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Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

Charting the unusual career path of the Tokyo gold medallist

Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games - Olimpiadi Tokyo 2020 - Women's Road Race - Musashinonomori Park - Fuji Internetional Speedway 137 km - 25/07/2021 - Anna Kiesenhofer (Austria) - photo Luca Bettini/BettiniPhoto©2021

As an amateur rider, Anna Kiesenhofer ’s Olympics victory might have been a surprise, but she was not a rider to be underestimated.

In an extraordinary comeback story, the winner of the road race at the Tokyo Olympics left the sport at the end of 2017 when she found herself out of contract. She came into Tokyo without a pro team and left as Olympic Champion. 

The 30-year-old began her cycling career in 2014 after sustaining running injuries that prevented her from continuing her pursuits of triathlon and duathlon. She later joined a Catalan amateur team based near Girona and went on to win the Spanish National Cup overall in 2016.

That same year, Kiesenhofer entered the 2.2 Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l'Ardèche, which she had failed to finish the previous season due to a crash on the third stage. On the third stage of the 2016 edition, which featured a summit finish on Mont Ventoux, Kiesenhofer bridged to a breakaway group which, amongst others, contained the Polish rider Anna Plichta, who would later become her breakaway companion in Tokyo. 

Olympics: Shock gold for Anna Kiesenhofer in women's road race Olympics: Van Vleuten celebrates but mistakes silver for gold Deignan frustrated with 'weird agendas' in Olympic road race

After bridging, Keisenhofer then went on to attack the group at the bottom of Ventoux and won the 94.9km stage by 3:53. Kiesenhofer eventually took second overall in the race. 

The then-26-year-old signed her first professional contract with Lotto Soudal Ladies for the following season. However, after a series of DNFs, she ended her 2017 campaign in April and did not sign a contract for 2018, eventually taking a year off the bike.

In 2019, Kiesenhofer came back to the sport as an amateur rider, winning the Austrian national road race and time trial championships and placing 20th in the World Championship time trial. She has gone on to replicate her time trial win every year since, including 2021. Despite her results, Kiesenhofer was still without a professional contract going into the Olympics.

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Off the bike, the new Olympic Champion has a PhD in mathematics after studying at the Technical University of Vienna as well as at Cambridge University before completing her doctorate in Catalonia in 2016 alongside her racing career. She currently works at the University of Lausanne, combining research with teaching. 

Kiesenhofer’s specialism in time trialling coupled with her mathematics expertise make it all the more fitting that the Austrian won by solo breakaway and after a calculation error from the rest of the peloton. 

Before the race, Kiesenhofer had also been using her studies to prepare for the Games: earlier this month, she Tweeted a graph demonstrating her meticulous heat acclimation process in preparation for the temperatures in Tokyo. 

Kiesenhofer was the very first rider to attack in the Olympic road race, eventually forming a breakaway alongsize Carl Oberholzer (South Africa), Omer Shapira (Israel), Vera Looser (Namibia), and Anna Plichta (Poland) which went on to reach a gap of 11 minutes. After Looser and Oberholzer were dropped, Kiesenhofer attacked her two remaining breakaway companions and time-trialled her way to the finish for over 40km. 

After Shapira and Plichta were caught by the remainder of the peloton the rest of the riders seemed to believe that they were racing amongst themselves for Gold, unaware that Kiesenhofer was still in front. 

However, while it might have been a miscalculation from the rest of the peloton that allowed Kiesenhofer to maintain her lead of more than two minutes, her rivals' mistakes should not detract from the Austrian’s efforts and eventual win.

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math phd olympic gold

math phd olympic gold

A Mathematician Just Won an Olympic Gold Medal in Cycling

Austrian anna kiesenhofer was considered to be a dark horse in the race., nur ibrahim, published july 28, 2021.

A surprise winner emerged during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic women’s road race on July 25, 2021. Anna Kiesenhofer, a 30-year-old Austrian cyclist and mathematician, was considered a novice compared with her competitors, but she emerged victorious, beating the others by 75 seconds.

Kiesenhofer, who earned master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics and applied mathematics, respectively, had not been part of a professional cycling team since 2017.

She planned her own training, nutrition, and race strategy, saying her background as a mathematician helped. She also trained alone, and had no teammates.

Her competitors appeared to have been caught off guard by her getting ahead. Because she was such a dark horse, most of the seasoned cyclists seemed to let her get ahead in the beginning of the race, hoping to chase her down later. But she managed to maintain her spot at the front of the group. Through the 85-mile terrain, she persisted alongside world champions and cycling superstars until some didn’t even realize that she was ahead of them alone on the road. Some, who thought they had won, were confused to see she had beaten them to the finish line.

Kiesenhofer currently teaches and does postdoctoral research at a polytechnic institute in Lausanne, Switzerland. She came to the Olympics with no medal expectations.

Upon her victory, she said, "It was unrealistic, because nobody would have believed it. It was just incredible. I couldn't believe it — even crossing the line I couldn't believe it."

By Nur Ibrahim

Nur Nasreen Ibrahim is a reporter with experience working in television, international news coverage, fact checking, and creative writing.

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The story of Anna Kiesenhofer: From PhD in mathematics to being Olympics 2021 cycling champion

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Several records and surprise winners have popped up at the Olympics 2021. Anna Kiesenhofer's win in women's road cycling was one such odds-defying moment. The Austrian upset several favorites to grab gold in the event. Here is the inspiring journey of Anna Kiesenhofer.

Anna Kiesenhofer of #AUT takes #gold in the #CyclingRoad women’s road race on her #Olympics debut! #StrongerTogether | @tokyo2020 | @UCI_cycling pic.twitter.com/abW1tiNM4m — Olympics (@Olympics) July 25, 2021

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Kiesenhofer started off with triathlon

The Austrian actively participated in triathlon from 2011 to 2013. But the excruciating event requires extreme stamina, with injuries being a regular phenomenon. Quitting the triathlon, Kiesenhofer turned her focus to cycling in 2014.

