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The Girl Who Loved Math - Melanie Wood is only female to represent US in International Mathematical Olympiad
Discover, June, 2000 by Polly Shulman
EVEN IN THE REMOTE MOUNTAINS OF CARPATHIA, IN A SMALL TOWN CALLED SINAIA--WHICH very few Americans have ever heard of or are likely to visit--one is rarely far from a peculiar piece of hardware that seems to have captivated teenagers around the world: a basketball hoop. [paragraph] In Carpathia, the teens scrambling under the hoops tend to be Romanian, of course, but on this particular day in Sinaia there also happen to be some American teens who have been invited to play. But they have something they like to play a whole lot better than basketball. [paragraph] The Americans, six teens aged 15 to 17, are here to practice for a different sport. In 10 days, on July 16, they will gather with 427 other teens from around the world in Bucharest to face off against six mathematics problems so difficult that many college professors would find them taxing. This competition is called the International Mathematical Olympiad, and the American contestants have been selected from high schools across the United States.
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Before those grueling days in Bucharest, though, the Americans have decided to practice--in exhibition games, if you will--against the Romanian math team. Now, after hours of work, the Romanian team is taking a much needed break playing basketball, but the Americans can't let go.
"The Americans are upstairs," says Titu Andreescu, their coach. "Our students are not very athletic. Well, they are athletes of the mind."
In a stuffy dorm room festooned with dirty laundry, Andreescu's mental athletes are sprawled on beds and linoleum. One is lost in thought, a place he finds comfortable for hours at a stretch. Another stares intently at handouts of problems from the last Olympiad. The other four have gathered around a notebook, brandishing the mathematician's weapon--number 2 pencils--to attack a particularly thorny brain boggler. Melanie Wood, tall and green-eyed with blond hair, is the only girl in the room. In fact, Melanie is the only female ever chosen to represent the United States. She turns to the five boys in the room and offers a way to solve the geometry problem at hand. She suggests inversion, a strategy for turning circles into lines to see if the simpler relationship of lines to lines will open up a solution to the problem posed by the circles. The other pencil-wielders nod their heads and join in with gusto.
What might seem ridiculous to many people--that mathematics can be more engaging to teens than basketball or video games or even dating--could stand for absolute truth in this room at this moment.
But mathematical fun does not come without stress. The U.S. team has an impressive history--three wins in 26 years of competition. And in 1994 all six Americans were awarded perfect scores. The competition is never easy: The Chinese and the Russian teams are always a threat, as are teams from countries with strong mathematical traditions such as Romania, Iran, and Hungary. Individual futures are also at stake. Although not one of these teens will have any difficulty getting into college, winning a gold medal at the Olympiad could earn a full scholarship.
Melanie may be under greater stress than anyone on the U.S. team. This is her second Olympiad. The previous year, in Taiwan, she won a silver medal. "Once you win," she says, "you have attention on you. Particularly because I'm the only American girl."
AFTER A PRACTICE EXAM THAT THE ROMANIANS finish with troubling speed, the Americans huddle. What does the Romanian victory mean? Perhaps only math can tell them. Melanie and her friends start with definitions used for solving problems involving inequalities. Do the Romanians "dominate us?" one asks. In math terms, dominate would mean the Romanians' worst player has beaten the best U.S. player. "Do they majorize us?" another asks. This term is more complicated: It would be true if the Romanians' top player got a higher score than the top U.S. player, and if the sum of their top two players' scores beats the sum of our top two, and the sum of their top three beats the sum of our top three, and so on. "What will it mean if there are teams that we beat or tie but don't majorize?" asks Melanie, who then answers her own question: "It'll mean we're clumpier than they are."
"What do you mean by clumpy?" asks Lawrence Detlor, from New York City.
"Our scores are closer together."
"That's the opposite of what I thought you meant," he says. "I thought clumpy meant `containing separate clumps.'"
Melanie's mind has already raced ahead to a consideration of how the size of a team's home country might affect clumpiness. "It would seem like big countries would be more clumpy than little countries, because if you take the top six people in a big country, they'll probably be good. But small countries will tend to be clumpy, too, because they might not have anybody good. So they're clumpy, but not in an interesting way."
Later, when Melanie asks if anyone has a pamphlet from a previous Olympiad, Lawrence answers: "I do. Wait! What do you mean by pamphlet? It's probably the opposite of what I mean by pamphlet."
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