The Colorado Mathematical Olympiad and Further Explorations

Over the past two decades, the once small local Colorado Springs Mathematics Olympiad, founded by the author himself, has now become an annual state-wide competition, hosting over one-thousand high school contenders each year.

This updated printing of the first edition of Colorado Mathematical Olympiad: the First Twenty Years and Further Explorations offers an interesting history of the competition as well as an outline of all the problems and solutions that have been a part of the contest over the years. Many of the essay problems were inspired by Russian mathematical folklore and written to suit the young audience; for example, the 1989 Sugar problem was written as a pleasant Lewis Carroll-like story. Some other entertaining problems involve old Victorian map colorings, King Arthur and the knights of the round table, rooks in space, Santa Claus and his elves painting planes, football for 23, and even the Colorado Springs subway system.

The book is more than just problems, their solutions, and event statistics; it tells a compelling story involving the lives of those who have been part of the Olympiad from every perspective.

From the reviews:

"Like Gauss, Alexander Soifer would not hesitate to inject Eureka! at the right moment. Like van der Waerden, he can transform a dispassionate exercise in logic into a compelling account of sudden insights and ultimate triumph." — Cecil Rousseau Chair, USA Mathematical Olympiad Committee

" ... this book is not so much mathematical literature as it is literature built around mathematics… with the Further Explorations sections, anyone so inclined could spend a lifetime on the mathematics sprouting from this volume." —Peter D. Johnson, Jr., Auburn University

"I finished reading the book in one sitting – I just could not put it down. Professor Soifer has indebted us all by first making the effort to organize the Colorado Mathematical Olympiads, and then making the additional effort to tell us about it in such an engaging and useful way." —Branko Grünbaum, University of Washington

"A delightful feature of the book is that in the second part more related problems are discussed. Some of them are still unsolved." —Paul Erdős

"The book is a gold mine of brilliant reasoning with special emphasis on the power and beauty of coloring proofs. Strongly recommended to both serious and recreational mathematicians on all levels of expertise." —Martin Gardner

“This book is addressed to lower undergraduate students and presents the 20-year account of the Colorado Mathematical Olympiad. The volume under review contains original problems with complete solutions. … Soifer’s treatment is colloquial and could be used for general classroom enrichment as well as for competition preparation. … warmly recommends this book as an introduction to problem solving and the construction of proofs.” (Teodora-Liliana Rădulescu, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1215, 2011)