The Worldwide Online Olympiad Training (WOOT) program was established in 2005 by Art of Problem Solving,[1] with sponsorship from Google and quantitative hedge fund giant D. E. Shaw & Co., in order to meet the needs of the world's top high school math students. Sponsorship allowed free enrollment for students of the Mathematical Olympiad Program (MOP). D.E. Shaw continued to sponsor enrollment of those students for the 2006-2007 year of WOOT.
As of 2023, WOOT courses are also offered to students preparing for Chemistry, Physics, and Computer Science Olympiads. [2]
The focus on the WOOT program is taking already excellent pre-college students deeper into their studies of elementary mathematics, with a focus on proof-writing.
During the first year (2005–2006) of the WOOT program, a little over 100 students participated, over 90% of whom were among the fewer than 500 qualifiers for the 2006 United States of America Mathematics Olympiad (USAMO), including most of the competition's 12 "winners." Several participants from the United States and other countries won medals at the 2006 IMO held in Slovenia.
WOOT students (WOOTers) are guided by veterans of national and international mathematics competitions such as IMO medalists, winners of the USAMO, a former Westinghouse competition winner, a Canadian Math Olympiad winner, perfect scorers on the AIME, perfect scorers on the American High School Mathematics Examination (now the American Mathematics Competitions), and a perfect scorer at the national MathCounts competition.
The first year of the program was sponsored by Google and D. E. Shaw & Co. Subsequent years have been sponsored by:[3]