Kiesenhofer is a PhD holder

Anna #Kiesenhofer of Austria, who is rendering the commentators speechless by leading the Women’s Road Race in the #Olympics , is also a mathematician with degrees from Vienna and Cambridge and a doctorate from the University of Catalonia. Hugely impressive. pic.twitter.com/WxnA7TaSPg — Timothy Phillips (@TSJPhillips) July 25, 2021

The newly crowned cycling champion holds a PhD in mathematics. She was a student at the University of Vienna and also went to Cambridge University. The cyclist acquired a doctorate from the University of Catalonia in 2016. She is currently pursuing post-doctoral research in mathematics at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Kiesenhofer came to the Olympics without a professional contract

Anna Kiesenhofer joined a Catalan team in 2016. She had a stunning race that year in a French competition that won her the silver medal. She signed her first professional contract with the Lotto-Soudal Ladies. But a string of disappointing results forced her to cancel the contract and take a year off.

One more rider will join our team in 2017: it's @AnnaKiesenhofer ! Welcome Anna! Read more: https://t.co/6V1YskUvS6 📷 @TCFIA pic.twitter.com/eEA2XTXKzy — Back-up LSL (@Backup_LSL) November 23, 2016

She made her comeback in 2019. Kiesenhofer won the time trial championships and came 20th in the World Championships time trial. Despite these performances, she couldn't earn another professional contract. With her win in Tokyo, this is bound to change.

Kiesenhofer's stunning victory

Anna Kiesenhofer has a PhD in mathematics and is now an Olympic champion 🥇She's bringing home Austria's first gold medal in cycling since 1896 🤯 pic.twitter.com/1ltmqE3bjN — SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) July 25, 2021

In a strategic move, Kiesenhofer pedaled way ahead of the peloton in Tokyo. She maintained a steady gap, leading other cyclists to believe they were in front. As she crossed the finish line, the rest of the field was still over a minute away. The Austrian just fell to the ground in jubilation as she celebrated a splendid win.

Also Read: Tokyo Olympics 2021 Schedule

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Tokyo Olympics: Austrian Math PhD Anna Kiesenhofer Shocks Favourites In Olympics Women's Cycling Road Race

Tokyo olympics: austrian mathematician anna kiesenhofer won the gold medal in women's road race cycling on sunday. kiesenhofer holds a doctorate in applied maths..

Tokyo Olympics: Austrian Math PhD Anna Kiesenhofer Shocks Favourites In Olympics Womens Cycling Road Race

  • Austrian mathematician Anna Kiesenhofer won gold in road race cycling
  • Kiesenhofer holds a doctorate in applied maths
  • She upset some of the favourites to win the race at Olympics on Sunday

Austrian mathematician Anna Kiesenhofer claimed a shock gold in a women's Olympic road race on Sunday that saw veteran Dutchwoman Annemiek van Vleuten mistakenly think she had won. The 30-year-old national time trial champion Kiesenhofer, who holds a doctorate in applied maths from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia having also studied at Vienna and Cambridge Universities, held her nerve after a long breakaway that the main peloton never managed to reel in.

Van Vleuten made up for a horrific crash at the Rio Games in 2016 with silver, although she admitted to a massive gaffe after thinking she had won when she crossed the line.

Italian Elisa Longo Borghini bagged bronze for the second consecutive Games.

"It's incredible, I couldn't believe it, even when I crossed the line," said Kiesenhofer.

"I planned to attack at kilometre zero and I was happy I could get in front. That is something I could not take for granted because I am not good at riding in the peloton.

"I am happy that I was not too scared and I just went for it. I attacked and with the group we worked more or less together -- it was helpful to have a group. I saw I was the strongest and I knew I had the climb before the long descent.

"I'm pretty good at descending so I got some more time and then it was just like a time trial to the finish."

Van Vleuten acknowledged that her raised-arm finish had been in vain.

"Yes, I thought I had won," she said. "I'm gutted about this, of course.

"At first I felt really stupid, but then the others (her teammates) also did not know who had won."

In a dramatic finale to a long day's ride, the peloton reeled in France's Juliette Labous and with under four kilometres to go, the gap to Kiesenhofer was cut to under three minutes.

First, two-time world champion Anna van der Breggen, who was targeting back-to-back golds after winning in Rio, and then Van Vleuten cut loose at the 2km mark, but it was much too late.

Kiesenhofer shot through the 1km run-in smiling and constantly looking over her shoulder in full knowledge that the gold was hers in a massive upset of the formbook.

Drenched in sweat, she collapsed to the ground after coming through the finish line, screaming in delight, hands on helmet in near-disbelief.

Drama for Van Vleuten

As with the men's road race, tens of thousands of Japanese fans lined the gruelling 137km route between Musashinonomori Park and the Fuji International Speedway that featured 2,692 metres of elevation gain.

There was earlier drama for Van Vleuten, who sustained concussion and a fractured spine in a horrific crash in Rio, after the 38-year-old took a tumble when Denmark's Emma Joergensen veered into her path after falling.

The 2019 world road race champion quickly regathered her senses and moved her way back into the peloton to take up the fight, with the women's race featuring a field of 67 riders compared to 130 in the men's road race won by Ecuador's Richard Carapaz on Saturday.

But Kiesenhofer held a five-minute advantage over Van Vleuten for large parts of the race, pushing the pace on a solo descent off Kagosaka Pass 40km from the finish to drop early breakaway partners, Israel's Omer Shapira and Polish rider Anna Plichta.

And with 24km to go, Van Vleuten was reeled back in by a 14-strong chasing group, stretched out as riders sought to surge.

Hitting speeds of 60km/h (40 miles-per-hour) on the Fuji race track, Labous was first to push out before the Dutch quartet manoeuvred into an attacking position, but they could do nothing about Kiesenhofer's surprise victory in the shadow of Mount Fuji.

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Math teacher schools Dutch masters to clinch Olympic cycling gold

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Math teacher schools Dutch masters to clinch Olympic cycling gold

SHOCKER. Anna Kiesenhofer (middle) wins Austria its first gold medal in any sport since 2004.

Christian Hartmann/Reuters

From time to time the Olympics throws up a tale of the unexpected, a rank outsider prevailing against all the odds.

But Anna Kiesenhofer’s victory in the women’s cycling road race on Sunday, July 25, takes some beating.

