Comments on: India at the Mathematical Olympiad

By: Sriram

Sriram — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:49:25 +0000

Fundamental question: Why should India do well at Maths Olympiad ?

By: Ritwik

Ritwik — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:39:53 +0000

Oho … I think you love me.

By: Nilu

Nilu — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:14:52 +0000

I don’t know about others, but this idiot Ritwik gives me a headache.

Here is your warning — either be stupid knowing you are or shut up. Else, go lark around Sabnis.

By: Nilu

Nilu — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:40:18 +0000

As an addition to stupidity here, let me add this.

I do not know how research in Mathematics works in India. But graduate students who go to American Universities are more often than not piled with teaching responsibilities that ensure they will hardly make any meaningful progress in their research in the first two years. Unless one is exceptionally gifted and perseveres to the next level, the graduate student’s research is bound to be mediocre.

Maybe Amit Varma will campaign for change in funding practices in research assistant positions. In ‘08 Presidential race, that is.

By: Vishnu Narayanan

Vishnu Narayanan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:27:50 +0000

Why do you think that Madhu Sudan would leave his research at MIT and come to India to teach Math. olympiad kids? What incentive does he have in doing that? Same goes for Manindra Agrawal.

By: Nilakantan Rajaraman

Nilakantan Rajaraman — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:16:01 +0000

Let’s see what happened to the person who was ragged to death in my class and was not even considered very bright by peers. He is now bothered about Databases.

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~mvnak/cv.pdf

MVN was brighter than I ever was or will be — but he was not the best in my class. Yet, he qualifies on Avataram’s 6th rank in JEE criterion. The brightest in that class of ‘98 is now a crack addict or something. That’s not even the point. The point is, shut up, idiots.

By: shrek

shrek — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:32:36 +0000

Aren’t there only two chances to make it to the camp ? (once as junior and once as senior? ) E.g the guys to last win gold medas in 2001, jha and sarkar gave JEE one year later in 2002. Jha had a rank of ~30 in JEE and sarkar had 6. once chose ISI kolkotta, the other iitb and so it goes.
I seem to remember that these guys didnt qualify for the team in 2002.

@sheesh …. better be a bottom feeder amongst the best, than be the best amongst bottom feeders.

By: froginthewell

froginthewell — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:06:16 +0000

Ritwik, your pattern matching observation is great. RMO and INMO ( at least the ones I have seen ) are all trivial once you have certain basic knowledge.

I too went to the training camp but didn’t make it to the team ( so we will have several common friends ). Another observation at IMOTC was that the coaching was by no means structured - just several problems are worked out - the sessions were by no means illuminating or tailored to sharpen problem solving skills. What many of my friends and I used to do were to search in a large strategy space - probe several familiar strategies. If we were lucky we would pick out the strategy which leads to a solution.

By: Alan Smithee

Alan Smithee — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:59:12 +0000

avataram, atha free ya vudunga. Was Gandhi a brahmin? Why are all these kids wearing the poonal? Some even wear it ‘valam’. Are they doing tharpanam?

By: avataram

avataram — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:21:58 +0000

Lot of passion there, wish you had shown that in winning a gold. But like you, let me not shoot the messenger(s).

What is your solution? That kids in pune wake up at 6am, wear khakhi shorts, do vishram savdhan for one hour and then learn vedic mathematics at BP? A fine haul of gold medals that has given us.

And NV Tejaswi, who is working on the Birch Swinnerton Dyer conjecture is a better bet for the next fields than Balwe, who is still struggling with his Ph.d or postdoc. At Pittsburgh.