AopsUser101’s 700th post

Mathematical Journeys
I’d like to share what I’ve found detrimental and helpful throughout my ongoing mathematical
journeys. I hope you find it helpful despite my weak language arts skills (lol).

1. Stop looking for the right training.

They’ve been a lot of AoPS posts criticizing the people who are asking for the ideal training, but
there’ve been even more AoPSers asking questions like “What should I do to make USAMO by
grade 10?.” Here’s what wrong this mindset:

- It relies on the assumption that the only reason you’re doing math is to achieve a goal of
yours. Is anyone’s goal while taking competitions to make MOP? Maybe your goal is to make
MOP, but it shouldn’t be. Your goal should be to be happy. If math makes you happy, do
math, but don’t do math for the sake of making MOP, do math for fun. Frankly, who cares if
you never make MOP because during the 9 hour period that seemingly determines your life,
you spend too long on the second question? Maybe you’re too slow at math, but that doesn’t
mean you aren’t good at it. My point is: making MOP means that you’re good at math, but
being good at math doesn’t mean you’ve made MOP. As a result, you shouldn’t aim for
MOP—aim to be the best mathematician you can possibly be (and yes, I took that part from
Sarah Seales).

- There is no golden practice set that will guarantee a given score. There is no number of hours
that will make you make MOP. The best chance you have at achieving your mathematical
goals is to work as hard as you can and have fun. Enjoy the problems. There’s nothing more
you can do.

2. Don’t math every day, all day.

The myth that doing math as close to 24/7 will yield better results is admittingly, not that
common, but I still feel the need to address it because of its importance. Here’s what’s wrong
with it:

- There’s research proven that taking breaks actually helps you. Trust the science if nothing
else. Science tells you to go outside basically daily, to live a balanced life. Read the book
Range for details [I highly recommend!].

I’ll provide an example, which surprise-surprise, is about me.

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Recently, I started my own blog to document my life. I had a math blog to share my solutions to
interesting problems I’ve solved. I had Skype to chat with my friends, and then one day, all of a
sudden, I resolved to not waste a single minute of my time. I deleted my blogs and removed every
single one of my chat conversations, blocking even my closest friends. Every second would be a
math second. And I meant every second.

My plan to only do math didn’t last longer than three hours because I felt disconnected. I no
longer wanted to do late AIME problems, the only reason I was doing math was to abstain to my
overly strict rules. In all, my plan to abstain for all non-math endeavors made me hate math.

Another example: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz came up with idea of binary numbers from Chinese
Philosophy.

3. Math is no “better” than any other subject

- Why do people study a subject? I claim that people do math in the pursuit of happiness.
Similarly, for language-arts-lovers, people write essays for the pursuit of happiness.
Everything comes down to happiness. For me, with math, there is a sense of happiness each
time I solve a hard problem, each time I solve a #15 on the AIME, and each time I see a
problem. That’s why I do math, to feel that happiness. For others with more end-goal
mindsets, they feel happy after achieving their goal—whether it be a small goal or not, it still
feels good accomplish something. And that’s why as a whole, the population does math.
Similarly, that’s why as a whole the population does for example, language arts. Generally
speaking, subject X is no better or no worse than subject Y, it’s simply another subject
created in the pursuit of happiness. All subjects are equal, even though some subjects mean
more to you. Don’t be too hasty to generalize math as the superior subject because it’s your
favorite.

4. High Achiever ≠ Tiger Parent

- Recently, I saw a post accusing a middle-school MOPPER of having abusive parents, and I
think that’s fundamentally wrong because there are plenty of self-motivated kids out there.
I’m sure we all personally know a few high-performing children with tiger parents, but don’t
generalize this—it’s called the hasty generalization logical fallacy.

5. Have a regular sleep schedule

Often, some of us want to finish that Olympiad problem and need an extra few hours, so we end
up staying two hours later than our usual bed-time, often later. I was guilty of this, suffering the
consequences each time, until recently, when I started reading articles about the danger of having
an irregular sleep schedule.

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- I’ll save you the nitty gritty details, but I can assure you that it will help academic
performance if you have a regular sleep schedule. There are countless articles on it as well. I
don’t care if for you, a regular sleep schedule means sleeping at 1 am, the important thing is
just to have a regular schedule.

6. Staying healthy is important.

I’ve seen people risk their health for a mathematical reward—and there’s something terribly
wrong when you do that. Perhaps you will have more time if you never run as opposed to
running every morning, but in the end, you’re:

- Risking your health. Trust me, staying healthy matters, and it’s important to take care of your
body. This is not ground-breaking news, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but all of us are
guilty of neglecting this advice.

- Not achieving optimal results. You think that by skipping your morning run, you’re gaining
time, math time, but you’re not. A morning run, even a few exercises daily, helped me a lot,
and I’m sure you’ll find similar results for yourself. Often times, during a run, I come up with
a key idea for a hard problem I was working on. And if you still think time is problem,
there’s a USAMO Winner who’s also nationally ranked at volleyball, so if you manage your
time well, you can do math and athletics. It’s important to do both.

7. Don’t put yourself down for not achieving what you want to achieve and don’t brag.

- This follows directly as a consequence of my previous two points (particularly that not all
“good” mathematicians make MOP even though alll MOPers are good at math and that we
do math is the pursuit of happiness). Competitions don’t matter, they assess how quickly we
can solve problems and label this as our problem solving knowledge. Don’t put yourself
down for failing for example, AMCs. Even if competitions mattered, you still shouldn’t put
yourself down because in the end, you can still improve. There’s room for growth. As for
bragging, it offers absolutely nothing and just revolves around putting down a person for
your own happiness. Don’t brag or put yourself down.

Acknowledgements:

I’m not a pro mathematician. I haven’t made MOP (or even anything remotely as prestigious),
yet I’m giving you advice on it. A bit fishy, eh? I’m not giving you advice, I’m simply sharing
what I think works and what doesn’t work based on my experience and a few articles. I’m
sharing my view on math. You can disagree with it, but I feel the importance of getting my view
and reasoning out there.

I’m interested on your opinions on the matter as well.