In recent years the US and Russia - once the undisputed world champions of these competitions - have been beaten by China again and again in pretty much all of the International Science Olympiads (a testament to the rise of China, if you ask me) but the US has now won its second consecutive win this year on the IMO:
The really funny thing about this, though, is what's been happening to the US Olympiad teams:
Notice something?
East Asian Americans now dominate this as much as Black Americans dominate certain sports.
Oh and to put things in perspective on these competitions - there have been Fields medalists, i.e. winners of the equivalent of the mathematics Nobel prize, who have 'only' managed to win a Bronze or Silver medal in the IMO. In other words they select for people who are 1 in millions in terms of mathematical and science talent. So these competitions are of significance, and are much more important for civilization than sports.
If you look at the countries statistics on the IMO site (which I've checked are typical of other Science Olympiads too), you will find some other odd things and then not so odd things - for example, India actually does relatively badly on them while Iran does very well (in fact the only female Fields medalist is an Iranian-American woman, Maryam Mirzakhani, who won Gold twice including a perfect score on the IMO).
Aside from Iran and Turkey (which does decently but is outclassed by Iran) - all other Muslim countries completely fail.
South-East Asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand also have respectable performances.
Eastern European countries actually do better than western European countries (probably due to political correctness here with respect to gifted education).
Latin American countries range in performance from mediocre to decent.
African countries mostly don't even compete and the ones that do perform worse than the Muslim countries.
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The really funny thing about this, though, is what's been happening to the US Olympiad teams:
You must be registered for see links
Notice something?
East Asian Americans now dominate this as much as Black Americans dominate certain sports.
Oh and to put things in perspective on these competitions - there have been Fields medalists, i.e. winners of the equivalent of the mathematics Nobel prize, who have 'only' managed to win a Bronze or Silver medal in the IMO. In other words they select for people who are 1 in millions in terms of mathematical and science talent. So these competitions are of significance, and are much more important for civilization than sports.
If you look at the countries statistics on the IMO site (which I've checked are typical of other Science Olympiads too), you will find some other odd things and then not so odd things - for example, India actually does relatively badly on them while Iran does very well (in fact the only female Fields medalist is an Iranian-American woman, Maryam Mirzakhani, who won Gold twice including a perfect score on the IMO).
Aside from Iran and Turkey (which does decently but is outclassed by Iran) - all other Muslim countries completely fail.
South-East Asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand also have respectable performances.
Eastern European countries actually do better than western European countries (probably due to political correctness here with respect to gifted education).
Latin American countries range in performance from mediocre to decent.
African countries mostly don't even compete and the ones that do perform worse than the Muslim countries.
