Cmo

[A.J]

Ok, the 41st Canadian Math Olympiad is fast approaching. How are people preparing for it?
I am making this thread so that we can discuss the solutions after the contest itself (which is this Wednesday).

As for me, I am just looking at past papers and hoping not to get a 0

Here are the topics that I think will be covered in this year's CMO:
Inequalities
Number Theory
Recursion
And some others that I am not too sure about....

Oh well, any nonzero score is a good score (personally, I think that anything solving 1 - 3 questions is good....although not easy)

[Foundation]

The four categories of olympiads:

Geometry
Number Theory
Algebra
Combinatorics

Please remember not to say anything, this includes posting your preferences about the questions, your feelings about it, and generally anything, until at least Thursday morning, as others around the country may be writing at different times.

[A.J]

Thanks for the heads up. We can talk about it before the contest at least. So, how is Massey preparing, Foundation? Here, at WCI, all of us are kinda turning emo...we all are expecting a 0 (expect for Alex Song, of course). I hope to get a score higher than 10, but that's me hoping...how did you do last year?

[bugzpodder]

Is Massey still pwning at CMO? Actually scratch that, I don't remember anyone from Massey getting in Group I ever...

[A.J]

bugzpodder wrote:

Is Massey still pwning at CMO? Actually scratch that, I don't remember anyone from Massey getting in Group I ever...

Well, they aren't pwning, but they are getting good scores. We are hoping for a couple in group 2...out of the 7 that made it from our school, watch nobody (except, once again, for Alex Song) make it past the last group...but I am hoping for all of us to make it to the 2nd group...

[Analysis Mode]

There's Jon Schneider from UTS, who's been to the IMO for the past two years.

[SJ]

hmm.. I have never heard of CMO.. I don't think my school offers it

[bbi5291]

SJ: It's not an open contest. The COMC is open, and a small number (I don't know it exactly, perhaps 50-100) of the highest scorers are invited to the CMO, Canadian Mathematical Olympiad, which is used to determine the Canadian IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad) team. That's why it might seem that your school doesn't offer it.

@Analysis Mode: What's your point?

[A.J]

Brian, are you writing the CMO? How many from Woburn made it? Waterloo CI has 6, and Massey has 2.

[bbi5291]

2 from Woburn are writing it, Hanson and I. I am not nearly as good at math as I am at CS. I suspect it's basically about practice - unlike with CS, nobody ever pushed me to my limit in math, so I didn't get enough contest practice. Hanson doesn't really prepare for math contests either. We both got in on the repechage, and I too will be glad for any nonzero score >.<

As a matter of fact, students at Woburn seem to be unique in being much better at CS than at math. I am almost scared by how good you guys are.

[A.J]

Only 2 of the people who made it this year out of the 6 have actually written CMO before. I am hoping to solve 2 questions, although that won't be the case, seeing how last year's was easy (hinting that this year's will be far from easy). Good luck to you guys, I am pretty sure that you guys will do well.

[SJ]

yes. good luck to you all!
this sounds so intense!

[bbi5291]

A.J., you are overestimating me, much as I overestimated Jon Schneider's coding ability from his impressive results at the math olympiad, I suspect. The fact that you could call last year's CMO "easy" means that you are much better than I am. (I did read the solutions - they didn't seem THAT hard - still my record is not particularly glorious for math contests.)

[A.J]

You underestimate yourself Brian. Hoxever, Jon is quite the coder, apparently.

[bbi5291]

Yes, I didn't mean to call him a mediocre coder or anything of that sort. He has quite an impressive rating on TopCoder, for instance, it was higher than mine for quite a while (and who knows, that trend might have continued were it not for the fact that he hasn't been doing TC lately). The point is that he's not as good at CS as he is at math, and I'm not as good at math as I am at CS.

Do I underestimate myself? It really depends on expectations. Schneider is somewhat likely to make it to the IOI this year, in my opinion; he already has a silver at IMO. Robin Cheng came 7th in the CMO last year, so I expect him to make it to the IMO this year. If I make the assumption that I am at least as smart as they are, then I must be falling far short of expectations (my strongest subject is chemistry, which isn't intellectual enough compared to math.) However, if my only goal was to get some scholarships and be accepted to Waterloo, then I would be inclined to agree with you; clearly I would be underestimating myself in this case.