I remember when I got the central aha, I justified it to my teammates as “it’d be so cool, so it has to be right”. — Nathan Pinsker This is a post meant to explain what makes puzzle hunts appealing to people who haven't done them before. If you do care about the actual mechanical… Continue reading An advertisement for what puzzle hunts are about and why they’re cooler than everyday puzzles
Things I’ve learned from running OTIS
Note: if you are a prospective OTIS student, read the syllabus instead. More useful, less bragging. In the unlikely event that I’m a social gathering like a party or family gathering, people will sometimes ask me about my teaching. Invariably they ask, “so do you do like 1:1 meetings or group lessons?”. Then I have… Continue reading Things I’ve learned from running OTIS
A story of a town
This was originally a diary entry, but I showed it to some students who told me I should put it in my blog instead. Imagine you’ve moved to a new town, and want to explore the local offerings, because there’s a lot to do and see, and you’re expecting to live here a while. The… Continue reading A story of a town
Yet another reason I don’t give much generic advice
So I have an FAQ now for contest-studying advice, but there’s a “frequently used answer” that I want to document now that doesn’t fit in the FAQ format because the question looks different to everyone that asks it. The questions generally have the same shape: “would it be better to do X or Y when… Continue reading Yet another reason I don’t give much generic advice
The depth of Hanabi
This post is a short chrono-logue about my time with the card game Hanabi, which I play with the H-group. Thus, it’s also implicitly an advertisement for why I enjoy the game Hanabi so much. I think the progression is a bit interesting because it can be divided into almost discrete “stages”, with each stage… Continue reading The depth of Hanabi
Slice of life of the OTIS GM
Here’s a snapshot of what running OTIS looks like these days. Starts from last Sunday afternoon until Monday lunch. Timestamps indicate when the action was completed (rather than started). Sunday 13:04: Process a late financial aid request from someone who forgot to request it earlier. Sunday 13:14: Edit OTIS website to clarify that if you… Continue reading Slice of life of the OTIS GM
Things to tell 18-year-old Evan
Early in 2023 the MIT Undergraduate Math Association had an event where course 18's could get paired with a graduate student and chat over coffee. So naturally I got asked what I wish I knew as an undergraduate. This post records some subset of the things I said. Undergraduate math isn't deep after all ---… Continue reading Things to tell 18-year-old Evan
Twitch & USEMO Announcement
Twitch Solves ISL Season 3 I'll be resuming streaming live solves of math problems this fall! As usual, the stream runs at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern on Fridays, for 2-4 hours per stream usually. The dates of the first ten streams are currently scheduled (tentatively; these move around a lot) as: Friday September 15… Continue reading Twitch & USEMO Announcement
Agency
Sometimes my OTIS students suggest features or things for the OTIS website, and I reply “submit a pull request”. I’m usually half-joking when I say this, because I acknowledge that I’m essentially saying “please do the work for me”. But part of me isn’t joking. Because, one of the things I’ve grown to most value… Continue reading Agency
What I would add to the K-12 list
I often gripe about how standard K-12 education is overly focused on specific knowledge (how to solve a quadratic, memorizing dates for history, etc.) rather than general skills (e.g. "how to figure out how to solve a quadratic"). On the other hand, I understand why; teaching general skills is much more difficult than preparing a… Continue reading What I would add to the K-12 list
Power Overwhelming 