The Colorado Mathematical Olympiad ... - Alexander Soifer

The Colorado Mathematical Olympiad and Further Explorations: From the Mountains of Colorado to the Peaks of Mathematics,

by Alexander Soifer.

# Pages : 408
# Publisher : Springer; 2011 edition
# ISBN-13 : 978-0387754710


This book dramatically (by a factor of 2.5) expands its predecessor, the 1994

Colorado Mathematical Olympiad: The First Ten Years and Further Explorations. It

conveys the spirit and the exciting history of the competition as well as an

outline of all original problems and solutions that have been created for the

contest over 20 years mostly by the author. Some of the problems were inspired

by Russian mathematical folklore; for example, the 1989 Sugar Cubed problem was

written in a pleasant Lewis Carroll-like story. Other entertaining problems

involve Olde Victorian Map Colourings, King Authur and the Knights of the Round

Table, Crawford Cowboy Had a Farm, Santa Claus and his elves painting the plane,

etc.


The twenty "Further Explorations" form a unique feature, not found in any

other Olympiad book: each exploration takes off a solved Olympiad problem and

leads the reader to the forefront of mathematics. These bridges allow young

mathematicians to engage in mathematical research all of their own. Part V of

the book gives the microphone to the winners, who describe the role of this

Olympiad in their lives and share their successful careers