The 30-year-old Austrian mathematics lecturer riding in her first Olympics was virtually unknown to an elite peloton of seasoned pros, including a Dutch quartet boasting nine world road titles and golds at the last two Olympic road races.

They will not forget Kiesenhofer in a hurry, however, after she ambushed their plans for an orange procession in the foothills of Mount Fuji with a fairytale ride.

After escaping in a five-rider break right early in the 137km route, she then went solo for the last 40km in baking sunshine and held on for an audacious victory.

So unexpected was her gold medal that when Dutch three-times world champion Annemiek Van Vleuten crossed the line at the Fuji International Speeedway a minute and 15 seconds later, she assumed she was the winner.

The 38-year-old Van Vleuten soon realized her error and the realization that she had been beaten by a former triathlete who does not even ride professionally sunk in.

Van Vleuten, reigning champion Anna Van der Breggen, and Marianne Vos had been tipped to dominate the race.

But they were given a basic lesson by a rider who had only ever won one international race – make sure you do your homework.

Even when Kiesenhofer and fellow escapees Anna Plitcha of Poland and Omer Shapira of Israel reached the top of the day’s last climb with an eight-minute lead and around 50km left, confusion reigned in the pack.

Van Vleuten accelerated as if to hunt them down but was given no assistance by her mates who were more concerned with marking the big names in the pack than sharing the chase.

They later claimed they had a lack of information on how far Kiesenhofer was ahead and Van Vleuten did celebrate like a victory as she crossed the line, only to realize she had been beaten by a rider who gave a masterclass in race management.

“I mean I don’t need like high level math for this kind of calculations, but it’s kind of my mindset,” Kiesenhofer, who has a PhD in mathematics and lectures at the University of Lausanne, told reporters.

“But I planned the race, I looked at the time, at the time where I might pass at some kilometres, how much food I have to take in and so on. I planned to attack at kilometre zero and I was happy I could get in front.”

“That is something I could not take for granted because I am not good at riding in the peloton.”

Regular cycling followers are familiar with breakaways being ruthlessly pursued by the big fish, then swallowed.

Britain’s former Olympic champion Chris Boardaman, commentating for the BBC, threw off his natural support for compatriot Lizzie Deignan to will Kiesenhofer to victory in what he described as 1,000-1 gamble by the Austrian.

Yet Kiesenhofer, a national time trial champion, appeared to have it all under control as she gritted her teeth around the final laps of the Fuji race track.

“I am happy that I was not too scared and I just went for it,” she said. “I attacked and with the group we worked more or less together. I saw I was the strongest and I knew I had the climb before the long descent.”

“I’m pretty good at descending so I got some more time and then it was just like a time trial to the finish.”

She is the first Austrian to win a cycling gold since the Adool Schmal’s victory on the track at the 1896 Athens Games.

It was also Austria’s first gold in any sport since 2004.  – Rappler.com

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Anna Kiesenhofer wins Olympic Gold Medal

Congratulations to Dr Anna Kiesenhofer (M.A.St for Part III Maths in 2021) on her Olympic Gold Medal  in the Women's Individual Road Race.  Well done Anna!

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Tokyo Olympics: Dr Anna Kiesenhofer, The Math Professor Who Won Cycling Gold

Indiatimes

On several occasions, the Olympics throws up a tale of the underdog beating all odds. But Dr Anna Kiesenhofer’s victory in the women’s road race on July 26 is in a class by itself , as per Reuters. 

The 30-year-old Austrian mathematics lecturer who was taking part in her first Olympics was virtually unknown in the sport before this. Of course, now that is no longer the case.

They will not forget Kiesenhofer in a hurry, however, after she ambushed their plans for an orange procession in the foothills of Mount Fuji with a fairytale ride. 

After escaping in a five-rider break right early in the 137km route, she then went solo for the last 40km in baking sunshine and held on for an audacious victory. 

So unexpected was her gold medal that when Dutch three-times world champion Annemiek Van Vleuten crossed the line at the Fuji International Speeedway one minute and 15 seconds later she assumed she was the winner. 

Tokyo Olympics

The 38-year-old Van Vleuten soon realised her error and the realisation that she had been beaten by a former triathlete who does not even ride professionally sunk in. 

Van Vleuten, reigning champion Anna Van der Breggen and Marianne Vos had been tipped to dominate the race. 

But they were given a basic lesson by a rider who had only ever won one international race — make sure you do your homework. 

Even when Kiesenhofer and fellow escapees Anna Plitcha of Poland and Israel’s Omer Shapira reached the top of the day’s last climb with an eight-minute lead and around 50km left, confusion reigned in the pack. 

Van Vleuten accelerated as if to hunt them down but was given no assistance by her mates who were more concerned with marking the big names in the pack than sharing the chase. 

Tokyo Olympics

They later claimed they had a lack of information on how far Kiesenhofer was ahead and Van Vleuten did celebrate like a victory as she crossed the line, only to realise she had been beaten by a rider who gave a masterclass in race management. 

”I mean I don’t need like high level math for for this kind of calculations, but it’s kind of my mindset,” Kiesenhofer, who has a PhD in mathematics and lectures at the University of Lausanne, told reporters. 

”But I planned the race, I looked at the time, at the time where I might pass at some kilometres, how much food I have to take in and so on. I planned to attack at kilometre zero and I was happy I could get in front. 

”That is something I could not take for granted because I am not good at riding in the peloton.” 

Regular cycling followers are familiar with breakaways being ruthlessly pursued by the big fish, then swallowed. 

Britain’s former Olympic champion Chris Boardaman, commentating for the BBC, threw off his natural support for compatriot Lizzie Deignan to will Kiesenhofer to victory in what he described as 1,000-1 gamble by the Austrian. 

Yet Kiesenhofer, a national time trial champion, appeared to have it all under control as she gritted her teeth around the final laps of the Fuji race track. 

”I am happy that I was not too scared and I just went for it,” she said. ”I attacked and with the group we worked more or less together. I saw I was the strongest and I knew I had the climb before the long descent. 

”I’m pretty good at descending so I got some more time and then it was just like a time trial to the finish.” 

She is the first Austrian to win a cycling gold since the Adool Schmal’s victory on the track at the 1896 Athens Games. 

