Un-diverse US team ties for first place at International Math Olympiad
Quick! Call the diversity police! For the fourth time in five years the US team placed first in the International Mathematical Olympiad, this year tying for first place with China.
The six U.S. team members also won gold medals for their individual high scores on the Olympiad, known as the world championship mathematics competition for high school students.
However, this very dominating winning team does not look like America -- all members are males, 5 Asians and one Caucasian, judging by appearances.
Photo credit: Carnegie-Mellon University
Pictured above: 2019 U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team members from left: Edward Wan, Daniel Zhu, Brandon Wang, Colin Shanmo Tang, Luke Robitaille, Vincent Huang
Race, gender, ethnicity, family income, sexual orientation or other identifiers do not factor in to qualifying for the team to attend the Olympiad. Instead, selection is based solely on scores in math competitions.
Students qualify for the U.S. IMO team by participating in a series of competitions provided by the Mathematical Association of America’s competitions program, called the MAA American Mathematics Competitions (AMC). Approximately 300,000 students worldwide participate in the MAA American Mathematics Competitions each year which leads the nation in strengthening the mathematical capabilities of the next generation of problem solvers. The six U.S. team members joined 65 of their peers from the United States and seven other countries at MAA AMC’s Mathematical Olympiad Program in June to immerse themselves in problem solving and train for the IMO and other international competitions including the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad where the U.S. team, also organized by MAA, won first place in April.
Similar objective standards apply for the international competition.
IMO scores are based on the number of points scored by individual team members on six problems. On each day of the two-day competition, the teams have 4.5 hours to work on three problems.
So, nope, again, no extra points based on race, ethnicity, family income, sexual orientation or country of origin's standing at the UN. Points are apparently awarded based solely on merit.
As I mentioned earlier, as these objective standards to produce winners based on merit alone do not produce diverse winners the pc diversity police must be notified to register their protest because they are obviously unfair.
As for the politically correct folk who believe in merit, we offer congratulations to the winners on a job well done!