Diliman), Christian Chanshio (AdMU), Gari Lincoln Chua (AdMU), Jerome Dimabayao (UP Diliman), Job Nable (AdMU), John Gabriel Pelias (UP Diliman), Adrian Reginald Sy (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Timothy Robin Teng (AdMU).
Eden is the country’s team leader and Vallejo, the deputy team leader.
The MOSC and the Philippine participation to the IMO are joint projects of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Science Education Institute and the Mathematical Society of the Philippines, and supported by the UP Diliman Institute of Mathematics and the AdMU Department of Mathematics.
Most prestigious math competition
The IMO is the most prestigious mathematics competition for high-school students and is the oldest of all the international science Olympiads.
This year, there were over 600 students coming from 111 countries. This makes the IMO the largest of all math competitions in terms of participating nations. Each country can send at most six contestants, accompanied by a team leader, a deputy team leader and possibly some observers.
The IMO was first held in 1959 in Romania, and has been held annually in various host countries. This year it was held in Hong Kong from July 6 to 16.
Image credits: Marco Melgar
2 comments
Ito ang dapat ipinagmamalaki ng bansa at hindi ‘yung mga ka-AlDumb-an. Magandang balita ‘to sa bansa natin na pagkanta at pag-arte lang ang kinikilalang talento ng karamihan.
“The six problems at the IMO were certainly very difficult that even the easiest was several times harder than the math problems that were usually encountered by high-school students.”
Matagal ko nang sinusubaybayan ang kompetisyon na ‘yan at talagang malulula ka sa mga tanong. Kahit sa ordinaryong college student itanong ‘yan, walang masasagot ni isa.