writing

Understanding with System 1

26 October, 201928 March, 2019 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)3 Comments

Math must be presented for System 1 to absorb and only incidentally for System 2 to verify. I finally have a sort-of formalizable guideline for teaching and writing math, and what it means to "understand" math. I've been unconsciously following this for years and only now managed to write down explicitly what it is that… Continue reading Understanding with System 1

On Reading Solutions

6 March, 201715 November, 2017 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)9 Comments

(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

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

14 March, 201517 March, 2015 Evan Chen (陳誼廷)13 Comments

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