Fandom drama in my other other fandom
Mar. 3rd, 2026 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnThe Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has a tiered level of competitions that, in the US, is the gateway to participating in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). The first level is the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) 10/12 exams -- roughly speaking, you take 10 if you're in grade 10 or below, and 12 if you're in grade 11 or 12, though younger students can take the 12. This competition is multiple-choice and open to anyone who wants to take it; usually there are, idk, a couple dozen or more kids from E's school who take it, and I think most high schools around have it as a possibility. The second level, which you are invited to if you score above a certain threshold on the AMC, is the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). Usually at E's school there are a couple to a few kids who qualify for that. (These two contests are open to international students.) The third level, dictated by a threshold that is a function of your AMC and AIME score, is the USA Junior Mathematics Olympiad (henceforth JMO, for the route via AMC 10) or the USA Mathematics Olympiad (AMO, via AMC 12), which unlike the first two levels is a proof-based competition. (There are a couple more levels after this that lead to the six kids who are the US team for the IMO, but I have no experience with them and they are not relevant to this rant, so I won't talk about them here except to note that they exist.)
I have spent way too much time this winter being angry at the MAA, and it hasn't even directly affected my kid. It may have affected a couple of her friends. (I can't even tell you how incandescent I would be if it had directly affected my kid, who really loves math competitions and has put a lot of energy into them, and we talk all the time about how it's really OK if she doesn't do well, but it's one thing not to do well after having made an honest effort at an honorable goal, but not to do well because the system has screwed you over is another thing again!)
The issue here is that the MAA competitions have become these things that kids perceive as very important for college, etc. And what that means is that there is a very large incentive to cheat. And in the last few years there have been quite a few more widespread ways to easily cheat. (Ironically, because of all the rampant cheating, the MAA competitions are now somewhat less taken into consideration by colleges than they used to be.)
Since 2023 the level and widespread nature of the cheating has increased by a lot, with major leaks, some of which appeared on public websites. MAA's response has been veeeeeery slow. This year there have been some common-sense changes to the AMC/AIME, like, for paper copies, shortening the time between when the exam was available and when answer sheets had to be uploaded, although it's still more than 24 hours. (We do paper copies in our area.) Why has this taken so long to implement. Who knows. They have also moved the JMO/AMO administration to be in "central" testing centers to cut down on cheating. I think this is in general a good idea, though it's rather lucky that a) we live only a couple of hours from a center; b) we have the resources to easily be able to stay in a hotel that weekend so kiddo doesn't have to get up super early both days. It's not very equitable, but then everything about academic competitions has been getting less equitable since when I was a kid, so what else is new?
However, also this year, the additional wrinkle was introduced that AI became good enough that it can solve basically all of the AMC and AIME problems. Aaaaaaand MAA has an option to do the test online, but does not appear to have any measures in place like a locked browser to prevent a student from using AI while taking the exam (????).
Take a look at this score distribution for last year's 2024 AMC 12A exam. (All data is from https://maa.edvistas.com/eduview/report.aspx?self=&view=1561&mode=6, until they take it down, which at this point I don't put past them.)
The top score is 150, and as you might expect, the distribution is centered on the lower end and gets more and more sparse as it goes to the higher end, as this is a test that is supposed to have some questions doable for most strong math students and test up to the upper limits of the strongest students (with also time pressure as one of the constraints).
Now look at this year's distribution for the same test: 2025 AMC 12A.
Notice how much less sparse the distribution is on the right side in general, and in particular that huge hump on the very right side, at a perfect score. (In fact, the ENTIRE top 1 percent -- which is a particular category of distinction (DHR, for those of you who know what that is) -- was perfect scores, which has never been the case before.) You might say, "maybe the test was easier this year." I have reason to believe it was, if anything, harder (though to be fair I have not done the problems myself). You might say, "maybe all the top kids discovered an awesome way to study and so scores got higher on the top end." I... really... kind of think that if this awesome way had been discovered, E would know about it. (In the interest of full disclosure I should say that everyone was given full credit for one of the problems which was not written clearly. BUT this should STILL not have moved the distribution like that.)
Do you know what the actual difference is between this year and last year? AI got good enough to be able to do all the problems, is the difference.
The test E took was the AMC 10A/B, not the 12A/B, and the distribution doesn't look nearly as obviously wanky for that one, but the thresholds are still higher than I would expect them to be. One of her good friends didn't qualify for AIME who I think totally should have (and who qualified last year). Another kid she knows would, I think, have qualified for the JMO this year if it had been the years before cheating got super bad, but the last several years the thresholds have been much higher than before.
Okay, so, remember how up top I mentioned that the way to qualify for JMO/AMO is by your "index" (a function of your AMC and AIME score that used to be AMC + 10*AIME but this year was announced to be AMC + 20*AIME) being above a certain "cutoff" threshold. (This threshold is often a little lower for girls so they can try to hit a ~10% JMO/AMO percentage of girls.) In all previous years they have released the index threshold cutoff and informed qualifiers at the same time.