It was also Austria’s first gold in any sport since 2004.   

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Whether math adds up for US men's Olympic team remains to be seen | Opinion

math phd olympic gold

Editor’s note: Simone Biles made her third Olympic squad , highlighting the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team for the Paris Games.

MINNEAPOLIS — Math is supposed to be black and white, leaving no room for debate or questions.

Sometimes, however, even the most straightforward of things will rip your heart out. Leave you wondering if the numbers did, in fact, lie.

The five men who made the U.S. gymnastics team for the Paris Olympics on Saturday night did so because a computer program said their three best scores across four nights of competition made for the highest-scoring team. Same when their scores from all four nights of competition were considered.

It’s a system the athletes and their coaches pushed for, wanting decisions to be made more on data and less on subjectivity.

And yet, it still seems lacking. Even knowing the scoring format for team finals requires a team that’s more jigsaw puzzle than cookie cutter, it’s hard to look at the final standings and not wonder if, math aside, this is the right team.

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“This is a great team,” said Brett McClure, the men’s high-performance director.

But is it the best team?

“Based on the results from two competitions, these are the guys that were the best. Absolutely. For this process,” McClure said.

That is not exactly definitive, something this system was supposed to negate.

Because all three scores on each event will count in team finals at the Paris Olympics — there's no dropping a lowest score, as there is in qualifying — it's not as simple as taking the top five all-around gymnasts in rank orders for teams with designs on a medal. Instead, the medal hopefuls build squads that can put up big scores on every event and do it consistently, and sometimes that means bypassing the rank order.

The Americans are taking Stephen Nedoroscik, a specialist on pommel horse , traditionally one of U.S. men’s weakest events. But Nedoroscik did not put up crazy numbers on horse — he actually finished behind Patrick Hoopes at trials — and acknowledged watering down his routine Thursday night because of nerves. He also cannot do another event even if someone else gets injured.

Shane Wiskus is an alternate despite finishing third at the Olympic trials after the meet of his life. Ditto for Khoi Young, who is the team’s best vaulter and was third at the U.S. championships last month but had a rough meet at trials. There are guys staying home who can, and did, put up 15s or better, but weren't as good across the board.

“I had the best two days of competition of my life. That’s all I can do,” Wiskus said.

Asked how he felt for that to not be good enough, Wiskus replied, “Numb.”

“I feel like I deserved (to make) it,” he said.

There is no good way to crush someone’s Olympic dream. Whether it’s a sport decided by the first across the finish line, a computer program or some combination of head and heart, the idea of making the Olympics is what has kept these athletes in the gym, in the pool and on the track since they were kids, and nothing will lessen the sting of coming up short. Someone is always going to be devastated.

Making it make sense is the least they are owed, however. Sometimes, that requires more than pure math.

“I like the data. I think there should still be a little more discretionary (criteria),” said Sam Mikulak, a three-time Olympian who now coaches at EVO, where Wiskus, Nedoroscik and Brody Malone train.

“There’s been a lot of talk and feedback between the coaches and staff. I think going strictly off data and the judges’ panel, and that’s who controls who picks the team, that’s something we still want to work on,” Mikulak said. “It would be nice to be able to be a little more malleable in the coming years.”

The final proof will be on the medals podium in Paris, of course. If the U.S. men get their first team medal since 2008, no one will give a second thought to the makeup of the team.

If they don’t, everything will be open to question.

Even the math.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media.

Evan Chen《陳誼廷》

Email

  •   CV

Teaching (otis),   •   otis excerpts,   •   mock aime,   •   for beginners,   •   for coaches,   •   problems,   •   mop,   •   elmo,   •   usemo, personal/hobbies,   •   puzzle hunts,   •   games,   •   photos, youtube/twitch,   •   discord, plz learn code,   •   filesys concepts,   •   learning path,   •   latex style,   •   asy guide, publications,   •   egmo book,   •   napkin (v1.5),   •   course notes, recommendations,   •   mentors,   •   quotes,   •   faqs,   •   rec letters.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Homepage of Evan Chen

Self-portrait of Evan Chen.

This is the homepage of Evan Chen (陳誼廷), known also as vEnhance on many websites. I’m a math grad student at Mass Tech under Wei Zhang , and also a math olympiad coach , volunteer , and YouTuber on the side.

In the boring real world, my research interests are in number theory and combinatorics. You can download my CV , see my publications and research , or read my university transcript . Outside of math, I hate cooking.

I am on GitHub , Instagram , Twitch , and WordPress . You can also see my personal page for trivia about myself. Fellow Linux geeks can download my GPG key from ubuntu , opengpg , MIT , or GitHub .

If you are a high school student interested in math olympiads, you may visit the beginner’s page , my collection of handouts , or my archive of past problems and solutions .

Diagram to Taiwan TST 2014 problem.

About Evan #

Evan is a math PhD student at MIT, and a math olympiad coach. In addition to helping train the United States team, Evan runs his own training program while streaming olympiad math for public entertainment .

As a high school student, Evan was an IMO gold medalist and a winner of the 2014 USA math olympiad, which he took from 12:30am to 5am in Taiwan. He also wrote the popular textbook Euclidean Geometry in Math Olympiads while in high school, which was published in 2016.

Outside of math and teaching, Evan’s hobbies include Arch Linux, competitive Hanabi and puzzle hunts .

math phd olympic gold

Department of Statistics and Data Science

Nathan chen, olympic gold medalist.

math phd olympic gold

Statistics and Data Science major Nathan Chen wins Olympic Gold 

All is Golden for Nathan Chen ’24 by Hamera Shabbir

It was a Nathan Chen ’24 masterclass as he earned the highest short-program score in Olympic history, won silver with Team USA and finished with a flourish to win gold.

Nathan Chen ’24 is golden. 

Taking to the ice last in the men’s singles figure skating competition Thursday at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the statistics and data science major proved himself to be the Quad King, three-time world champion and now, Olympic gold medal winner. 

