China's 17-Year-Old 'Math Prodigy' Turns Out to Be a Fraud

Photo: Jiang Ping/Bilibili

A 17-year-old girl in China was declared a 'math genius' due to the results of a prestigious competition. The organizers filmed promotional videos about her, the 'prodigy' gave interviews, and then it turned out that she cheated when solving problems.

In 2018, Chinese tech giant Alibaba (owner of AliExpress) launched an online math competition through its DAMO Academy that was open to anyone.

This year, 85 top participants competed for prizes ranging from $2,000 to $30,000. In the first round, 12th out of 802 applicants was 17-year-old Jiang Ping, a girl from a poor village in Jiangsu Province in eastern China.

On June 13, the organizers told her story in a special promotional video, because usually the competition leaders include students from prestigious universities like Harvard, Oxford, and MIT.

Chinese media noted that for the first time in the history of the competition, a representative of a modest school (the girl studies fashion design), and not an elite university, ended up so high. Jiang's ranking made her a sensation, and local media called her a “child prodigy,” the BBC writes.

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“Learning math is not an easy process, but whenever I solve a problem, I feel happy,”– Jiang Ping told the state-run People's Daily.

The girl's teacher has also gained fame in China: the teacher was praised for recognizing and developing the student's love of mathematics.

But last Sunday, the competition organizers reported that Jiang had violated their rules. It turned out that the girl was being assisted by a teacher who had also registered as a contestant. The final results of the competition were announced on the same day: Jiang was not included in the final list of 85 winners.

It also became known that in a joint letter from the competition organizing committee, 39 other finalists stated that in the academy's promotional video, Jiang “made several obvious mistakes” while trying to solve a problem on the board. “It seemed that she was not familiar with mathematical expressions and symbols,” – contestants claimed.

Jiang's school also confirmed that the teacher had helped her. He was given a warning and disqualified from receiving awards for the next year.

Prepared by: Sergey Daga