Some of you have probably noticed that I’m helping with
organizing a new contest
and are asking what exactly this is.
So far, I haven’t said much about it because so much is up-in-the-air
(and that’s still true).
However, with the first few acceptances and registrations coming out,
I’m going to post an FAQ and few quick thoughts of my own.
Just to be clear, everything here is my own personal commentary and views
and not those of my employer or OMEGA generally.
What is OMEGA?
OMEGA (Organization for Math Engagement and Growth in America)
is a new 510(c)(3) whose ambitious long-term goal
is to build great, robust math programs for thousands of students
all across the USA (whether competition-like or not).
However, that is a pipe dream, because OMEGA is also about four months old
and has a whopping four staff, many of …
Announcement for the USEMO 2025:
- The USEMO 2025 will be held on October 25 - 26, from 12:30pm - 5:00pm ET each day.
- For competitors, registration will open in early October on AoPS.
- If you’d like to volunteer for grading, the signup for that is posted on the website now too.
You should sign up no later than October 25 for that.
As usual, all relevant info at https://web.evanchen.cc/usemo.html.
Happy Pi Day! Here’s a quick summary of some recent things going on with me:
- I got my PhD!
(I defended my thesis last December.)
- The 2025 Teammate Hunt
runs from March 28 to April 6. Please check it out!
(Yes, I’m on the organizing team.)
- USEMO 2025 is open to all middle and high school students now
(the US requirement has finally been dropped).
Problem proposals are open now and are due on May 10, 2025;
see the USEMO page for submission instructions.
-
After being in development hell for 10 years,
the silly weekend project I put together in 2015 is finally up:
Olympiad GeoGuessr,
a dumb game where you can try to guess collinear and concyclic points
from real MO diagrams.
Thanks to Abdullahil Kafi for contributing a lot of the recent levels.
We …
Two pieces of news for high school math contest enthusiasts:
OTIS Mock AIME 2025
We’re running the OTIS Mock AIME again this year! It’ll go from December 19, 2024 to January 20, 2025.
New this year is that we’re offering two tests, I and II, and you can try either or both.
However, unlike the real AIME, the two versions are intentionally different:
- The OTIS Mock AIME I is going to be tough.
It will definitely be harder than the actual AIME, by perhaps 2 to 4 problems.
But more tangibly, it will also have significant artistic license.
Problems will freely assume IMO-style background throughout the test,
and intentionally stretch the boundary of what constitutes an “AIME problem”.
- The OTIS Mock AIME II is meant to be more practically useful.
It will adhere more closely to the difficulty and style of the real AIME.
There will inevitably …
Publicity announcements for all things Evan:
Twitch stream schedule
Twitch Solves ISL will resume on September 13, 2024 and September 20,
2024 at the usual time. Then a two-week break (because I’m traveling on both September 27 and October 4),
and then continuing on Fridays for some to-be-determined number of weeks. Check the calendar.
In addition, this Sunday (September 8) at 7PM EDT [EDIT: meant Sunday!
agh], by popular request from the otters,
I’ll be streaming a session where I work on part of the calculation that I need for my PhD thesis.
It’s not going to make any sense so I dunno why people want to see it, but give the kiddos what they want.
If it goes well I might run more of them.
USEMO dates
USEMO 2024 will take place 26 October 2024 - 27 October 2024 and is open to US students,
see the …
The tenth year of OTIS is now accepting applications.
Due August 1, 2024 for regular deadline and April 30, 2025 for late applications.
https://web.evanchen.cc/otis.html#apply
The application and syllabus are pretty much going to be the same as in previous years;
here are some of the (mostly small) changes:
- I deleted the question that used to ask about past contest results because I
never read the answers to it anyway.
- The application problem set is one geometry problem shorter.
- Problem C.1 had its description change from “Learn to code” to “Learn to code, please,
I implore you” to encourage more people to not skip the problem.
- Reading Comprehension answers are now all nonnegative integers who sum is six
times a prime to make it harder for people to get the answers wrong when they submit a late application.
(For on-time application, the Google Form …
This is a short advertisement announcing that the OTIS Mock AIME 2024 is out.
The short version is that I wanted to give my students a chance to try their hand at problem composition,
which they took enthusiastically, and from their submissions I chose 15 problems to replicate an AIME.
There’s some really nice problems on here (I have some favorites,
but to avoid spoilers for people using this as a practice test, I won’t say which ones yet).
You can check it out here:
https://web.evanchen.cc/mockaime.html
I expect a number of students who plan to use this test as practice for the upcoming real AIME,
so I’ve set a “deadline” of January 15 and ask to avoid public discussion of spoilers before then.
Twitch Solves ISL Season 3
I’ll be resuming streaming live solves of math problems this fall!
As usual, the stream runs at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern on Fridays, for 2-4 hours per stream usually.
The dates of the first ten streams are currently scheduled (tentatively; these move around a lot) as:
- ~~Friday September 15~~ Sunday September 17 (note unusual date)
- Friday September 22
- Friday September 29
- Friday October 27
- Friday November 3
- Friday November 10
- Friday November 17
- Friday November 24
- Friday December 1
- Friday December 8
The holiday era (late December / early January) is always a big toss-up,
so I’m holding off on scheduling those dates until I have a bit more clarity on
my plane tickets those months.
We’ll also probably be continuing in the spring semester as well — keep an eye
out at https://web.evanchen.cc/videos.html for updates on that.
Tune …
Downloadable at https://web.evanchen.cc/handouts/NaturalProof/NaturalProof.pdf.
I don’t know why I thought to write this,
but it’s been bugging me for a year or two now that I’ve never seen the answer
to “what is a proof” written out quite this way. So here you go.
It’s a bit weird for me to be writing an article that contains “you can stop
reading here” as the second sentence, but first time for everything, I guess.