Chen capped off his record-breaking Olympic run with a gold medal in men’s singles skating, adding to a silver medal won in the team event. He first took to the ice in Beijing by  lifting his team to the top  of the men’s singles short program while  setting a personal best  of 111.71. Not satisfied with that result, Chen proceeded to  break the world record  in the men’s singles short program, recording yet another personal best at 113.97. On Thursday, Chen capped off his Olympic run by earning 218.63 points in the free skate, launching himself to a combined score of 332.60 and first-place finish. 

“I mean it’s a whirlwind right now — everything is happening so fast,” Chen said to NBC after his gold medal winning performance. “That program is really fun to skate. At the end I really just had a blast out there and I am really grateful. When I finished the last jump, I thought I was pretty close [to the win].”

Skating to a medley from the Elton John biopic “Rocketman” and wearing his nebulous Vera Wang costume, Chen opened his performance with his noted quad jumps. He strung together a quad lutz followed by a quad toe loop-euler-single flip followed by a triple axel and triple lutz, triple toe-loop combination. Chen established his proficiency at jumps before launching into an artistic dance break, a smile painted wide across his face as the crowd cheered. He ended the performance at the center of the rink as delegations across the stadium leapt out of their seats into a standing ovation. 

With Thursday’s majestic performance, Chen has finally secured the gold medal that has eluded him since the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. At the age of 18, Chen entered the Games as a medal favorite but came up short, leaving Korea with only a team bronze and fifth place individual ranking. Multiple errors in the short program knocked him down to 17th, but he rebounded in the free skate with a history-making attempt at six quads, five of which were successful. 

After falling short at Pyeongchang, Chen maintained world-class showings through titles and new records. Just one month after his fifth-place finish, he won the first of his three World Figure Skating Championships. He went on to claim his second of three Grand Prix Final titles in December 2018 and maintained his fine form since as the U.S. National Champion. 

Chen’s biggest challenge entering the Beijing Games was his peers from Japan. Yuzuru Hanyu, 27, is a two-time Olympic champion and prefaced the competition declaring his intent to land a quadruple axel — a feat that has never been successfully landed in competition. Hanyu attempted the jump twice in the free skate, but was unable to stick the landing either time and ultimately settled for fourth. Yuma Kagiyama of Japan earned silver with a combined score of 310.05 while fellow countryman Shoma Uno secured bronze with a combined score of 293.

“You can’t imagine how it feels,” Chen said of his Olympic-winning moment  in a post-skate press conference . “This means the world to me. I have the family connection [to Beijing]. It’s amazing to have this opportunity to do it here.” 

Nathan Chen is a student in Jonathan Edwards College. 

~Yale News, 2/10/22

HAMERA SHABBIR   

An illustration featuring a gold medal with a blue and white and red ribbon, with the medal covered in computer circuits, with colorful geometric shapes making up the background.

A.I.’s Latest Challenge: the Math Olympics

Watch out, nerdy high schoolers, AlphaGeometry is coming for your mathematical lunch.

Credit... Christian Gralingen

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Siobhan Roberts

By Siobhan Roberts

Reported from Stanford, Calif.

  • Published Jan. 17, 2024 Updated Jan. 22, 2024

For four years, the computer scientist Trieu Trinh has been consumed with something of a meta-math problem: how to build an A.I. model that solves geometry problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad, the annual competition for the world’s most mathematically attuned high-school students.

Last week Dr. Trinh successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on this topic at New York University; this week, he described the result of his labors in the journal Nature. Named AlphaGeometry , the system solves Olympiad geometry problems at nearly the level of a human gold medalist.

While developing the project, Dr. Trinh pitched it to two research scientists at Google, and they brought him on as a resident from 2021 to 2023. AlphaGeometry joins Google DeepMind’s fleet of A.I. systems, which have become known for tackling grand challenges. Perhaps most famously, AlphaZero , a deep-learning algorithm, conquered chess in 2017. Math is a harder problem, as the number of possible paths toward a solution is sometimes infinite; chess is always finite.

“I kept running into dead ends, going down the wrong path,” said Dr. Trinh, the lead author and driving force of the project.

The paper’s co-authors are Dr. Trinh’s doctoral adviser, He He, at New York University; Yuhuai Wu, known as Tony, a co-founder of xAI (formerly at Google) who in 2019 had independently started exploring a similar idea; Thang Luong, the principal investigator, and Quoc Le, both from Google DeepMind.

Dr. Trinh’s perseverance paid off. “We’re not making incremental improvement,” he said. “We’re making a big jump, a big breakthrough in terms of the result.”

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U.S. Places First at International Mathematics Competition in U.K.

By Jocelyn Duffy jhduffy(through)andrew.cmu.edu

  • Mellon College of Science
  • jhduffy(through)andrew.cmu.edu
  • 412-268-9982

The U.S. team tied for first place with China at the 60th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), which was held in Bath, United Kingdom, July 11-22. The six U.S. team members, Vincent Huang (a returning member from 2017 and 2018), Luke Robitaille, Colin Tang, Edward Wan, Brandon Wang and Daniel Zhu also won gold medals for their individual high scores in the Olympiad, known as the world championship mathematics competition for high school students.

The U.S. team is coached by Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences  Po-Shen Loh . Under Loh’s leadership, the team also placed first at the IMO in 2015, 2016 and 2018. 

Each year, the six members of the team make their final preparations for the IMO at Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus at the  Mathematical Association of America ’s Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program (MAA’s MOP), where they train with some of the world’s best high school math students.

"These high school students become more and more impressive each year, often already coming with knowledge that I myself only encountered in graduate school. It is an honor to have the opportunity to serve as a guide as they learn how to turn their skills into impact," Loh said.

Approximately 80 students are invited to MOP on the basis of their exceptional performance on national and international Math Olympiad competitions, and top-­finishing countries are invited to send two of their top students. Funded by the Benter Foundation, the Allegheny Foundation, CMU’s President’s Office and the Hillman Foundation through the Henry L. Hillman President's Chair, and CMU’s Department of Mathematical Sciences, the addition of international students gives MOP participants the chance for a multi-cultural experience similar to what the IMO team encounters at the competition.

This year, Carnegie Mellon had a few additional connections to the competition. One of the six problems on the IMO was authored by recent mathematical sciences graduate David Altizio, who will begin his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this fall.

