B. Sury, professor of the Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru, is the coordinator for the Karnataka Regional Mathematical Olympiad. In an email to The Hindu he explains why Karnataka is not adequately represented in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), and how to reverse the situation. Excerpts:
For a decade now, most of the IMO team members are from West Bengal and Maharashtra. Karnataka is one of the many regions that has not represented in the IMO.
The reasons are manifold. West Bengal and Maharashtra continue to do well because apart from role models, who have set a tradition over the years, the students have good exposure to difficult problems of the Olympiad kind and good training in solving previous years’ papers.
Students from Karnataka (and many other regions), who have somehow struggled and reached International Mathematical Olympiad Training Camp, realise that they have very little experience with problems of a high level of difficulty. The last time a student from Karnataka was a member of the Indian IMO team was way back in 1996, when it was held in India. At that time, the lone Karnataka student was the only one to win a gold medal.
In countries such as China and the U.S., the passion for maths and other Olympiads is akin to what we see in our country for something like the JEE.
Training programmes
The solution lies in having training programmes where talented students are exposed to challenging problems. In fact, the Olympiad problems are much more challenging than any JEE problem, while most students are under the impression that JEE is the most difficult examination in the country.
‘The last time a student from the State was a member
of the Indian IMO team was in 1996’
