The Alibaba Mathematics Competition has been held for 6 sessions, of which the first 5 are very dull and have no social influence, just a game in a small circle. It can't be helped, after all, the deeper the thing, the fewer people play.
Just like the annual college entrance examination, only the composition of Chinese has discussion value, because only this question has the deepest mass foundation, and everyone can talk about a few words. As for other subjects, we can't talk about it.
This is not the case for the college entrance examination, not to mention the math competitions that are several levels more difficult. Take Ali competition test questions as an example, many questions can't be read. But this question made my eyes shine, because I vaguely saw groups and P between the lines.
This year's Alibaba Mathematics Competition suddenly exploded because Jiang Ping, a 17-year-old girl from a secondary school in Lianshui, Jiangsu, was selected from a group of top school players and ranked 12th among the finalists.
One stone stirred up a thousand waves, and this matter quickly fermented on the Internet. This is normal, because it has a basis in informatics. According to Shannon, the grandfather of informatics, the amount of information depends on the probability of the event occurring.
That is, the greater the probability of an event occurring, the smaller the amount of information contained in the event itself. Conversely, the smaller the probability of occurrence, the greater the amount of information it contains. The more unlikely something happens, the more informative it is.
For example, the amount of information that the Chinese table tennis team won is zero, because it is a definite event. The Chinese table tennis team lost, and the amount of information was extremely high, because it was extremely unlikely to lose. Therefore, we often say that the Chinese table tennis team is not news if it wins, and it is news when it loses.
The Chinese men's football team is the opposite. The loss of the Chinese men's football team is not news, it is only news if it wins, and it is explosive news. If the Chinese men's football team wins the World Cup, it will take a year to search for hot searches, because the amount of information is infinite.
Jiang Ping won the twelfth place in the world in the Ali Mathematics Competition, which is extremely informative because the probability of occurrence is extremely small. The egg does not discriminate against the secondary school, the secondary school can also Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, there will be a master in a certain industry, but it can't hide the mathematical genius.
My friend Thief Fork, a Ph.D. in mathematics who graduated from Zhejiang University, once had a wonderful answer to a reader's question. Some netizens asked him if he wanted to learn Olympiad mathematics in primary school. He replied that gifted children could learn something.
The netizen then asked, how can you tell if your child is talented in mathematics? His reply is something I will never forget: When you ask this question, you have already proved that your child is not talented in mathematics.
Mathematical talent cannot be hidden, and it is difficult to bury a genius, especially under the current education system, from primary school to senior high school, mathematics is a major subject that cannot be beaten. Even if you study liberal arts, you can't escape the clutches of mathematics.
Many people have complained that the mathematics we learn seems to be useless in daily life and work (except for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), so why should we be the main subject? Here the egg always has to talk about his own understanding and why he wants to study mathematics.
Learning mathematics is very helpful in exercising one's analytical skills, comprehension skills, reasoning skills and other logical thinking skills. By learning mathematics, our thinking will become more rigorous, and it will be more conducive to analyzing and solving problems.
Therefore, children who are generally good at mathematics will not be too bad in other subjects, including Chinese, and many mathematics problems now require a certain reading comprehension ability, as well as a certain ability to express themselves. Solving a mathematical problem is an analytical expression in itself, but in mathematical language.
Secondly, mathematics itself is the foundation of the natural sciences and is a tool of the natural sciences. The richer the tools of mathematics, the more conducive it is for people to explore the unknown world and solve unprecedented problems facing mankind.
For example, Neptune was discovered because astronomers found that the actual orbit of Uranus deviated from the calculations of Kepler and Newton's laws, and the only explanation was that there were other planets nearby exerting gravitational attraction.
Maxwell, the grandfather of the communications industry, had a very high level of mathematics, and on the basis of his known knowledge of physics, he predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves based on pure mathematical derivation, and predicted that the speed of electromagnetic waves was equal to the speed of light.