Additionally, two members of international IMO teams will begin their studies at Carnegie Mellon this fall in the Department of Mathematical Sciences . Howard Halim, a member of the Canadian IMO team, will start his undergraduate degree and Ting-Wei Chao, one of the assistant coaches for Taiwan's IMO team, will begin his Ph.D.

“The Mathematical Association of America is proud to congratulate the students who competed in the International Mathematical Olympiad for the United States of America on their first-place finish in the challenging math competition,” said Michael Pearson, executive director of the Mathematical Association of America. “We are proud to organize the U.S. IMO team through the MAA American Mathematics Competitions that strengthen the nation’s mathematical problem-solvers. In this competition and their future endeavors, these students will help achieve our vision of a society that values the power and beauty of mathematics and fully realizes its potential to promote human flourishing.”

The United States of America will host the 62nd International Mathematical Olympiad in 2021 in Washington, D.C., and it will be organized by the Mathematical Association of America.

The New York Times

Wordplay | u.s. team wins first place at international math olympiad.

Wordplay - New York Times Blog

U.S. Team Wins First Place at International Math Olympiad

U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team members Ankan Bhattacharya, Allen Liu, Ashwin Sah, Michael Kural, Yuan Yao, Junyao Peng, and coach Po-Shen Loh.

The United States has won the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad, the world’s most prestigious problem-solving competition for high school students.

The competition, held July 6-16 in Hong Kong, included teams from over 100 countries. The winning U.S. team score was 214 out of a possible 252, ahead of the Republic of Korea (207) and China (204). Rounding out the top ten were Singapore (196), Taiwan (175), North Korea (168), Russian Federation (165), United Kingdom (165), Hong Kong (161) and Japan (156).

Congratulations to the U.S. team: students Ankan Bhattacharya, Michael Kural, Allen Liu, Junyao Peng, Ashwin Sah, and Yuan Yao, head coach Po-Shen Loh, and deputy coach Razvan Gelca.

This week we’ll be featuring two of the problems from this year’s six-problem test, with our discussion moderated by Po-Shen Loh himself.

Here are the two problems — our challenges for this week.

The first challenge is IMO 2016 Problem 2 :

Find all positive integers n for which each cell of an n × n table can be filled with one of the letters I , M and O in such a way that:
• in each row and each column, one third of the entries are I , one third are M and one third are O ; and • in any diagonal, if the number of entries on the diagonal is a multiple of three, then one third are I , one third are M , and one third are O .

Our second challenge is a bit more difficult. Here’s an introduction by Dr. Loh:

This year’s IMO featured an unusually large number of non-standard problems which combined multiple areas of mathematics into the same investigation. The most challenging problem turned out to be #3, which was a fusion of algebra, geometry, and number theory. On that question, the USA achieved the highest total score among all countries, ultimately contributing to its overall victory — a historic repeat #1 finish (2015 + 2016), definitively breaking the 21-year drought since the last #1 finish in 1994, and the first consecutive #1 finish in the USA’s record.

Let’s give it a try. Here’s IMO 2016 Problem 3 :

Let P = A 1  A 2 …   A k  be a convex polygon on the plane. The vertices A 1,  A 2, …,   A k have integral coordinates and lie on a circle. Let S be the area of P . An odd positive integer n is given such that the squares of the side lengths of P are integers divisible by n . Prove that 2 S is an integer divisible by n .

That concludes this week’s challenges. If you’d like to try your hand at the remaining four problems in this year’s IMO exam, you’ll find the complete test here . To obtain a perfect score for the test, you must successfully provide the correct answer for each problem, and also prove that each answer is correct.

A Short Conversation with U.S. Team Coach Po-Shen Loh

Talking math with U.S. coach Po-Shen Loh in Hong Kong after the 2016 International Mathematical Olympiad.

I had the good fortune to be in Hong Kong last week for the IMO, and caught up with U.S. coach Po-Shen Loh after the event. Following are excerpts from our conversation:

Gary Antonick : Congratulations on your victory. Were you surprised to win?

Po-Shen Loh : The win was a surprise, and now it means the future will be stronger for the US. Something interesting happened this year: the US training program students were estimating the chance that this year’s US team would win the IMO. Their estimate was 40%. To me, that number is huge. If you did that kind of odds three years ago, you wouldn’t have had that high a percent. There are a lot of very good teams out there. What it means is that last year’s victory has given a big confidence boost.

How you perform on something is not just a function of what you know, but how intensely you engage during the activity. This year, the US team went in with a very contagious We Can Do It attitude. The United States has won before, so winning is possible.

This year was actually a rebuilding year for the USA — four of the team members are not in their final year of school — but they were able to still win.

G.A. : This year’s test seemed to emphasize creativity more than previous years. How would you say the problems were creative?

P-S.L : This year’s problems — particularly #3, which we shared above — fused different subjects together in creative ways. Whenever you have fusion, as in cuisine, then there is creativity involved.

G.A. : How was the U.S. team selected and trained?

P-S.L : Students are selected from an original pool of hundreds of thousands of entrants through a series of selection exams run by the Mathematical Association of America, the official organizers for the USA participation in the IMO. The six student team is then brought together prior to the IMO for a three-and-one-half-week training program at Carnegie Mellon University, which is also organized by the MAA.

Participating in the training camp will be the current year’s six-person team, along with fifty-four additional students who might be on the team in future years. This year we also included ten international students — students on IMO teams from other countries. We paid for their airfare, hotel, food and teaching.

G.A. : Wait — you trained some of the team members from other IMO teams?

P-S.L. : Ten of them, including several gold medalists. Two of the four gold medalists on the Singapore team, for example, trained with the US. One of them commented that one of the techniques he used to solve one of the problems in this year’s IMO was from our training program.

This was such a big success that next year, we’re inviting 30 internationals.

G.A. : Do any other countries do this?

P-S.L. : Not at this scale. It’s counter-intuitive. First, bringing in the international students gives the top US students peers. They always tell you — if you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re in the wrong room. So we bring in these peers, who are actually at the same level as these top six. Of course that increases the level.

Secondly, when the students come to the IMO, there’s no culture shock. You’ve suddenly landed and you look over there — oh my goodness. There’s the South Koreans. There’s the Chinese. There’s the Singaporeans. These guys must be amazingly good.

