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0 pointsnewprint6y ago0 comments

To answer your question, I work in optimization.

IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad) are extremely complicated problems that even professional mathematicians often struggle with them. IMO is a level on its own - Gold Standard. Not all Mathematical Olympiads are of the same level of complexity as IMO. Good example are Olympiad caliber problems that are not overkill - Hungarian Problem Books.

MO problems are useful, because they make you think out of box, they often times involve several branches of math in one problem, such as number theory problems go in hand with combinatorics; they don't require complex mathematical machinery, and technique of solving problems, directly translates to solving complex problems in analysis/abstract algebra.

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lonelappde6y ago· 1 in thread

But industrial mathematics is numerical methods, a rather different beast from the tricky closed form puzzles of Olympiads. I question your claims of causation vs correlation regarding Olympiad work and industrial math and general effort put into basics of mathematical thinking and general mathematical intelligence.

newprintOP6y ago

Not entirely true. A lot of optimizations theory and practice are are straight-up inequalities. My claim is very simple: by being able to solve moderately-hard MO problems, you are developing excellent mathematical problem solving skills that let you solve problems in other branches of mathematics or draw interesting connections, because MO problems require ability to solve problem that are at the intersections of different branches of mathematics.

I frequently see topics similar to this one popping-up on HM and a lot of people interested in learning or re-learning math as an adults. Excellent ! So let them learn discreet mathematics by solving problems in algebra, combinatorics and number theory. Once they are comfortable, they can move on to more abstract subjects. My view is very similar to Concrete Mathematics, by Knuth, Patashnik, Graham. Their "concreteness" is very down to earth: combinatorics, number theory and few other things in the mix.

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lonelappde6y ago· 1 in thread

newprintOP6y ago

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