Member-only story
IMO 2024 — USA Wins! China 2nd, Korea 3rd.
Plus a Fairytale 4th Place for India
The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is the world’s most prestigious mathematics competition. Although the competitors are just high school students, they can solve problems so notoriously difficult that only few in the world can rise to the challenge.
China has been the undisputed king of the IMO for the past 30 years. And they are proud of this fact. But this year, for the first time since 2019, USA has taken back first place… by a paper-thin 2 point margin.
The Olympiad has 6 problems, worth 7 points each. Each country has 6 representatives, which gives a total possible score of 252 points.
The chart below shows the scores of the top 40 countries in this years IMO.
USA and China had a 20 point margin over 3rd place South Korea, who have also been remarkably consistent in the last 10 years.
But the real fairytale story this year is India.