There is also a sentence that also illustrates the characteristics of the discipline of mathematics - all physicists are basically mathematicians. It is a common occurrence in the history of science that physicists have to create a set of mathematical theories in order to solve physical problems.
Therefore, if you want to enter the door of modern science and modern industry, and if you want to fully understand our world, you must master the stepping stone of mathematics and use the tool of mathematics skillfully. This is what mathematics means to the individual.
For the country, it is also necessary to screen out talents suitable for different jobs through mathematics. In frontier fields such as basic disciplines and advanced fields, mathematics must be passed. Basic discipline research, ordinary people can't do this.
Therefore, ordinary children should be cautious about learning Olympiad mathematics, ordinary people should be cautious about mathematics competitions, ordinary candidates should be cautious about applying for mathematics research majors, and ordinary people should be cautious about stock market prediction...... After all, math competitions, math research, and stock market predictions are high-IQ games, and falling into the abyss of mathematics is troublesome.
Based on the fear of the abyss of mathematics, I have always believed that mathematics competitions, mathematical research and stock market predictions are not for ordinary people to play, so it is very shocking for Jiang Ping, who is studying in secondary school, to win the 12th place in the preliminary round, and the amount of information is huge (because the possibility is extremely small).
What's more, Jiangsu Province itself is a big province of education, starting from kindergarten, it can be said that every student has experienced a hundred battles, and there are countless large and small exams, and it is very unlikely that a mathematical genius will be buried.
Although I am not quite convinced, I did not comment lightly. There are two reasons, first of all, to tell the truth, we can't even understand Jiang Ping's volume, how can we comment? Anyway, there is a final, and we will naturally see it when the time comes.
Although I did not comment publicly, I checked with Dr. Thief Cha of Mathematics from Zhejiang University, Senior Brother Mou from the Department of Mathematics of HKUST, and Tan from the Department of Mathematics, and Tan who likes to wander in the abyss of mathematics, and our views are the same.
Yesterday, the official website of the Lianshui Education and Sports Bureau responded to confirm our view, that is, there is something greasy in this matter. The Lianshui County Education and Sports Bureau confirmed that the screenshot of Jiang Ping's monthly test score of 83 on the Internet is true.
What does this response mean? The first shows that Jiang Ping's usual mathematics scores are not particularly outstanding, with a full score of 150 points and 83 points, and the monthly examination papers of technical colleges and universities are extremely simple compared to ordinary high schools.
Second, Jiang Ping's computer for the monthly exam was borrowed, which, combined with Jiang Ping's math level, meant that she didn't have much opportunity to use the very professional Latex math software and submit the test papers.
Third, the Lianshui Education and Sports Bureau kicked the ball to the organizer Ali. So Dan is always very heartbroken, and netizens across the country have been quarreling around Jiang Ping for more than ten days, but Ali, who knows the truth of the matter best, has become a silent bystander, and is probably still snickering on the sidelines.
This thing itself is also full of evil nature. When everyone is discussing whether Jiang Ping cheats or not, we may all be toyed with. Because what exactly is the definition of cheating? The definition of cheating is definitely breaking the rules to get results.
However, the rules of the preliminary round of this competition are relatively relaxed, and the contestants can complete the answers within 48 hours, and it is still open book (from 8 o'clock on April 15 ~ 8 o'clock on April 17.
For 48 hours, no one can sit in front of the computer all the time, and no one is proctoring, so there is a possibility of team fighting. Moreover, teamwork has always been an open secret known to everyone in the industry. Many of them did well in the preliminary round, but the finals were a mess.
Under this rule, each player may not be fighting alone. Since the rules are like this, whether it counts as cheating or not is another matter.
What do you think of this rule? After all, the preliminary round is an audition, and there are neither bonuses nor medals, so it is normal to be relaxed, and it can also lower the threshold, increase interest, and even create gimmicks.
