Median Putnam contestants, willing to devote one of the last Saturdays before final exams to a math test, are likely to receive an advanced degree in the sciences. It is counterproductive on many levels to leave them feeling like total idiots. --- Bruce Reznick, "Some Thoughts on Writing for the Putnam" Last February I made… Continue reading An apology for HMMT 2016
Tag: teaching
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
Some Thoughts on Olympiad Material Design
(This is a bit of a follow-up to the solution reading post last month. Spoiler warnings: USAMO 2014/6, USAMO 2012/2, TSTST 2016/4, and hints for ELMO 2013/1, IMO 2016/2.) I want to say a little about the process which I use to design my olympiad handouts and classes these days (and thus by extension the… Continue reading Some Thoughts on Olympiad Material Design
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
Stop Paying Me Per Hour
Occasionally I am approached by parents who ask me if I am available to teach their child in olympiad math. This is flattering enough that I've even said yes a few times, but I'm always confused why the question is "can you tutor my child?" instead of "do you think tutoring would help, and if… Continue reading Stop Paying Me Per Hour
On Problem Sets
(It appears to be May 7 -- good luck to all the national MathCounts competitors tomorrow!) 1. An 8.044 Problem Recently I saw a 8.044 physics problem set which contained the problem Consider a system of $latex {N}&fg=000000$ almost independent harmonic oscillators whose energy in a microcanonical ensemble is given by $latex {E = \frac… Continue reading On Problem Sets
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
Why do roots come in conjugate pairs?
This is an expanded version of an answer I gave to a question that came up while I was assisting the 2014-2015 WOOT class. It struck me as an unusually good way to motivate higher math using stuff that people notice in high school but for some reason decide to not think about. In high… Continue reading Why do roots come in conjugate pairs?
Power Overwhelming 