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Math Team
41–50 of 106 posts
Re: Math Team
#42The author mentions at one point that he was unable to solve a problem because he didn't memorize the formula for the Euler totient function in order to count the number of numbers relatively prime to 9999. ...but its actually an interesting (and not super difficult) exercise in its own right to figure this out even if you don't know the formula. Encourage you all to give it a shot. SPOILERS: 9999 = 3^2 * 11 * 101, s…
The difference for you is that you're doing it as a fun exercise. With contest math, you're drilling these formulas and tricks so you can reproduce them quickly on a timed exam. If you know both of the facts listed in the essay then you can knock off this question in a minute or two.
Trying to come up with everything from scratch could take a lot longer and be very frustrating when you've got other problems waiting for you to solve.
Re: Math Team
#43I'm from Scandinavia, and I always find it both fascinating and alien how much focus the US system puts on extracurriculars - and more specifically competitive extracurricular activities. On one side, it is probably good to motivate pupils to aim for something, and get good at it - but on the other side, you obviously end up with a bunch of kids that are just really good at grinding away - even if their heart is not…
Not everyone else is doing it. OP article is about the top 1% of high school students with elite ambitions. In your country, this might be like highlighting an Olympian's training vs. your average recreationist. The vast, vast majority of US students go to university with acceptance rates of 50% or higher where your GPA is the determinant.
Re: Math Team
#44Why does this guy act like he's so successful and genius? He should feel bad that even though he graduated Stanford back in 2009, he's only a senior software engineer at a random non-FAANG company.
Re: Math Team
#45I'm from Scandinavia, and I always find it both fascinating and alien how much focus the US system puts on extracurriculars - and more specifically competitive extracurricular activities. On one side, it is probably good to motivate pupils to aim for something, and get good at it - but on the other side, you obviously end up with a bunch of kids that are just really good at grinding away - even if their heart is not…
Not everyone else is doing it. OP article is about the top 1% of high school students with elite ambitions. In your country, this might be like highlighting an Olympian's training vs. your average recreationist. The vast, vast majority of US students go to university with acceptance rates of 50% or higher where your GPA is the determinant.
I mean, the elite students here end up doing pretty much the same thing as elite students in US: They become medical doctors, investment bankers, management consultants for MBB, hedge fund and private equity, and what have you. But I guess we don't have to jump through the same amount of hoops to get accepted.
With that said, we have around 20 universities and colleges in Norway, versus the thousands you have in the US - so I would imagine that elite employers in the US rely more on colleges/universities for the filtering part, which in turn filter HS students. A whole lotta filtering going on, it would seem.
Re: Math Team
#46This personal account resonated with me since I also had some personal experiences in both the "math competition" and "competitive high school" world up until I graduated high school in ~2018. --- I went to a middle school where I somehow ended up far ahead in the curriculum due to my own interest in science and math, thanks to my personal interests and parental support at the time. I think I caught the attention of…
well you obviously weren't THAT far ahead since you went to George Tech University instead of MIT or otherwise
The author went to Stanford so what he experienced is 1000x whatever you are talking about
Re: Math Team
#47The author mentions at one point that he was unable to solve a problem because he didn't memorize the formula for the Euler totient function in order to count the number of numbers relatively prime to 9999. ...but its actually an interesting (and not super difficult) exercise in its own right to figure this out even if you don't know the formula. Encourage you all to give it a shot. SPOILERS: 9999 = 3^2 * 11 * 101, s…
The problem (and linked solution is here)
https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/2022_AIME_I_P...
The totient formula isn't the hard part of the problem.
The test has a very short time limit (for the difficulty of the problems), and has many gruelingly complicated problems,so if you dont have the formulas down cold, you'll burn out during the contest.
Of course, if you don't care about silly speed-mathing contests, you can enjot the problems at a leisurely pace.
Re: Math Team
#48There's no evidence that being on the math team helped his application.
The people who win the math contests (And yes, who get into elite schools because of it) enjoy practice. That's the secret. Tao says the same thing about research mathematicians.
The people who hate it don't do well and it doesn't help their college applications.
He mentions that he was the only one on high school team who discovered how to triangulate a polygon, which is taught in Geometry class (junior high school for him).
Their bad attitude drags the team down.
Re: Math Team
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with your suggestion is that it implicitly suggests death for loser commoners, of which there will always statistically be more. The loser commoners need some way to ensure their basic needs are met, or they find a way to do that anyways. For example, see all the "eat the rich" rhetoric. I don't think there's anything wrong with suggesting that people should try to make the most of what they have, but sug…
Great. So is your suggestion that high school students should focus on politics and building an equitable society instead of optimizing for themselves? That would be very altruistic indeed.
I guess we’ve come far enough from being hunter-gatherers that the value of acts that ensure group cohesion and community wellbeing seem like some sort of extra effort or altruism, instead of a fundamental aspect of optimizing survival as a whole. That said, I was talking about governance and policies, not what career choices someone should or could make.
Re: Math Team
#50In the 4th paragraph he describes “the arc of a stone falling to earth” as an exponential function. Is that true? I always thought it was quadratic.
He also wrote that the angels in a triangle sum to 180^0 :-)