I remember when I went to the IMO that was exactly the experience I had.

But if you train together you’ve already been in this international experience for the prior three and a half weeks.

G.A. : Who thought of this idea to train so many members of so many different teams?

P-S.L. : My idea. I think of some pretty strange stuff.

G.A. : What does IMO training look like?

P-S.L. : We have math class from 8:30 in the morning until about 3:00 PM, with time for lunch. And then a seminar at 7:30 PM for an hour.

Every other day the day runs until 6:00 because we have a practice test.

There’s a video about this: An Inside Look at the MAA’s Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program .

At this event that we run — it’s a very different atmosphere. You’re not there to beat anyone. You just work together for 3 1/2 weeks.

How does the US IMO training program differ from other training programs?

The US program did not stress that much mechanics. That was actually a worry that some people had — if you come to the US training program, you might not get enough training.

G.A. : What separates the top performers in the IMO from the rest of those at this event?

P-S.L. : I don’t want to say it’s genetic. A lot of people say you must be born with something very special. Maybe once in a while, you may see something like that. But people are basically the same.

Here’s an example. Suppose I tell you to memorize the following:

First of all, what is gravity?

Now — how about the following? Could you memorize and rewrite the same way? Impossible.

প্রথম সব, মাধ্যাকর্ষণ কি ?

But it’s not impossible. All the people in Bangladesh can do it.

What I’m referring to — you have some concepts in your brain called letters and words. When you look at the English version of this question about gravity, your brain is not memorizing where the squiggles are. Your brain has conceptualized it already, and then compresses the information. You have no problem dealing with it.

So — what’s the difference between a top performer and everyone else? If you look at mathematics — if you’ve built the concept structure, when you reason about the problem, you’re reasoning in large concepts. You’re working with large concepts and putting them together.

It’s not a miracle. It’s just about whether your brain has partitioned the concept map, and whether you can deal with entire concepts as primitive arguments as apposed to working with each little letter at a time.

G.A. : Thank you, Po.

For a gentler introduction to some concepts in this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad, National Coach Po-Shen Loh highlights several through his puzzles this week on Expii here .

Want to stay in shape for next year’s Math Olympiad? Each week, Po-Shen Loh posts a set of five questions on Expii, ramping up in difficulty from accessible to intense. In collaboration with the recent film The Man Who Knew Infinity  about the intriguing mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, who overcame impossible odds to change the future of mathematics, they are scouring the world for undiscovered mathematical ability, in the Spirit of Ramanujan Talent Search .

That’s it for this week. As always, once you’re able to read comments for this post, use Gary Hewitt’s Enhancer to correctly view formulas and graphics. (Click here for an intro.) And send your favorite puzzles to [email protected].

Check reader comments on Friday for solutions and a recap by Po-Shen Loh.

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Can Tran Thanh Trung, 29, will be teaching and conducting research at the University of Science, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City.

Vu Hai Quan, the university’s director, praised Trung as an outstanding individual with a desire to guide the younger generation and contribute to his homeland.

"Trung had already expressed his wish to return home to work around four or five years ago. I fully support him, and with the VNU350 project, he will be facilitated by Vietnam National University (VNU), Ho Chi Minh City to develop and contribute to the country," Quan said last week.

"I believe Trung's decision to return has great significance and will inspire many young scientists."

The VNU350 project of the VNU, HCMC aims to attract scientists capable of independent teaching and research, contributing to the goal of making this university one of the top research institutions in Asia.

Can Tran Thanh Trung, the 2013 International Mathematics Olympiad gold medalist and valedictorian of Mathematics at Duke University. Photo by Ho Chi Minh City National University

Trung will be assigned research topics and funding in the fields of cryptography, security, and blockchain applications.

The Vietnam National University will also support him in realizing his idea of establishing a center to train high school students, helping them access new knowledge and study at top universities worldwide.

A former student of the specialized Math class at the High School for the Gifted under the VNU, HCMC, Trung won the gold medal at the 2013 International Math Olympiad (IMO) in Colombia, becoming one of 57 Vietnamese students who have won gold in half a century of the country participating in the IMO.

He then attended Duke University on a full scholarship and graduated as the valedictorian in Mathematics in 2018, before pursuing his Ph.D. at Caltech.

Caltech is a leading global university in basic sciences and engineering, and has one with the highest per capita Nobel Prize winners in the U.S., known for its stringent admission criteria, with a total student body of only about 2,000, according to British publication Times Higher Education.

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Myths about Olympiads

This post is motivated by a comment I saw on a post here on r/math , which expressed a thought that has occurred to me a few times as a PhD student in mathematics who is involved in preparing students for Olympiads. The post has since been deleted (or at least I cannot find it) but I think the content of that comment should be preserved and further discussed.

Without further ado, the point of this post is the following claim. I would like to know whether people agree or not.

CLAIM: There is a significant amount of people in the mathematics research community that have a completely misguided and wrong impression of what Math Olympiads are, but that nonetheless confidently treat them as some sort of “evil force” and insist on bombing Olympiad contestants who ask for career advice with mantras like “Research/University Mathematics has nothing to do with Olympiads” which mostly come from a place of ignorance.

Let me elaborate. I don’t deny that there are differences between Olympiad math and Research/University math. I dedicated a significant amount of my life to either of them, so I am aware of the differences. However, on closer inspection, one finds quite often that the people who use catchphrases like the one I quoted above are thinking of “differences” that actually do not exist.

I have seen this phenomenon here on Reddit. A while ago there was a post on this sub from a young student who had participated somewhat extensively on Olympiads (at the IMO level or close) asking for university advice of some sort (I think he was having some second thoughts about majoring in math). Immediately he received the usual load of “Bear in mind, Olympiads and higher math are different, yadda yadda yadda”, but at least one of the answers went beyond that. The replier, after emphasizing strongly how different the two flavors of Math were, left a suggestion of a book for the student to read, to discover whether he really liked “real math”. The title of the book? “Introduction to proofs”.

