MATHEMATICS TODAY

APRIL 2002
60
Winning a one-day cricket match has a lot to do
with the team effort and the captains acumen.
Winning at the IITJEE is not just about hard work,
it has a lot to do with intelligent work. In this last
month, prior to the IIT Mains, let us take a captains
outlook.
Before the match, you do net practice. The captain
watches the net practice, forms his strategy for the
the day of the match. In April, watch your fielding,
batting and bowling at the net practice. For the
day of the examination, design your strategy, wear
your temperament and plan your batting order.
Your preparation for the examination is all but
over. It is like, you have selected the team of 16
for the match. Your batsmen and bowlers are as
good as they are. Their last minute effort is not
going to change their overall capability.
Now, there is no point in doing further problems
or acquiring more knowledge. It will almost be as
good as it is right now. Rather, your final output
may decrease, if you try to be greedy and acquire
more data. The challenge that confronts you now
is to mobilise that which you have.
Performance (output) =
Efficiency (Captains outlook)
Input (Knowledge acquired)
Dear student,
Your months of labour is about to come to fruition. This is your last month before the IIT Mains.
There is many a slip between the cup and the lip fear haunts you. You fight it by putting harder
work, finding newer problems and acquiring greater knowledge. Just hold it!
See this as a game you play. I invite you to captain your team in playing this game. O! captain!
listen carefully.
S. Shyam Sunder, B. Tech, IIT Delhi
l S. Shyam Sunder, a professor of physics is a widely acclaimed trainer for the IIT-JEE, who has given seminars and
workshops all over India. l Curently, he is working as Director (Academics) PIE education. l He is the first person in
India to have solved the IIT-JEE physics paper and published it in the newspaper the very next day.
You, the I IT aspirant
Sunday,
the 5th of
May
Net
Practice
April
Revision
Fielding
Concepts
Network
Batting Topics
Bowling
Match
strategy
Examination
Temperament
Batting
order
Questions
attempting
order
Captain
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Nothing much can be done about the input now,
but you can considerably impact the efficiency.
Most students, are not even aware that such a thing
exists. Congratulations, you are aware!
April, is the month for practising your captaincy.
Enough of batting, bowling and fielding. Enough
of problem solving, enough of acquiring new concepts
and new knowledge. What works now is to start
watching your fielding, your batting and the bowling.
Fielding : It pertains to the field set up that you
do. Even with an aggressive batting of the opposition,
a good field set up can prevent lot of runs. Good
strokes need not produce runs, if your fielding is
superb.
Lay down a tight network of concepts that none
of the JEE questions can beat. Wind up your
preparation by recalling all the concepts that you
know, the formulas that you remember and
derivations that are involved.
Scan all the questions that you have hitherto
done. Questions you could do
the first time you tried, say Hi
to them and Bye to them, as soon
as possible. Mark them .
Questions that stumped you
the first time or tricked you into
giving an alternate invalid answer,
say hello to them, ask them courteous questions
of well being and then say good bye. Mark then *.
And, there would have been questions which
pestered you for a long time. Meet them properly.
Greet them, enquire their well being, have a
conversation and then bid them good bye. Mark
them .
If your scanning and marking of questions is
complete, it would help you quickly revise all the
* and questions the week prior to the examination.
In cricket a popular slogan is Catches win
Matches. Parallely we can say :
Past questions, scan, IIT-JEE, you can!
Batting : You as a captain has to decide what
will be your batting order. It will be a crucial decision
in your overall tally of runs.
IIT-JEE is like a one-day cricket match. The match
is about limited overs to play and maximum runs
to score. The IIT-JEE is about limited time (2 hours/
120 minutes) to play and maximum marks to make.
The cricket team consists of 11 players, who can
bat. The questions paper contains about 11 questions
to solve. All the batsmen need not necessarily bat.
Similarly all questions need not necessarily be done.
Note this point. The question papers instructions
might say : Attempt all questions. Just think, there
is no penalty for not attempting all the questions.
A certain conditioning leads us to believe that
more questions attempted means more marks scored.
It is akeen to saying more the batsmen who play,
more will be the runs scored. Not necessary. The
runs scored depends on who played, in what order
and how many did they score.
