What is MEMO?

The Middle European Mathematical Olympiad (MEMO) is the continuation of Austrian-Polish Mathematical Competition (APMC), held 29 times from 1978 to 2006. Now ten countries participate in the MEMO: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

Similar to the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), each country participates with at most six students and two team leaders. As one of the main goals of the new competition was to enable a larger number of students to gain experience in international competitions, the teams participating in the MEMO are typically disjoint from the IMO teams. Also, in order for MEMO to help younger students prepare for some future International Mathematical Olympiad, students in their senior year are not eligible to be in the MEMO team.

The most important part of the MEMO are the individual and team competition, each lasting five hours. The problems are of the "olympic" type, typically divided into four areas: algebra, combinatorics, geometry and number theory. At the individual competition the students solve one problem from each area. The team competition test consists of eight problems, two from each area (although at the first two MEMOs the team competition also had only four problems). In team competition the students solve the problems together, which gives the competition a very special atmosphere. The team part of the competition existed also at the APMC, but it is otherwise a rarity in mathematical competitions.

The whole program lasts for one week. Besides the individual and team competition, it contains excursions, entertainment and sports activities.

The 9th Middle European Mathematical Olympiad will be held in Koper, Slovenia, from 25^th August to 31^st August. It is organised by Društvo matematikov, fizikov in astronomov Slovenije.