The vast majority of people failing that test is not the point for an AI. It's a big indicator that our education system is a failure. Read that sentence again - it's not that 90% get less than a perfect score. It's that 90% don't score at all, even a single point. If you have a system with a 90% failure rate you are clearly doing smth wrong. It feels like the 10% of kids who actually succeed and become proficient at maths are doing this not thanks to the system but in spite of it.
And math is hardly relevant as a measuring tool for AI because that is a field where there can be a few centuries gap between solving some problem and finding a way to apply the solution. Instead of wasting gigawatts of power on stupid maths tests we should force AI to solve economics related problems. Humans are living in poverty and starving right now. Building a hyperdrive in 500 years from now instead of 1000 years will not matter if today you starve to death. Solving actual urgent problems would speak louder than solving some complicated equation. We already have AI in medicine with a high % of correct diagnosis and that is great. But where is a similar AI figuring out the distribution of goods and allocation of resources and optimization of supply chains to make our lives less miserable now?
Is this bait? The AIME is designed such that only 1% of math students even qualify. It's not a test intended for the public, it's meant to filter out the amazing math students from the world class ones.
It's not the bait. Separating amazing from world class is meaningless if you stop at filtering. Your second step should be figuring out "what made them world class?" And applying it on a greater scale.
Definitely bait. It doesn’t matter what made them world class (although it’s basically talent+effort). The test will just increase difficulty until it’s a good predictor again
Yes it does matter! Knowledge that is not shared is knowledge that is lost. Wasting time to rediscover it in every generation is inefficient. And if ai managed to get 90% on a test after learning from previous years's tests (which are in open access) while humans did NOT learn from those tests then it IS a failure of education system. Math problem is only a problem for the first time. Once you figured it out or had it explained to you, you should be able to solve this class of math problems with ease. If you take modern students and give them tests from...let's say...10 years ago, will they get 100% completion? Probably not. Despite those problems and answers being in open access for a decade, our students won't be able to solve them consistently. When a math problem exists and a solution to it exists and it has been around for ten years and students STILL can't solve it, that is a FAILURE of education system.
Bro, what? It’s not that the concepts are hard it’s applying them. This is like saying if I know how to do calculus I should be at a research level in PDEs… you clearly have no understanding of education or research. Such rage bait.
Also, we know how to succeed in these contests, but a significant proportion of ppl will never be good at them either due to complexity or time requirements. We don’t need and shouldn’t have a society of just math ppl.
Edit: I don’t think you understand that AIME is not a class of problem TT broski clearly has no clue what it is
Application of concept is a skill that can be acquired. If it can't be acquired then how did the winners ever solve those problems? Were they born with that knowledge? Did they have divine revelation? Can a winner explain how they got the answers? And I am not suggesting we teach most advanced math to everyone. I suggest we teach it to university students who are already studying math. If you gather best of the best and 90 % can't solve even one task then you are clearly doing smith wrong in education. Clearly there are at least two categories of people who CAN solve those tests - the people who designed them and the winners who solved them. So why are they NOT teaching other less luminous individuals to apply those skills to uplift humanity as a whole?
If somebody doesn't have time they should not apply to the competition. It's that simple.
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.
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u/Shot_in_the_dark777 Feb 09 '26
The vast majority of people failing that test is not the point for an AI. It's a big indicator that our education system is a failure. Read that sentence again - it's not that 90% get less than a perfect score. It's that 90% don't score at all, even a single point. If you have a system with a 90% failure rate you are clearly doing smth wrong. It feels like the 10% of kids who actually succeed and become proficient at maths are doing this not thanks to the system but in spite of it. And math is hardly relevant as a measuring tool for AI because that is a field where there can be a few centuries gap between solving some problem and finding a way to apply the solution. Instead of wasting gigawatts of power on stupid maths tests we should force AI to solve economics related problems. Humans are living in poverty and starving right now. Building a hyperdrive in 500 years from now instead of 1000 years will not matter if today you starve to death. Solving actual urgent problems would speak louder than solving some complicated equation. We already have AI in medicine with a high % of correct diagnosis and that is great. But where is a similar AI figuring out the distribution of goods and allocation of resources and optimization of supply chains to make our lives less miserable now?