This year they sent email to all qualifiers... and have not released the cutoff. AoPS Wiki last week showed that the cutoff will not be released (that verbiage was deleted when I checked it today, but there is still no cutoff listed), and kids were reporting that at least one MAA-associated adult said on Discord that they wouldn't be released at ALL. On both AoPS and the discord channels E is in, there are kids reporting an index who made it that's lower than kids who didn't, and even if you allow for the inevitable trolls, liars, etc. on AoPS, E knows the kids on Discord, and there does seem to be something going on here.
So basically MAA is doing SOMETHING, no one knows exactly what, and completely breaking any kind of transparency, AND basically changing how all this is done at the very last minute (there was NO communication beforehand that cutoffs would not be released this year, or that they would release JMO/AMO qualifiers before cutoffs, or anything). No communication that I am aware of of any kind from MAA about what's going on. (Maybe there will be something. Someday. Maybe that's why the AoPS verbiage changed, because they plan to release thresholds someday? Orrrr maybe they just asked them to take it down for even less transparency?? Who knows!) And as anyone could have told you, the absence of transparency has led to wild rumors about how they're doing the computation. The wildest ones have been getting refuted (it doesn't LOOK like there's any credence to the wild rumors it might be based on race or geographic location), but stiiiiiill.
E told me that someone on Discord said, tongue-in-cheek, that the index is now AMC + 20*AIME + 2d20 [two rolls of 20-sided dice, for those who aren't D&D enthusiasts] which was a joke but...
And if all this weren't enough, they seem to have made an error in the emails that went out telling people they had qualified, which meant a whole cohort of people didn't get the emails that day who should have. (For those of you who care, it seems to have been anyone who took the 10A and the 12B.) This does seem to have been fixed within a couple of days, but at the time it just added to the whole general aura of rage and chaos. Especially since no thresholds were released so no one knew whether it made sense for them to have qualified or not!!
E's and my best guess is that they are doing some sort of complicated cheating-detection and rejecting kids based on that, even if they are above the secret cutoff. (And I do think there is a secret cutoff number.) The problem is that any cheating detection you run on scores alone (and, idk, maybe it's possible it's not just the scores, there are rumors that although they don't have browser lockdown that they can detect tab changes, but again WHO KNOWS) cannot tell the difference between someone who cheated and someone who is really smart and decided to really study hard this year and also maybe had a cognitive jump. E had one of these cognitive jumps in sixth grade where her score jumped by a LOT (surprising all of us) on the AMC 8, and it kills me to think that someone might look at that and decide she was cheating. (There is also a chance that her score might jump a lot on the JMO this year. It might not! But it might -- she's been putting some work into it this year and I can tell she's more confident about it than she was last year (plus which last year there was that whole thing where she ought to have scored higher anyway, but never mind that now). I've been saying things to her like, "you should try not to go to the bathroom too much during the JMO in case someone thinks you're cheating," and I feel awful that I have to say things like that. Though of course the fact that cheaters exist is not the MAA's fault. But the fact that she might have no recourse if she does well and they assume she's cheating because she worked hard?? That WOULD be their fault!)
It is fortunate that A. doesn't seem to be super into math competitions like E has been, because the whole system is broken, as far as I can tell.
I have spent way too much time this winter being angry at the MAA, and it hasn't even directly affected my kid. It may have affected a couple of her friends. (I can't even tell you how incandescent I would be if it had directly affected my kid, who really loves math competitions and has put a lot of energy into them, and we talk all the time about how it's really OK if she doesn't do well, but it's one thing not to do well after having made an honest effort at an honorable goal, but not to do well because the system has screwed you over is another thing again!)
The issue here is that the MAA competitions have become these things that kids perceive as very important for college, etc. And what that means is that there is a very large incentive to cheat. And in the last few years there have been quite a few more widespread ways to easily cheat. (Ironically, because of all the rampant cheating, the MAA competitions are now somewhat less taken into consideration by colleges than they used to be.)
Since 2023 the level and widespread nature of the cheating has increased by a lot, with major leaks, some of which appeared on public websites. MAA's response has been veeeeeery slow. This year there have been some common-sense changes to the AMC/AIME, like, for paper copies, shortening the time between when the exam was available and when answer sheets had to be uploaded, although it's still more than 24 hours. (We do paper copies in our area.) Why has this taken so long to implement. Who knows. They have also moved the JMO/AMO administration to be in "central" testing centers to cut down on cheating. I think this is in general a good idea, though it's rather lucky that a) we live only a couple of hours from a center; b) we have the resources to easily be able to stay in a hotel that weekend so kiddo doesn't have to get up super early both days. It's not very equitable, but then everything about academic competitions has been getting less equitable since when I was a kid, so what else is new?
However, also this year, the additional wrinkle was introduced that AI became good enough that it can solve basically all of the AMC and AIME problems. Aaaaaaand MAA has an option to do the test online, but does not appear to have any measures in place like a locked browser to prevent a student from using AI while taking the exam (????).
Take a look at this score distribution for last year's 2024 AMC 12A exam. (All data is from https://maa.edvistas.com/eduview/report.aspx?self=&view=1561&mode=6, until they take it down, which at this point I don't put past them.)
