For a second season in a row, Alec has been chosen after a quiz by the school to attend a class on a specific type of mathematics called Olympiad.
It is something that I have not only never come across in my math studies all the way to university, but never even heard of. So before his first season with it, I thought it was just a fancy name for an elite math group in Primary 3 last year. But after I have looked through his workbooks, I found that even though the basic solutions in this area is just a lot of basic calculation, the shear number of calculations and process of thinking requires the utmost discipline in logic. Even though I have attended two classes in logic during my postsecondary education, I still find it somewhat difficult to grasp on working out the solutions.
In the above linked website, here is a general example of what it is in a secondary school level calculation; where in Alec’s level, a few of the unknowns would be listed for him….
Find out what number each and every capital letter (digit) represents:
ABCD multiply by 4 = DCBA
And this next example was almost beyond me….
FIVE+TWO+ONE=EIGHT
I don’t even want to begin with this following example, as it doesn’t seem like I knew how.
Perhaps I should practice more in case Alec needed any help.
Althou the 2nd example took me over an hour to work out, I enjoyed it very much. However, at one point I thought about giving up and just use a computer to brute force the solution.
Reminds me of two things: (1) the board game MasterMind; and (2) taking the easy way out of solving diffential equations by computer numerical methods.
Unfortunately, the MathNet website is very slow.
咁計數會令我失去計數的樂趣！
Tin,
D’you mean the FIVE+TWO+ONE=EIGHT one? It took me about the same time as you did. I wonder what the time limit is for how many of these questions during an exam. 5 of the 3rd example type questions in 4hrs would probably be to many for me, and longer time limit wouldn’t help me at all.
Daniel,
It does seem to be more of a training for logic than mathematics. I felt frustrated at times working on some of these solutions; but I kept on going until I could work it out as I just wanted to get it done since I had started. I did, however, loss interest in working on the 3rd example immediately after working on the first two and another one in the site, so I didn’t start on that at all. Perhaps I’ll give it a go over the weekend.
FIVE+TWO+ONE=EIGHT took me over an hour. FORTY+TEN+TEN=SIXTY took around forty five minutes. I suppose with enough practise I too could become reasonably good at it, but this is hardly something very creative, and I suppose it would get old quickly.
The problem is of course that kids of young ages can’t concentrate for hours, so making them attempting more than a few of these questions in a test environment is IMO a bit pointless: you’ll be testing one’s patience and concentration rather than anything else.
Give that third example, the devision, a try.