So the question in terms of IIT-JEE is to discuss
who are your batsmen, find how well they play,
and thus categorize them. This knowledge would
help you in planning your batting order.
The batsmen are your topics for the IIT-JEE. A
topic is the name of the smallest set which can fit
a question. If you quote the name of a topic as
Mechanics, it would be invalid. Since a question
of IIT-JEE can be termed as
rotational dynamics question,
which is a subset of the bigger
set Mechanics. The names of a
few topics could be: Newtons laws,
Work, Power, Energy, Doppler
Effect, Bohrs theory etc.
Now, a captain would categorize his batsmen
as opening/one down, middle order, tailender and
may be as physically unfit. Equivalently we can
categorize our topics as 1, 2, 3 and 4.
You can categorize the topics of your course,
by doing a USA analysis on them. U stands for
understanding. Your understanding refers to the
clarity of concepts involved, ability to derive the
relevant formulae off hand and to recall all your
formulae.
S refers to solving of sufficient problems. You
could note this sufficiency in terms of solving of
all your assignment questions, text book questions
or whatever task you had set for yourself.
A means application. It is clear when your
knowledge has been tested out in terms of feedback
of marks from simulated tests. Normally, we talk
about the marks scored in a test. Notice the marks
scored in a particular topic i.e the marks scored in
the question pertaining to that topic.
The question papers instructions
might say : Attempt all questions.
J ust think, there is no penalty for
not attempting all the questions.
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You declare a batsman or topic as 1 when your
understanding is solid, solving of problems is sufficient
and feedback of marks scored is promising.
A 2 batsman or topic is categorized, when your
understanding is good, assignments are complete.
But the independent application is in doubt since
the batsmans feedback from the performance in
the past tests is not so encouraging. The observation
is: good at the netpractice but not such good scores
in the past test matches.
The 3 batsman or topic is the one whose scores
in a couple of matches has been astonishing. Like
a century scored by a nightwatchman! Topics which
you understand well but you have not spent sufficient
effort or time on solving questions/assignments.
Yet you have cracked a few problems in the past
tests thus surging your confidence.
A 4 batsman or topic is the one where in your
understanding of the topic is good but neither you
have a back up of sufficient problems or assignments
nor a tally of good scores in the past tests, to support.
The USA analysis is summarised in the following
table.
Batsman U S A
Category
1
2
3
4
Bowling : You need to coach a batsman to see
the bowl and play. Does a batsman play the bowler
or play the bowl? The top batsman always plays
the ball, and not the bowler. He is not diffident or
over confident while looking at the bowler. He
plays each ball on its own merit. He hammers a
loose ball and defends a good ball.
Likewise, when you answer a question in the
IIT-JEE judge it on its own merit. Dont be afraid
of the glamour of a topic. Many a times a student
is afraid of solving a Modern Physics question, because
it contains terms like gamma photon generator.
The glamorised jargon bamboozles you. You are
so impressed or afraid of the question that you
are already shaking. Your impression of the question
forbids you from solving it. Maybe, it was a loose
delivery of a great bowler, so hook it for a six.
Be aware of the kind of balls that you could be
playing. The ball could be a loose ball, spin, fast
one or a bouncer. Let us code them as A, B, C and
D respectively.
A loose ball or A question is the one which is
a simple one. It is a lollipop question. Not all questions
are tough in the IIT-JEE. Once in a while, such
simple questions do come which can be done even
with a 12th class level understanding of the topic.
A spin ball or B question is the one which makes
you perceive something different from what it is.
It could trick you. Be cautious. You can play the
ball, just be careful. Maybe the question is asking
you something different from what you immediately
think, it is. Dont jump into conclusion. Watch the
ball carefully. May be the question demands that
you conserve angular momentum but tricks you
into conserving mechanical energy. If you were
careful, you would have seen through the trick,
but only if you were.
This is what yields the phenomenon of many a
student yelling Oh! No! while climbing down the
stairs of the examination hall. They call it a silly
mistake, what it actually was is a profound mistake.
There was no captain in their team. Captaincy, itself
was missing, have the Oh! No! s.
The next kind of ball is the fast one or C question.
