Citation: Canellidis, V.; Sofianopoulou, S. Analytics Framework for Comparing National Performance Achievements in International Mathematical Olympiads. Educ. Sci. 2022, 12, 838. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci12110838 Academic Editor: Han Reichgelt Received: 20 October 2022 Accepted: 18 November 2022 Published: 21 November 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). education sciences Article Analytics Framework for Comparing National Performance Achievements in International Mathematical Olympiads Vassilios Canellidis * and Stella Sofianopoulou Department of Industrial Management and Technology, University of Piraeus, 18534 Piraeus, Greece * Correspondence: bcanell@unipi.gr Abstract: This study measures and analyzes the performances of the participating nations at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). A country’s success at the IMO is evaluated by the number of gold, silver, and bronze medals won. To measure and compare the performances of the countries, the data envelopment analysis approach is employed and all countries that have won at least one medal have been included in our dataset. As measures for the inputs, two macro-level determinants that can support the effort made by a country are considered: population size and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Our findings indicate a mean level of technical efficiency for the nations analyzed. The results suggest that, on average, the inefficient countries in the sample could achieve improved results by increasing the number of outputs produced while maintaining the same level of effort spent. Keywords: competition events; mathematical Olympiads; performance evaluation; data envelopment analysis; DEA 1. Introduction This study analyzes the performances of countries at the International Mathematical Olympiad that was held in remote format and administered from Saint Petersburg (the Russian Federation) in 2021. The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is the oldest international annual science Olympiad, and 619 students from 107 countries participated in this competition. The IMO is the world championship mathematics competition for high school students and is held annually in different countries. In this study, the macro-level determinants of the Olympians’ performances at the IMO are investigated in order to measure the performances of the participating countries. A nation’s success at the IMO can be judged by various measures, including by the number of gold, silver, and bronze medals [1]. In order to measure the performances of the nations in terms of their mathletes’ achievements, the data for the year 2021, published by IMO.org, were utilized and appro- priately modified as required. The current research concentrated on the country-specific characteristics that can support the performances of the mathletes. The results from this study provide information concerning the technical efficiency of the nations analyzed. The study indicates that by solving our model, one can obtain the efficiency scores for the participating nations investigated. Our approach draws on studies of the performances of nations at international sporting events, where researchers employ various social eco- nomic measures as inputs to measure and compare various outputs, but mainly the medals won [2–4]. The results of our analysis show an average level of technical efficiency for the nations analyzed and indicate that further training for the targeting of realistic objectives for future events can become a plan to pursue. The method can help nations to compare themselves with their peers and to discover the gap in their outputs and can thus be utilized as a tool that shows that some countries may not be performing as they should. In our investigated Educ. Sci. 2022, 12, 838. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12110838 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education