Though such a competition may have its raison d'être, I think those younger people who are seriously interested in mathematics will lose nothing by ignoring it. There is a competition called the Mathematical Olympic, in which a competitor is asked to solve some problems, which are difficult and of the type I avoided. I avoided such types, and chose more straightforward problems, which one could solve with standard techniques and basic knowledge. I discovered that many of the exam problems were artificial and required some clever tricks. In The Map of My Life mathematician Goro Shimura wrote of his experience teaching at a cram school And as there is only one test of originality in mathematics, namely the accomplishment of original work, and as it is useless to ask a youth of twenty-two to perform original research under examination conditions, the examination necessarily degenerates into a kind of game, and instruction for it into initiation into a series of stunts and tricks. The examiner is not allowed to content himself with testing the competence and the knowledge of the candidates his instructions are to provide a test of more than that, of initiative, imagination, and even of some sort of originality. My own opinion is that this is the inevitable result, in a mathematical examination, of high standards and traditions. It has often been said that Tripos mathematics was a collection of elaborate futilities, and the accusation is broadly true. In The Case against the Mathematical Tripos mathematician GH Hardy wrote

In elementary school I had the vague idea that professional mathematicians spent their time computing digits of pi, for instance, or perhaps devising and then solving Math Olympiad style problems.

Well, I guess they should be warned that their impressions of what professional mathematics is may be quite different from the reality. high school students and young researchers)? What advice would you give to young people starting out in math (i.e. In a 2003 interview, Fields Medalist Terence Tao answered the question Furthermore, they've become tied to a misleading mythological conception of 'genius.' I've collected relevant quotations below.Īcknowledgment - I obtained some of these quotations from a collection of mathematician quotations compiled by my colleague Laurens Gunnarsen. Unfortunately, while math competitions may be more representative of mathematical practice than school mathematics, math competitions are themselves greatly misleading. It's common for bright young people to participate in math competitions, an activity which is closer to that of mathematical practice. As I mentioned in Fields Medalists on School Mathematics, school mathematics usually gives a heavily distorted picture of mathematical practice.

The Map of My Life by Goro Shimura