Competition Math Is Not The Highest ROI For Most Mathematically Gifted Students

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When a middle or high school teacher has a bright math student, and the teacher directs them towards competition math, it’s usually not because that’s the best option for the student.

Rather, it’s the best option for the teacher.

It gives the student something to do while creating minimal additional work for the teacher.

Competition math problems generally don’t require students to learn new fields of math.

Rather, the difficulty comes from students needing to find clever tricks and insights to arrive at solutions using the mathematical tools that they’ve already learned.

But if you look at the kinds of math that most quantitative professionals like rocket scientists and machine learning researchers use on a daily basis, those competition math tricks show up rarely, if ever.

What does show up everywhere is university math level subjects like linear algebra, multivariable calculus, differential equations, and calculus-based probability and statistics.

Given that most students who enjoy math end up applying math in some other field as opposed to becoming pure mathematicians, it would be a lot more productive for them to get a broad view of math as early as possible so that they can sooner apply it to projects in their fields of interest.

Further Reading: The Greatest Educational Life Hack: Learning Math Ahead of Time

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