Essays – Power Overwhelming

Infinitely many stages of grief

5 April, 20245 April, 2024 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)11 Comments

Where do all the smart, curious, earnest kids go these days? One of my friends asked me this recently, and I wasn’t sure what to say. In the last ten years, something has changed. If I had to summarize my concerns in one sentence, I would say this: kids these days no longer feel they’re… Continue reading Infinitely many stages of grief

MOHS was a mistake

5 January, 20246 January, 2024 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)5 Comments

I remember reading a Paul Graham essay about how people can’t think clearly about parts of their identity. In my students, I have never seen this more clearly than when people argue about the difficulty of problems. Some years ago I published a chart of my ratings of problem difficulty, using a scale called MOHS.… Continue reading MOHS was a mistake

A short dissent on USA eligibility

15 July, 202115 July, 2021 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)

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

Meritocracy is the worst form of admissions except for all the other ones

13 January, 202012 January, 2020 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)13 Comments

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

1 June, 201931 May, 2019 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)10 Comments

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

27 March, 201827 March, 2018 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)5 Comments

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

13 August, 201615 August, 2016 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)34 Comments

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

27 May, 201610 March, 2018 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)31 Comments

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

13 February, 20165 March, 2018 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)4 Comments

[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