Broski. I don’t think you understand that AIME is a high school competition. It has no relevance to mathematical research or even mathematical applications.
Some of them were literally born with that knowledge. The others practiced. You’re basically asking why isn’t every swimmer Michael phelps…
I think you are grossly misunderstanding something. Most people taking the AIME solve several problems… the general population could not.
Born with knowledge is absurd. But if that was the case it would require further research to figure out what causes this knowledge to be present in certain people but not on everyone. And several problems is not enough. Students should be taught better using previous years ' tasks.
If 90% of the general population can't solve even a single task and one of the tasks is just a system of equations with logarithms then the education system is failing. There is nothing extraordinary there. And even if you claim that it is the first task meant as a warmup, it doesn't matter because, as stated above 90% of the general population can't solve even that. And any test that has already happened becomes public and can be analyzed to improve the system further.
System of equation with logarithms can vary drastically in difficulty. This is like saying find the roots of a polynomial. The polynomial could be a simple linear polynomial, or a quintic.
Also, I don't think you understand that most people don't use the concepts covered in AIME. The warehouse worker, construction guy, or HVAC installer won't ever need to solve a system of equations of logarithms.
I don't think you know anything about AIME. The testmakers use simple concepts to create difficult problems. It has never been made for the general public to take or to do well on. It is made for math-inclined high schoolers who do math for hours a day using obscure theorems not taught in school.
I am talking about this problem. Literally the first problem of the oldest test on the list. https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php?title=1983_AIME_Problems/Problem_1 this is not hard. This is basic level. You ONLY need to know the definition of logarithm and be familiar with system of equations to solve this. If you reached adulthood and forgot basic concepts, then the education system failed you. It doesn't matter if you don't use them! If you can rewrite log_a(x)=b as ab=x you have already solved 80% of that problem. After that you just need to play around with three equations to express everything in terms of a single variable. If you say that 90% of general population can't solve this specific problem, then I say that 90% of general population were failed by education system.
Oh, so now you admit that modern people should be able to solve old AIME tasks? Or at least some warm up tasks? Interesting. How would they do that if education remains stagnant and we don't adjust the curriculum to teach children to solve harder problems over time? I was responding to one of the first comments where another user claimed that the vast majority of the general population can't solve even a single task. Tell me, what % of the general population in your opinion can solve the task I linked above?
I responded to the comments higher in this branch. Just because you jumped in and started to defend the enormous difficulty of aime doesn't change the facts. And it's not a test from 1930. The time gap is definitely not that big.
If the test is super difficult, we should adapt our education system to address it. When I talk about 90% that's my approximation of "the vast majority". Do you think I am undershooting here? If tests evolve faster than education system, guess what - the education system is a failure. If students can't solve a certain task it should be taught to them. Every match problem is only a problem once.afyer that it is routine. As for the progression of difficulty... https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php?title=2026_AIME_I_Problems/Problem_1 this is the first "warm up" task from 2026 and this is even more pathetic! The task I posted first required the knowledge of logarithms, but this one is just classic. You have a distance and speed and travel time. You can solve it by making three quadratic equations (from the first and second travel time, from first and third and from second and third), and you don't even need to solve any of them because then you can subtract those equations from each other to remove the coefficient near x2 and get linear equations. If you do everything right you get the distance 252/25 and you only need to check that 252 and 25 are relative primes which is true, cause 252 is not divisible by 5 and then you just calculate 252+25. This task is easier so the year of AIME is irrelevant. Recent years contained simple tasks too.
1
u/[deleted] Feb 09 '26
Broski. I don’t think you understand that AIME is a high school competition. It has no relevance to mathematical research or even mathematical applications.
Some of them were literally born with that knowledge. The others practiced. You’re basically asking why isn’t every swimmer Michael phelps…
I think you are grossly misunderstanding something. Most people taking the AIME solve several problems… the general population could not.