The top score is 150, and as you might expect, the distribution is centered on the lower end and gets more and more sparse as it goes to the higher end, as this is a test that is supposed to have some questions doable for most strong math students and test up to the upper limits of the strongest students (with also time pressure as one of the constraints).
Now look at this year's distribution for the same test: 2025 AMC 12A.
Notice how much less sparse the distribution is on the right side in general, and in particular that huge hump on the very right side, at a perfect score. (In fact, the ENTIRE top 1 percent -- which is a particular category of distinction (DHR, for those of you who know what that is) -- was perfect scores, which has never been the case before.) You might say, "maybe the test was easier this year." I have reason to believe it was, if anything, harder (though to be fair I have not done the problems myself). You might say, "maybe all the top kids discovered an awesome way to study and so scores got higher on the top end." I... really... kind of think that if this awesome way had been discovered, E would know about it. (In the interest of full disclosure I should say that everyone was given full credit for one of the problems which was not written clearly. BUT this should STILL not have moved the distribution like that.)
Do you know what the actual difference is between this year and last year? AI got good enough to be able to do all the problems, is the difference.
The test E took was the AMC 10A/B, not the 12A/B, and the distribution doesn't look nearly as obviously wanky for that one, but the thresholds are still higher than I would expect them to be. One of her good friends didn't qualify for AIME who I think totally should have (and who qualified last year). Another kid she knows would, I think, have qualified for the JMO this year if it had been the years before cheating got super bad, but the last several years the thresholds have been much higher than before.
Okay, so, remember how up top I mentioned that the way to qualify for JMO/AMO is by your "index" (a function of your AMC and AIME score that used to be AMC + 10*AIME but this year was announced to be AMC + 20*AIME) being above a certain "cutoff" threshold. (This threshold is often a little lower for girls so they can try to hit a ~10% JMO/AMO percentage of girls.) In all previous years they have released the index threshold cutoff and informed qualifiers at the same time.
This year they sent email to all qualifiers... and have not released the cutoff. AoPS Wiki last week showed that the cutoff will not be released (that verbiage was deleted when I checked it today, but there is still no cutoff listed), and kids were reporting that at least one MAA-associated adult said on Discord that they wouldn't be released at ALL. On both AoPS and the discord channels E is in, there are kids reporting an index who made it that's lower than kids who didn't, and even if you allow for the inevitable trolls, liars, etc. on AoPS, E knows the kids on Discord, and there does seem to be something going on here.
So basically MAA is doing SOMETHING, no one knows exactly what, and completely breaking any kind of transparency, AND basically changing how all this is done at the very last minute (there was NO communication beforehand that cutoffs would not be released this year, or that they would release JMO/AMO qualifiers before cutoffs, or anything). No communication that I am aware of of any kind from MAA about what's going on. (Maybe there will be something. Someday. Maybe that's why the AoPS verbiage changed, because they plan to release thresholds someday? Orrrr maybe they just asked them to take it down for even less transparency?? Who knows!) And as anyone could have told you, the absence of transparency has led to wild rumors about how they're doing the computation. The wildest ones have been getting refuted (it doesn't LOOK like there's any credence to the wild rumors it might be based on race or geographic location), but stiiiiiill.
E told me that someone on Discord said, tongue-in-cheek, that the index is now AMC + 20*AIME + 2d20 [two rolls of 20-sided dice, for those who aren't D&D enthusiasts] which was a joke but...
And if all this weren't enough, they seem to have made an error in the emails that went out telling people they had qualified, which meant a whole cohort of people didn't get the emails that day who should have. (For those of you who care, it seems to have been anyone who took the 10A and the 12B.) This does seem to have been fixed within a couple of days, but at the time it just added to the whole general aura of rage and chaos. Especially since no thresholds were released so no one knew whether it made sense for them to have qualified or not!!
E's and my best guess is that they are doing some sort of complicated cheating-detection and rejecting kids based on that, even if they are above the secret cutoff. (And I do think there is a secret cutoff number.) The problem is that any cheating detection you run on scores alone (and, idk, maybe it's possible it's not just the scores, there are rumors that although they don't have browser lockdown that they can detect tab changes, but again WHO KNOWS) cannot tell the difference between someone who cheated and someone who is really smart and decided to really study hard this year and also maybe had a cognitive jump. E had one of these cognitive jumps in sixth grade where her score jumped by a LOT (surprising all of us) on the AMC 8, and it kills me to think that someone might look at that and decide she was cheating. (There is also a chance that her score might jump a lot on the JMO this year. It might not! But it might -- she's been putting some work into it this year and I can tell she's more confident about it than she was last year (plus which last year there was that whole thing where she ought to have scored higher anyway, but never mind that now). I've been saying things to her like, "you should try not to go to the bathroom too much during the JMO in case someone thinks you're cheating," and I feel awful that I have to say things like that. Though of course the fact that cheaters exist is not the MAA's fault. But the fact that she might have no recourse if she does well and they assume she's cheating because she worked hard?? That WOULD be their fault!)
It is fortunate that A. doesn't seem to be super into math competitions like E has been, because the whole system is broken, as far as I can tell.
