The Art of Problem Solving Initiative, Inc.

The AoPS curriculum stretches students to their full potential, while our online school connects eager students with inspiring peers and accomplished instructors. We give many of these students their first taste of a world beyond traditional math. A world filled with challenging, intriguing problems that require creativity and persistence to solve. A world where they have access to impressive mentors and role models. And most importantly, a world filled with inspiring peers who share their love of learning—peers that they often first met in AoPS classes and the AoPS online community. Origin Story In the summer of 1990, after his first year of college, Richard Rusczyk invited two friends from the Math Olympiad Summer Program, Sandor Lehoczky and Sam Vandervelde, to join him in building a new national math contest. Sam came up with naming the contest the "Mandelbrot Competition," with the intent of using the Mandelbrot Set as a logo. Richard called Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot from a payphone at a convenience store to ask his permission to use his name. Dr. Mandelbrot gracefully agreed. Unfortunately, the first two years of the Mandelbrot Competition weren't as successful as we'd hoped. The scores on the tests were extremely low, perhaps because the tests were too hard, or perhaps because the students hadn't been exposed to as much math as we had. While walking across campus discussing the problem, Sandor suggested a solution: "We should write a book!" Eighteen months later, one book became four: two texts and two solution manuals entitled the Art of Problem Solving. On the advice of a publisher at Princeton University Press, we published the texts ourselves. Fortunately, organizations we’d been involved with as students helped us get the word out, and the books quickly found an audience. Nine years later, that audience was a critical starting point for the launch of www.artofproblemsolving.com.