20% of Japanese University student with 13 to 15 year-old reading abilities

[Maciamo]

I am not sure the results of the Olympiads are very significant. As you see, lots of communist countries (China, Russia, Romania...) performed well, and that is strikingly similar to how they perform at the Olympic Games. These people are drilled for tests because they want to show how brilliant their country can be. The truth is that many other countries care very little. I have participated to the maths olympiads once when I was 16. Anybody is free to try, but there was only one other person in my class who tried. I was qualified easily for the 2nd turn, but as it was in another city and on SATURDAY (i.e. holiday), I decided not to go. The truth is I care very little, and 95% of the other students cared even less as they didn't even try the first turn in our school.

Anyway, I never considered maths as a very useful topic. Although I was good at it when I felt interested or receptive to the teacher (in which case I was first of my class, otherwise I could be last because I just didn't listen in class and didn't even care to try the test if I was too tired, as often happened when I was a young teenager), maths would have been the last subject I would have chosen at university, because it doesn't bring any knowledge that distinguish one from the masses (like philosophy, psychology or history), and is not practical enough (like economics, law, languages or medicine) to get an interesting job. I have always felt that computers are better at maths than humans, and it is therefore a waste of time and energy.

If fact, that's about the same for sciences. I used to love sciences, and took it as my main option throught secondary school (esp. chemistry), but I now find that what I learned is basically useless.

So contributors to the society from the elites will usually be those with a wide range of interest, philosophical mind (in the sense of thirst for knowledge and understanding the world), high IQ, good interpersonal skills and pragmatic personality. Mathematicians usually lack all of these, except maybe the IQ (but that really depends on the person).

[RockLee]

to compare countries how smart they are with only ELITE student is total bullcrap...cause there are only a few ppl in the country who are that smart and as maciamo said..they have been drilled for this...besides, it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the topic

[Maciamo]

to compare countries how smart they are with only ELITE student is total bullcrap...

You know, there is a way of saying things, and I would like that to avoid associations with bovine excrements.