News: Bulletin 2 from Adrian (23:36 BST, 15 July 2004)

Well everything is now known. The UK points totals were as follows:

Giles Coope  23 bronze
David Fidler  24 silver
Paul Jefferys  32 gold
Martin Orr  22 bronze
Alexander Shannon  16 bronze
Anne Marie Shepherd  17 bronze

These marks were fair. I think some of our students might have done a little better on another day, but getting 6 medals is great. We got full marks on q.4, and solid totals on q.1 and q.2, but rather little elsewhere.

The cutoffs were 16, 24 and 32. We came 19th. The top four teams in order were China, USA, Russia and Vietnam. Four students got 42s.

I shall provide more complete data (as requested by Joseph) tomorrow morning on our performance and on the IMO scores in general. I just need to find Gordon Lessells...

Many of you have emailed me interesting comments about the papers—sorry I haven’t had the chance to reply to you individually. I think the consensus around here is that the papers were pretty good. Question 3 was found relatively difficult (< 10 solvers, I think), and q.6 relatively straightforward. I suspect when the data is analysed that q.5 will be found to be a rather difficult one for that position on the paper.

The IMO experience as a whole has been excellent, though a somewhat improvisatory sense of organization has prevailed at times.

Best wishes to one and all,

Adrian

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