The idea that a student who did IMO-level Olympiads could possibly learn something from a book with this title strikes me as delusional, to say the least. And yet this was not the first time I witnessed this phenomenon. A while ago I was at a summer school and the subject of olympiads, specifically of university students who had done Olympiad work, came up somehow. A friend of mine immediately said the inevitable “Oh, but being good at Olympiads and being good at research are completely different things…”. I then mentioned something along the lines of Olympiad students already being familiar with the notion of proof by the time they start undergrad, and my friend looked startled and said “Wait, in Olympiads students have to write proofs?!”

There is a blog post by Evan Chen that somewhat addresses this topic: https://blog.evanchen.cc/2016/08/13/against-the-research-vs-olympiads-mantra/ . But even his stance is not strong enough, in my opinion, to address the general phenomenon. About the “research vs. olympiads mantra”, Evan Chen says: “It’s true. And I wish people would stop saying it.” But my point is that, in a certain sense, it is NOT true; that is, not in the way that people who say it mean it.

One may enumerate several actual differences between Olympiads and research. For example, one may point out topic-related differences: an Olympiad student has to learn, say, Euclidean Geometry, which is irrelevant for modern research. I have witnessed cases of people who were reasonably good at Olympiads and lost motivation during their undergrad simply because there were no longer medals to be won; this may be an important difference for some.

But these differences are nowhere near as strong as seems to be the widespread belief among much of the math research community, where Olympiad training seems to be regarded as “learning a bunch of rote tricks to solve some uninteresting exercises quickly”. I am always baffled when I hear something like that: what tricks?! Have these people ever spent some time trying to solve an IMO P6 by mindlessly applying rote tricks? Unless by “tricks” one means basic problem-solving principles, like “solving particular cases first”, “looking for hidden symmetries”, etc., which - guess what! - also underlie a lot of actual math research…

I believe this matters because this culture can be actually damaging to Olympiad students who, seeing these comments coming from people with authority in the field, are discouraged from pursuing higher math. In reality, although Olympiads and higher math are different things, they are - oh the blasphemy! - close enough to one another that someone who enjoyed the former has a reasonably high chance of also enjoying the latter.

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  1. Anna Kiesenhofer is a math genius who just pulled off one of the

    Instead, she powered through the 147-kilometer course, battling blistering heat and grueling humidity to secure Austria's first cycling Olympic gold medal since 1896. "It was pretty extreme ...

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  3. The Math Ph.D. Who Just Shocked Olympic Cycling

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  4. Anna Kiesenhofer

    Anna Kiesenhofer (born 14 February 1991) is an Austrian professional cyclist and mathematician, who rides for UCI Women's WorldTeam Roland Cycling. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).. Kiesenhofer gained fame when she won the gold medal in the women's individual road race at the 2020 Summer Olympics, the first Summer ...

  5. About

    Tokyo 2021 Olympic Gold Medal. Me, my brother and my sister ... I got into elite road racing during my PhD in Spain and won my first UCI race in 2016, the same year in which I completed my PhD. ... 2011-2012: Master in Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, UK. 2012-2016: PhD at UPC (Barcelona).

  6. A Mathematician Just Won an Olympic Gold Medal in Cycling

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  8. Tokyo Olympics: Austrian Math PhD Anna Kiesenhofer Shocks Favourites In

    Tokyo Olympics: Austrian mathematician Anna Kiesenhofer won the gold medal in women's road race cycling on Sunday. Kiesenhofer holds a doctorate in applied maths.

  9. The Math Ph.D. Who Just Shocked Olympic Cycling

    The Math Ph.D. Who Just Shocked Olympic Cycling. By. Jason Gay. Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria crosses the line to win the gold medal in the women's cycling road race. (Christophe Ena/Associated ...

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  11. Anna Kiesenhofer wins Olympic Gold Medal

    Anna Kiesenhofer wins Olympic Gold Medal. Congratulations to Dr Anna Kiesenhofer (M.A.St for Part III Maths in 2021) on her Olympic Gold Medal in the Women's Individual Road Race. Well done Anna!

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    She is the first Austrian to win a cycling gold since the Adool Schmal's victory on the track at the 1896 Athens Games. It was also Austria's first gold in any sport since 2004. On several occasions, the Olympics throws up a tale of the underdog beating all odds. But Dr Anna Kiesenhofer's victory in the women's road race on July 26 is ...

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    Evan is a math PhD student at MIT, and a math olympiad coach. In addition to helping train the United States team, Evan runs his own training program while streaming olympiad math for public entertainment. As a high school student, Evan was an IMO gold medalist and a winner of the 2014 USA math olympiad, which he took from 12:30am to 5am in Taiwan.

  15. List of International Mathematical Olympiad participants

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  16. Nathan Chen, Olympic Gold Medalist

    February 10, 2022. Statistics and Data Science major Nathan Chen wins Olympic Gold. All is Golden for Nathan Chen '24 by Hamera Shabbir. It was a Nathan Chen '24 masterclass as he earned the highest short-program score in Olympic history, won silver with Team USA and finished with a flourish to win gold. Nathan Chen '24 is golden.

  17. A.I.'s Latest Challenge: the Math Olympics

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  19. Tokyo Olympics 2020: mathematics lecturer & PhD wins gold

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  20. U.S. Places First at International Mathematics Competition in U.K

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  21. U.S. Team Wins First Place at International Math Olympiad

    The United States has won the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad, the world's most prestigious problem-solving competition for high school students. The competition, held July 6-16 in Hong Kong, included teams from over 100 countries. The winning U.S. team score was 214 out of a possible 252, ahead of the Republic of Korea (207) and ...

  22. Caltech PhD and Math Olympiad gold medalist returns home to inspire

    A former student of the specialized Math class at the High School for the Gifted under the VNU, HCMC, Trung won the gold medal at the 2013 International Math Olympiad (IMO) in Colombia, becoming one of 57 Vietnamese students who have won gold in half a century of the country participating in the IMO.

  23. Myths about Olympiads : r/math

    MOD. Myths about Olympiads. This post is motivated by a comment I saw on a post here on r/math, which expressed a thought that has occurred to me a few times as a PhD student in mathematics who is involved in preparing students for Olympiads. The post has since been deleted (or at least I cannot find it) but I think the content of that comment ...