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
Tag: olympiad
Hard and soft techniques
In yet another contest-based post, I want to distinguish between two types of thinking: things that could help you solve a problem, and things that could help you understand the problem better. Then I'll talk a little about how you can use the latter. (I've talked about this in my own classes for a while… Continue reading Hard and soft techniques
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
RMM 2019 pictures and aftermath
Pictures, thoughts, and other festives from the 2019 Romania Masters in Math. See also the MAA press release. Summary Po-Shen Loh and I spent the last week in Bucharest with the United States team for the 11th RMM. The USA usually sends four students who have not attended a previous IMO or RMM before. This… Continue reading RMM 2019 pictures and aftermath
Math contest platitudes, v3
I think it would be nice if every few years I updated my generic answer to "how do I get better at math contests?". So here is the 2019 version. Unlike previous instances, I'm going to be a little less olympiad-focused than I usually am, since these days I get a lot of people asking… Continue reading Math contest platitudes, v3
A few shockingly linear graphs
There's a recent working paper by economists Ruchir Agarwal and Patrick Gaule which I think would be of much interest to this readership: a systematic study of IMO performance versus success as a mathematician later on. Here is a link to the working paper. Despite the click-baity title and dreamy introduction about the Millenium Prizes, the… Continue reading A few shockingly linear graphs
New oly handout: Constructing Diagrams
I've added a new Euclidean geometry handout, Constructing Diagrams, to my webpage. Some of the stuff covered in this handout: Advice for constructing the triangle centers (hint: circumcenter goes first) An example of how to rearrange the conditions of a problem and draw a diagram out-of-order Some mechanical suggestions such as dealing with phantom points… Continue reading New oly handout: Constructing Diagrams
Make training non zero-sum
Some thoughts about some modern trends in mathematical olympiads that may be concerning. I. The story of the barycentric coordinates I worry about my geometry book. To explain why, let me tell you a story. When I was in high school about six years ago, barycentric coordinates were nearly unknown as an olympiad technique. I… Continue reading Make training non zero-sum
Revisiting arc midpoints in complex numbers
1. Synopsis One of the major headaches of using complex numbers in olympiad geometry problems is dealing with square roots. In particular, it is nontrivial to express the incenter of a triangle inscribed in the unit circle in terms of its vertices. The following lemma is the standard way to set up the arc midpoints… Continue reading Revisiting arc midpoints in complex numbers
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
Power Overwhelming 