FAQs

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Why do you like math? I find it really boring.

The math you and I are considering may be two very different things. So the first thing I'd like to say is that the reason I love math is because the math I'm talking about is the art of thinking. Math allows me to challenge myself with problems that make me think in new and creative ways, and challenge the norm. Doesn't sound too boring anymore, does it?

Are math olympiads = SOF IMO?

No!! Check my page on math olympiads for more information.

How should I prepare for math olympiads?

Check this page out!

Will studying N hours a day for M months allow me to do well in olympiads? Will doing XYZ guarantee me a good rank?

Short answer: It won't.

I think this is one of the questions you definitely want to stay away from - there is nobody who can tell you a certain "strategy" that allows you to guarentee doing well in the olympiads. It often comes down to practice, though. There is no denying that experience with a wide range of problems is essential to do well on the olympiads, and it can contribute greatly to your preperation. However, olympiads often depend a fair bit on contest day luck (especially the first time you appear for the exam) so it is important to remember that no preparation can guarantee you success here.

If I can't guarantee success, why should I bother with olympiads?

It all comes down to your glorious purpose. Personally, I think that the biggest impact olympiads have had on me is the fact that they have made me a problem-solver. I've learnt to think in new ways, and learn some magical math concepts. The quote "It's the journey that matters, not the destination" is more applicable than ever, and I think that preparing for these olympiads can give you an exposure in mathematics unlike anything you may have experienced before.

How long do I work on a problem before I give up?

The general way I like to think about this is "the number of hours of zero progress". In general, it's often unlikely you're going to make progress on a reasonable problem if you haven't been able to for, say, the last 3 hours. In general, you can set the lower bound to 1 hour/30 minutes too (this depends on the problem difficulty too), but I would say that any less than 20 minutes before seeing the solution is essentially just wasting the problem.

How to read solutions?

This is actually important - a lot of people end up reading the entire solution when they "give up", which doesn't just ruin the fun of problem-solving, but also prevents you from extracting more learnings from the problem. Reading an official solution often leaves you clueless on the one question that always should be answered - "How would I have come up with this?"

So instead of reading entire official solutions, I think it is a good in-between to take a peek at a line/ see what sort of idea is being used. In particular, I think getting hints on a problem is better than either of these - so it's often useful to have a person/system you can ask such hints for.

I'm in class 10/11/12. Is it too late to begin my preperations?

Class 10 and 11: Definitely not. There are lots of people who only began preparing seriously in these grades and have gone on to do very well in these olympiads (though starting early does definitely give you a slight edge). For class 12, the situation is slightly more tricky, since they typically have college admissions and boards to think about as well - so I think it comes down to how much passion you have for it, as well as the time you can dedicate to this. In particular, I think doing a little bit of these olympiads in class 12 can definitely be an enriching experience, but it comes down to the amount of time you can dedicate to it.

What's the right way to prepare?

There's no right way.

There are a few things to stay away from, though. Here are some things to keep in mind:

On another note, you may often be faced with questions such as: should I do X or Y? Is it worth it to do Z? It's important to know that everyone has a different style of learning, and even if a certain person thinks X is horrible, it may be ideal for you. So the best thing to do is probably to give all of X, Y and Z a small try - if they don't work out for you, so be it. 

Are there any online forums that can help me with my olympiad preparation?

I think you might want to look at some of the pages again, oops. In particular, OTIS is a wonderful forum with a variety of different resources for olympiad preparation. Online Math Club is a great online forum too with a wide range of classes available online publicly on their YouTube channel. The Sophie Fellowship community is an amazing place to be too, with the additional advantage of weekly problem sets and more personalized attention, so do consider applying for the program. All of these three were a massive help in my olympiad journey, and I encourage you to give them a try as well :)

I do math olympiads, and I recently heard about informatics olympiads/competitive programming. Should I give it a try?

I think informatics olympiads and competitive programming definitely have some relation with combinatorics in math olympiads, and maturity in one of them often helps in the other. There are some other skills you need in competitive programming as well - learning a certain coding language, for example. But realistically, these don't take too much time to learn, especially if you have done some form of coding in the past. Having experience in some math olympiad topics such as graph theory can also give you a decent headstart into some parts of your preperations, and experience with proofs and topics such as invariants can often give you an edge. Besides, if you enjoy solving problems that challenge you to think, I think you'll find informatics olympiads and competitions on websites like CodeForces a lot of fun.

How do I balance JEE/boards with olympiads?

It all comes down to your comfort. Different people have different ways of managing things, and there's no fixed answer to this. Personally, the way I tried managing it with other work is trying to take one thing at a time - when I was preparing for the olympiads I did so without worrying about other things, and if there was something important that I had to do, I would give myself a break from olympiads for a couple of days/weeks, and focus on what had to be done. This also served as a break from olympiads - no matter how much you love a certain subject, it is still important to take breaks from it so that you don't end up getting burnt out and lose your focus. Other people may have other views, and a lot of people can multitask different things together well, which is why it's best you try and find where your comfort lies.

What math camps can I apply to?

I think you'll find exactly what you need here

I prepared a lot, but I didn't do well on the olympiad this year. What now?

Firstly, you should know that it's okay. Even if you think you put in a lot of effort, and you think that it isn't fair that you didn't get what you wanted - it's okay. It has happened with a lot of people (including me!), and it's a part of the journey.

The question you want to ask yourself at such a point : if I knew that I'm going to mess this exam up, would I have still prepared the same way? Or would I have chosen to spend my time elsewhere? If you really enjoy what you do, these results shouldn't be enough to push you back all the way to square one. I know this is easy to say, but believe me, I've gone through this myself - and that love for what you're doing is the only thing that matters at the end.

All this being said, it is very important that you give yourself a break. Spend some time off, go on a vacation, read a book - life is not just about olympiad math. This break often helps you understand what you want to do more concretely, and it gets you back in the zone you should be in.

How should I revise/prepare on the day before RMO/INMO?

Don't. If you've been preparing for these olympiads for a fair bit now, there's not a lot you can cram in this last day - and learning something completely new is unlikely to be a good idea on this last day. It's important to keep yourself fresh and confident on the day leading upto the exam, so you should go out and play, enjoy, eat and sleep well and stay in good shape - mental freshness is key to doing well on such exams. You can solve a problem here and there, but don't spend too much time doing math. (This being said, it's better not to go to either extreme - don't watch a horror movie in the spirit of entertainment, and don't grind some IMO P6s for preparation)

How did you get into olympiads?

I was appearing for a local olympiad known as the JMO (broadly out of luck) in class 7, and preparing for that introduced me to topics such as Modulo Congruency and Permutations and Combinations. I attended a short crashcourse as well, and I found these topics really fun - and that's where I decided to get into the olympiads.