HARD PROBLEMS: The Road to the World’s Toughest Math Contest Documentary review….

The documentary by George Csicsery takes a look at the six high school students that got to represent the USA in the 47th International Mathematical Olympiad. It was a solid look at the US students in the competition, their family members, and teachers.

From the selection of the team, to finding out more about the team members, to the big exam itself, and who won it kept me glued to the TV set to see what happened next. I liked that we did not get a whole lot of showcasing the questions from the exam, l say that would have killed this documentary. It would have also been nice to have seen a look at other countries such as Russia and China, but I did not mind.

The six Americans representing the USA were Alex Zhai, Arnav Tripathy, Ryan Ko, Zach Abel, and Zeb Brady. Arnav was good at playing the piano while another team member was good at creating objects out of paper. Yi Sun though made it all five science Olympiads(biology, chemistry, physics, math, computer science). Each one is a sure die hard math lover going out for gold at the Olympiad.

The competition took place in Ljubljana Slovenia with 90 countries taking apart of it. The competition lasts two days with each day going for 4.5 hours. Each day is three tough math questions which are worth seven points a piece. They showcased the scary questions for one day for a few seconds.

In the end it was China getting first place with USA coming in fifth. Zeb Brady and Arnav Tripathy both won gold medals while the rest won silver.

All the students went onto college with most going to Harvard. Alex though did come back for the next two competitions getting gold both times.

To see the 2006 questions

Day 1 questions: click me
Day 2 questions: click me

Documentary website link with trailer: http://www.hardproblemsmovie.com/