In such a regular nature, it is natural to have some relatively large amount of information events, and I can even speculate that some people deliberately want to create such an explosive event with a large amount of information to catch the eye.
What's in it for you? First, the degree of attention is high, and the popularity is high; The higher the visibility, the greater the traffic; If the traffic is large, the income will be high. Who will benefit from this? Everyone figure it out for themselves.
If you give this topic to the editorial department of "A Certain Voice", "A Certain Person" and "A Certain Forest", you will definitely be able to write inspirational stories of grassroots counterattacks. While we were in tears, someone was laughing and counting the money.
I think Jiang Ping was ultimately a victim and was used as a tool. This little girl, who is not yet an adult, was forcibly sent to the center of the whirlpool of public opinion, and it is likely that she will have to live and study with a heavy burden of public opinion and ideology in the future.
Who is behind the scenes? From the end of the preliminary round on April 17 to the announcement of the results on June 14, all kinds of videos came overwhelmingly and began to make gods. These materials may have been prepared in advance, and I believe that you have your own answers.
In short, as long as the rules are weird, anything can happen. Believe it or not, as long as the rules are in place, Gonggong Hu of the Western Jin Dynasty or Gonggong Lianying Li can also be elected as the best father in China and the most majestic man in China.
So don't pay too much attention to the preliminary round with very loose and strange rules. There are also people who take the opportunity to lead the rhythm and ask the university to admit her (special recruitment) or give her a guaranteed qualification. There are also fabricated rumors that Harvard University has extended an olive branch to her.
Fortunately, the universities are calmer, for example, Zhejiang University only promised her to participate in the school's summer camp. This is a great way to get to know Jiang Ping through communication.
It should be noted that Du Jiangfeng, the president of Zhejiang University, is an academician trained by the University of Science and Technology of China, and he studied at the University of Science and Technology for his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. In addition, the presidents of Shenzhen University, Shanghai University of Science and Technology, Hegong University, Nanchang Hangkong University and other universities (as shown below) are all graduates of HKUST, so they are welcome to apply for USTC.
His teacher, Wang Yanqiu, hopes that she can study at Changshu Institute of Technology. Changshu Institute of Technology replied more appropriately, saying that she hoped that she would apply for Changshu University of Technology in the future, lay a good foundation for undergraduate, and then go to Zhejiang University for further study.
The most appropriate part of these two schools' replies is actually the sense of rules - according to the procedure. Once the rules are broken, then all sorts of moths are coming. If the results of the preliminary round can be used as a qualification for escort (exceptional), can it still be Jiang Ping's turn?
Although the college entrance examination system is currently the fairest system, it has also gone through many detours. Without exception, there are new rules outside the exam, and these rules seem to be eclectic to reduce talents, but do you think it can be your turn?
For example, can you be admitted to Tsinghua University through cheerleading? Can you be admitted to a prestigious university with a score of 75° and a wrong score of 60 because you published a few articles in the newspaper with the help of your parents? Can you, as a landlubber, be a national second-level swimmer and then be admitted to a prestigious university?
Can you not even know what CNKI is, but you can graduate from Beiying and become a postdoctoral fellow at Peking University? Can you become a high-level athlete on the bench of a basketball team and then be admitted to Peking University with more than 400 points?
So there are some rules, when you don't even know it, people will already be in the house and famous. You may not imagine that a high school that doesn't even have a swimming pool trains more than 20 second-level athletes a year, just because of extra points in the college entrance examination......
For most ordinary people, the simpler and crudest the rules, the better. There are some rules that you feel are opened to recruit special talents, but in the end it is the people who are the most eel drillers. So here comes the question for thought: who will camp except for eels?
It is not that the rules cannot be changed, but the revision of the rules is a matter of great caution, and it must be for the benefit of the majority of the people, and it must not become a loophole for the eel to drill the camp. Saying that a thousand ways and 10,000 stuck rules are related to the vital interests of every ordinary person.
Together, we monitor the rules, refine the rules, and then defend the rules.