Sometime this week the American Math Competitions released the following new policy: For the IMO, EGMO, RMM, TSTSTs, and TSTs, and MOP, students must be US citizens or US permanent residents. Visas are not a valid substitute. (AMC Policies) I want to make a rather brief statement on why I was opposed to this change. To… Continue reading A short dissent on USA eligibility
Category: Essays
Meritocracy is the worst form of admissions except for all the other ones
I'm now going to say something explicitly that I hinted at in June: I don't think a student deserves to make MOP more because they had a higher score than another student. I think it's easy to get this impression because the selection for MOP is done by score cutoffs. So it sure looks that… Continue reading Meritocracy is the worst form of admissions except for all the other ones
An opening speech for MOP
While making preparations for this year's MOP, I imagined to myself what I would say on orientation night if I was director of the camp, and came up with the following speech. I thought it might be nice to share on this blog. Of course, it represents my own views, not the actual views of… Continue reading An opening speech for MOP
I switched to point-based problem sets
It's not uncommon for technical books to include an admonition from the author that readers must do the exercises and problems. I always feel a little peculiar when I read such warnings. Will something bad happen to me if I don't do the exercises and problems? Of course not. I'll gain some time, but at… Continue reading I switched to point-based problem sets
Against the “Research vs. Olympiads” Mantra
There's a Mantra that you often hear in math contest discussions: "math olympiads are very different from math research". (For known instances, see O'Neil, Tao, and more. More neutral stances: Monks, Xu.) It's true. And I wish people would stop saying it. Every time I've heard the Mantra, it set off a little red siren… Continue reading Against the “Research vs. Olympiads” Mantra
___ Students Have to Suffer
This will be old news to most of the readership of this blog, but I realize I've never written it down, so time to fix that. Fill in the blank Let's begin by playing a game of "fill in the blank". Suppose that today, the director of secondary education at your high school says: "___… Continue reading ___ Students Have to Suffer
Things SPARC
[EDIT 2018/03/05: This description seems significantly less accurate to me now than it did a few years ago, both because my views/values have changed substantially, and because SPARC has changed direction substantially since I attended as a junior counselor in 2015. I'll leave it here as a reference, but should be taken with a grain… Continue reading Things SPARC
Conversations
I've recently come to believe that "deep conversations" are overrated. Here is why. Memory Human short term memory is pretty crummy. Here is an illustration from linguistics: A man that a woman that a child that a bird that I heard saw knows loves This is a well-formed English phrase. And yet parsing it is… Continue reading Conversations
Transferring
Apparently even people on Quora want to know why I transferred from Harvard to MIT. Since I've been asked this question way too many times, I guess I should give an answer, once and for all. There were plenty of reasons (and anti-reasons). I should say some anti-reasons first to give due credit -- the… Continue reading Transferring
Writing
In high school, I hated English class and thought it was a waste of time. Now I'm in college, and I still hate English class and think it's a waste of time. (Nothing on my teachers, they were all nice people, and I hope they're not reading this.) However, I no longer think writing itself… Continue reading Writing
Power Overwhelming 