This is the kind of question which the IIT-JEE is
famous for. People think all questions in the IIT-JEE
are of this type. It is only one of the types. You
would not be attempting C at first. You will be
riding the wave of questions already done before
attempting C. Hence you have greater chances of
doing it successfully.
D are the questions which you cant make head
or tail off. They are the bouncers, best left alone
initially.
Match strategy
Understand that the batting order makes a lot
of difference to the final tally of runs. If your openers
pile in a huge total, say 108 for 1, the confidence
of the middle order is boosted. They invariably
play well leading to the piling of a huge score.
Your opening questions must help you score good
marks.
A bad batsman sent earlier, not only fails to score
runs but is eating away the balls. This puts unwanted
pressure on the subsequent batsman to score more
runs in lesser number of balls.
The choice of bad question in the beginning is
not able to give you marks. It eats away the available
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time, better used in solving other questions. It would
puncture the confidence leading to a poor
performance.
Say your IIT-JEE has 10 questions/120 minutes.
It means democratically speaking, each question
can get 12 minutes. But understand that when a
question paper of IIT-JEE is made, it is assumed
that the examinee has 2 hours of time for thinking
as well as writing. If you knew all the questions
before hand, would you take 2 hours in writing
the paper. Certainly not. May be just 1 hour or so.
The rest of the time is the assumed time for thinking.
Now, if you send in the best question to bat,
they are as good as questions known before hand.
So they certainly would not eat that much time.
(12 minutes). They would give more marks in lesser
time. That is to say if your choice of the batting
order is correct, you would be in 108 for 1 kind
of score. You would have scored about 40 marks
in the first hour of your writing the paper.
In the IIT mains, you can get
through, if you score 40 marks.
Score 10 more marks, you would
be within 1500 ranks. Add 10
more marks to your score, you
quantum leap to the first 500
ranks. Scratch in 10 more, you
are in the la creme da creme of
top 100.
Looking at the above statistics, we can conclude
that if your opening questions score 40 marks in
the first hour, you are already an IITian. The next
hour of the exam is being given not by you but
you the IITian.
Now, when an IITian solves the question paper,
it would have a class of its own. You are now
playing in the positive spiral. The previous batsmen/
questions inspire a superlative performance from
the subsequent batsmen/questions.
Match temperament
On the day of the exam, you can maximize the
mobilisation of your potential. Realise, you dont
get marks for what you know, you get marks for
what you write.
Irrespective of the score of your past test matches,
what will count is the score you make in this one.
This is your world cup finals.
The ball that you will face now, has never been
bowled before, it has never been faced before by
anyone else. It is a fresh ball. Likewise the question
that you will face is a question that you have never
faced before and neither has anybody else. So what
matters, is how well you play the ball that comes
to you now.
You are able and capable. You have a solid
preparation. Bring in the freshness of your attention
on the question that you face.
When waters of the lake are calm, the moon in
the sky will be reflected in the lake, in all its pristine
glory. Likewise the solutions to the questions
already exist within you. They will reflect in the
cool and calm mind of yours as the test progresses.
Be sure the answers will flow through you. The
runs will flow from your bat. Just allow them to
do so.
Batting order
It is the day of the match. You are sitting in the
examination hall. The audience
is expectant. Your parents,
well-wishers, friends expect a great
performance from you. You take
in their encouragement and
support but you are not pressured
by them. You watch the bowlers
and the kinds of balls they would
bowl. Based on this you set down your batting
order.
Scan the question paper completely, marking
against each question, the code of the topic to which
it belongs. Categorise them as 1, 2, 3 or 4 as
appropriate.
Again scan the questions and discern the kind
of ball it is. Mark it as A, B, C, D as per your
analysis on the left of your numeric codes.
Thus your entire question paper is now divided
according to a new sequence, the alphanumeric
sequence.
e.g. A1, A2, A3, A4, B1....C1, C2 .... D3,

D4. This
is your batting order. Your batsmen shall play in
the order, you decide. Attempt the questions in
this order.
Thus you can maximize your potential on the
examination day. Read this letter, atleast 2 times
to internalize the idea. Be a cool captain, strategise
the way you have been coached, win your match.
All the best Yours affectionately,
Shyam Sunder
If your opening questions score
40 marks in the first hour, you are
already an IITian. The next hour
of the exam is being given not by
you but you the IITian.