On August 10, the Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics in collaboration with the Vietnam Mathematical Society organized a series of activities to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Vietnam's participation in the International Mathematical Olympiad (1974 - 2024).

The event aims to summarize and evaluate activities, discover, train and nurture young Mathematical talents in the past and orient future development. This is also an opportunity for generations of teachers, students and colleagues participating in IMO competitions to meet and reunite.

The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) has been held since 1959 in Romania. Vietnam started participating in 1974 and has sent teams 48 times with 288 contestants (including 18 women).

To date, Vietnam has won 271 medals at the IMO (including 69 Gold Medals, 117 Silver Medals, 85 Bronze Medals), the percentage of students winning medals is 94%. Throughout its 50-year history, there have been 10 excellent students achieving perfect scores, 10 students winning 2 Gold Medals.

In terms of unofficial team results, the Vietnamese team has been in the world's top 10 in most years of competition.

Professor Le Anh Vinh, Director of the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences, who has led Vietnamese students to participate in the IMO competition for 10 years, said that if calculated from 2013 to 2024, Vietnam will rank from 5 to 15. In 2017 alone, Vietnam had its best performance ever (ranked third in the world), with 4 Gold Medals, 1 Silver Medal and 1 Bronze Medal.

According to statistics from Professor Vinh, if calculated by the total Gold Medals of the teams at IMO, Vietnam ranks 8th in the world with 69 Gold Medals. With 48 participations, Vietnam wins an average of 1.44 Gold Medals/year. In the period 2013-2024 alone, Vietnam ranks 5th in the world with an average of 1.92 Gold Medals/year (total of 23 Gold Medals). During this period, 5 out of 10 contestants in Vietnam's history won 2 Gold Medals.

“This is a very encouraging rate. However, if we look at the development of Mathematics in the region, in the past 10 years, Thailand also has 21 Gold Medals and Singapore has 19. With the current way of doing things, these countries will not be inferior to Vietnam,” said Professor Vinh.

According to Professor Vinh, Vietnam's achievements are in the second group in the world (top 5 - 15). The top 4 countries are China, the US, South Korea, and Russia.

To compete with the top teams, Vietnam needs to refer to their team selection process. In these countries, selecting the final team is extremely complicated and takes a relatively long time; the process goes through many rounds and levels. Meanwhile, Vietnam's selection process is very simple (round 1 at the city level, round 2 at the national level and round 3 is to select the team, each round has 2 entries).

“We have achieved great success thanks to the system of specialized schools spread across provinces and cities. However, if compared with the top 4 countries, there will be a big gap in recruiting people. If we want to compete with the top, we need to think and improve more,” said Professor Vinh.

Professor Ngo Bao Chau, Scientific Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics, shared: “I am very happy about the achievements, especially the solidarity and cohesion between the Vietnamese mathematics community at home and abroad. I am also happy about the attention of the Government and Mathematics is still one of the favorite subjects of young people”.

However, he still has some questions such as how to make the Math learning movement more sustainable and widespread? How to make Math and other basic subjects become a voluntary choice for young people?

“We are talking a lot about training human resources for artificial intelligence, then semiconductors - mastering these technologies. But how can we master them if the time for Math and perhaps many other basic subjects is cut, both in high school and university? In the era of information explosion, of artificial intelligence, I think we need to avoid cramming new knowledge, but need to return to the basics, with basic principles of reasoning and thinking,” said Professor Chau.

Professor Chau believes that society should not only look at learning Math in terms of questions like: "What is the point of learning a lot of Math?"; "Why use the budget to benefit a small group of students?" or "training fighting cocks", but should look at it in terms of larger values.

The professor compared the International Mathematical Olympiad to a football story: "Everyone wants the Vietnamese football team to win a Gold Medal, for example, at the Asian level, the whole country would have exploded. Obviously, the results achieved have brought social values ​​and strength to Vietnam. When Vietnamese students win prizes at the International Mathematical Competition, it creates joy and encouragement.

The important thing is that if the general Vietnamese people are better at Math, the face of the country will change. Every day, each person has to face many decisions, if we just know which "variables" are not important or calculate the probability, we can make more reasonable decisions.

Professor Chau also mentioned the opinion that: 'Why should we use the budget to benefit a small group of students?'. He said: "It is true that good students will be better cared for. But a country with about 1,000 - 10,000 students who are very good at Math, I think the future of science and technology of the country will be different in the next 20 years. This is a worthy investment for the future of the country and we should not only think about investing in students to compete in IMO", Professor Chau shared.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Hoang Minh Son emphasized that "if you want a tall tree, you have to cultivate it from the roots" and said that the Ministry is very aware that if it wants to develop science and technology, it must start from very basic fields including Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry from high school to university.

"However, it is sad that the percentage of students from specialized schools choosing STEM-related majors at university level is only about 25.6%, which is lower than the national average (31% choosing to study STEM majors). Of course, specialized schools also have social science classes, but I believe that the STEM-related blocks in specialized schools must be much larger. So this is a point we need to think about," said Mr. Son.

Professor Ngo Bao Chau and the story of spending an entire afternoon unable to solve a math problem

During the book launch, Professor Ngo Bao Chau shared with young people about his passion and how to learn Math. "In primary school, Math was not my first choice for my favorite subject. But failing the entrance exam to the specialized Math school made me change my mind," the professor said.

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