<p>I’m sure all of us out there whom have taken any form of the AMCs realize that our curriculum does not fulfill the needs of the higher mathematics:</p>
<p>The above is a problem from the AMC 12, 2011. The AMC 12 only covers Pre-calculus and below. Who can honestly say that the have learned how to do such rigorous problems in school?</p>
<p>I have not looked at the problem, but why do you assume that any high school curriculum and the the content of the AMCs are the same? Sure, there is overlap, but you can’t assume that since your class never covered it, your class is not “sufficient”.</p>
<p>My honors trig/pre-calc class didn’t cover what was on that problem either… but that’s ok because high school curriculum =/= AMC tests. The point of these types of tests is that you have to go above and beyond what you are being taught in high school, that means self studying. You shouldn’t bag on your school, as it is not expected to cover everything on the test.</p>
<p>The problems in the AMC test are far too advanced for the majority of high schoolers (and people, in general). There’s a reason only smart kids take the test, because only they can comprehend the information. Not everyone has a 200 IQ like yourself, so they can’t understand the problems the way you do. If this information was brought into the normal high school trig/geometry/what ever curriculum, a lot of students would be confused which would negatively impact their education. There’s a reason high schools don’t teach metaphysics - the concepts are simply too tough for the majority of high school students so it would be a waste of a class.</p>
<p>Higher level math (what you would see as a math major in college and beyond) is not like what is on the AMC. It’s all proof based. You start from the very beginning and every step you take must be logically sound. In analysis for example you will start proving things like the properties of the real numbers. Then you will go on to find a definition for mappings that are surjective, bijective, continuous functions, etc. In abstract algebra you will go on to define algebraic structures and prove things about them. I don’t remember it that well but I didn’t see anything like what I saw in the higher math classes I took (topology for example) on the AMC.</p>
<p>Yes, dfree. However, that is entirely why America is so despicably ranked in mathematics correspondingly to a country, for instance, China. They are learning, in school how to complete problems like this from pre-adolescence.</p>
<p>Just relax, kid. Practice AMC tests outside of school, because your complaints aren’t going to change the school curriculum. The Art of Problem Solving book helps quite a bit, so you can spend your own time for your own math/science-related goals.</p>
<p>The function of high school math is to teach you enough to survive in college and to prepare you for the pursuit of a career in mathematics or a field using mathematics if you so desire. There are people who know a great deal of mathematics and have a successful career in engineering or what-have-you and would not be able to solve that problem. The AMC 12 is an example of recreational mathematics and requires ingenuity, not a strong knowledge of mathematics (by which I mean that obviously you have to know precalculus and below very well, but just knowing that isn’t by any means enough to do well on it). While being able to think outside the box and so forth are generally good qualities to have, they are not something that can be taught, and being good at the AMC 12 is not the same as being good at math.</p>
<p>I agree with quiksilver, the math learned in school is for real-life, and AMC’s are just for fun. It’s not that America’s curriculum is bad, it’s that they can only teach so much. Also, it’s not as if we’re behind everyone in the world, yes, we don’t have a rigorous curriculum, but even if we did, we wouldn’t learn this stuff because it’s not practical math that can be applied to a broad range of careers. One final thing is- AOPS is not what people in other countries learn. It’s not even what gifted kids learn in school. It’s just what you have to learn from an extra class or at camp.</p>
<p>Yeah, and PurePhysics, unless you have scores that qualify you for USAMO, AIME, IMO, or MOP, taking AMC isn’t really worth anything to colleges.</p>
<p>Math classes at my school are low level, regular, honors, and AP(Calc and Stats)
Truthfully, the honors course are too easy.
my school fills the honor courses with more kids because they feel the lower level kids need more one on one time(which makes sense)
we usually have two week units
the result is the top kids (5-7 kids in each class…out if 20) being bored out of our minds three days into a unit
while the kids at the bottom of the honors class never grasp the concept and bomb the test.</p>