Up to now I always felt a little saddened when I see people drop out of the IMO or EGMO team selection. But actually, really I should be asking myself what I (as a coach) could do better to make sure the students know we value their effort, even if they ultimately don't make the… Continue reading MOP should do a better job of supporting its students in not-June
Category: Learning Meta
Undergraduate Math 011: a firsT yeaR coursE in geometrY
tl;dr I parodied my own book, download the new version here. People often complain to me about how olympiad geometry is just about knowing a bunch of configurations or theorems. But it recently occurred to me that when you actually get down to its core, the amount of specific knowledge that you need to do… Continue reading Undergraduate Math 011: a firsT yeaR coursE in geometrY
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
Lessons from math olympiads
In a previous post I tried to make the point that math olympiads should not be judged by their relevance to research mathematics. In doing so I failed to actually explain why I think math olympiads are a valuable experience for high schoolers, so I want to make amends here. 1. Summary In high school… Continue reading Lessons from math olympiads
On Reading Solutions
(Ed Note: This was earlier posted under the incorrect title "On Designing Olympiad Training". How I managed to mess that up is a long story involving some incompetence with Python scripts, but this is fixed now.) Spoiler warnings: USAMO 2014/1, and hints for Putnam 2014 A4 and B2. You may want to work on these… Continue reading On Reading Solutions
Against Perfect Scores
One of the pieces of advice I constantly give to young students preparing for math contests is that they should probably do harder problems. But perhaps I don't preach this zealously enough for them to listen, so here's a concrete reason (with actual math!) why I give this advice. 1. The AIME and USAMO In… Continue reading Against Perfect Scores
Some Advice for Olympiad Geometry
I know some friends who are fantastic at synthetic geometry. I can give them any problem and they'll come up with an incredibly impressive synthetic solution. I also have some friends who are very bad at synthetic geometry, but have such good fortitude at computations that they can get away with using Cartesian coordinates for… Continue reading Some Advice for Olympiad Geometry
What leads to success at math contests?
Updated version of generic advice post: Platitudes v3. I think this is an important question to answer, not the least of reasons being that understanding how to learn is extremely useful both for teaching and learning. [1] About a year ago [2], I posted my thoughts on what the most important things were in math… Continue reading What leads to success at math contests?
Power Overwhelming 