4 ms·

A fun fact surprisingly not mentioned in the article, and which I thought would be topical at this time, is that the Romanians apparently love their math olympi

by svat 1y ago

A fun fact surprisingly not mentioned in the article, and which I thought would be topical at this time, is that the Romanians apparently love their math olympiads so much that they recently elected as their president an International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) medalist. The current president Nicușor Dan had perfect scores at the IMO both times he participated (one of only 12 students so far with a perfect score in each of their ≥2 participations [1]). In fact at IMO 1988 he was one of only 11 students who solved the famous/notorious “Vieta jumping” problem [2], which eluded even Terence Tao (who, to be fair, was participating at only 13 years old!). The Wikipedia section of “Notable [IMO] participants” has three sections: “Mathematicians”, “Computer scientists”, and “Other”, with Dan being the sole entry in the last one. :) [3] [1]: http://imo-official.org/hall.aspx?column=perfectscores&order=desc&gender=hide&nameform=western http://imo-official.org/hall.aspx?column=perfectscores&order... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vieta_jumping&oldid=1208437054#History https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vieta_jumping&old... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_International_Mathematical_Olympiad_participants&oldid=1301940085#Other https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Internati...

ddalex 1y ago
Sure, but that's not why he was elected president. Well, not directly. His Olympiad results led to him getting a doctorate at Sorbonne, which led to him speaking french, which led to impressing Macron who threw France's weight into supporting Dan. It was a power move to replace the German influence with French influence (previous praesident was ethnic German)
- ahartmetz 1y ago
  Germany and France are fairly aligned these days, no big deal :>
  - generic92034 1y ago
    Tell that to the people involved in or suffering from the power struggles regarding FCAS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Air_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Air_System ).
- mittensc 1y ago
  That's a really naive and wrong take. He is popular, he was elected mayor of Bucharest. He led a lot of anti corruption efforts for a very long time. (founded USB/USR) He is smart (as you noted by olympiad, speaking multiple foreign languages) He is religious as well (pretty important aparently) All his opponents were much less competent. A PSD candidate will never be president in a two term election unless the counter candidate is worse (because of iliescu and corruptiob) The AUR candidate really is a russian puppet and not that smart either, he's mostly there for the 30% vote extremists always get and which were taken by georgescu first time. It's a shame he got far and shows how much influence external actors can have over facebook/tiktok etc. The USR candidate that managed to squeeze through first time has no charisma and was a backup since Nicusor refused the first time... So what else is left?
  - stefantalpalaru 1y ago
    [dead]

by svat 1y ago

ddalex 1y ago

Sure, but that's not why he was elected president. Well, not directly. His Olympiad results led to him getting a doctorate at Sorbonne, which led to him speaking french, which led to impressing Macron who threw France's weight into supporting Dan. It was a power move to replace the German influence with French influence (previous praesident was ethnic German)

ahartmetz 1y ago
Germany and France are fairly aligned these days, no big deal :>
- generic92034 1y ago
  Tell that to the people involved in or suffering from the power struggles regarding FCAS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Air_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Air_System ).
mittensc 1y ago
That's a really naive and wrong take. He is popular, he was elected mayor of Bucharest. He led a lot of anti corruption efforts for a very long time. (founded USB/USR) He is smart (as you noted by olympiad, speaking multiple foreign languages) He is religious as well (pretty important aparently) All his opponents were much less competent. A PSD candidate will never be president in a two term election unless the counter candidate is worse (because of iliescu and corruptiob) The AUR candidate really is a russian puppet and not that smart either, he's mostly there for the 30% vote extremists always get and which were taken by georgescu first time. It's a shame he got far and shows how much influence external actors can have over facebook/tiktok etc. The USR candidate that managed to squeeze through first time has no charisma and was a backup since Nicusor refused the first time... So what else is left?
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago
  [dead]