WOOT

This week is the first week of WOOT (Worldwide Online Olympiad Training). WOOT is an online math class that specializes in higher-level math competitions like the USAMO (United States of American Mathematical Olympiad) and IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad). To qualify for USAMO, you must do well on the AMC (American Mathematics Competition), and the AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Exam). The course costs $700 (although you can get a full refund by October 1), and everyone who was a winner in the USAMO (there are always 12 "winners") took the class last year. Seeing that WOOT was a well known class and famous for "creating" good high school math students, I wanted to try it out.

When I said this was the first week of WOOT, there was technically a Week 0. Last week was orientation, and there were a couple of problem of the days. Monday Problem of the Days were one of the "easier" problems, although they would be very challenging to almost everyone at Uni. I was able to solve Wednesday's "medium" level problems which were proof-problems, meaning proving why the statement is true. (Try proving Heron's formula, without looking at the proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron%27s_formula, now problems like the Wednesday problem of the days are even harder)

There were Friday's problem of the day, but they are beyond my ability to solve, and even my dad, a silver medalist at the 1991 IMO, couldn't solve them. Examples of Friday problem of the day problems are here: https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php?title=2017_USAMO_Problems (Yes, this is the same test Sam Guo took last year).

The most important feature of WOOT are the lectures. There is three lectures per week, one on Mondays, Thurdays, Fridays. Every lecture in a particular week is the same, so you don't have to participate in all three lectures of that week.

Right now it is about 1:15, and today's lecture starts at 8:00 p.m. I hope I would be able to make most of that class, and hopefully solve all the challenges in my way, even if it is a USAMO problem.

P.S. If you wanted to take WOOT, it is too late to take it this year, but you also have to get a 5 on AIME, meaning only 5 students (including myself) at Uni would be elgible to take the class.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

School of Smash: Dash, Dashdancing and Wavedash

Learning how to move your character is one of the first things you learned in Smash. Tilting the control stick left or right will make your character walk left or right respectively. Tapping your control stick fast left or right will make your character dash, which is faster than walking. This is all basic information and you can get this information if you watch the tutorial. Beyond walking and dashing, there are more movement options that could give you a competitive edge over your opponent. Dashdancing doesn't look to hard to do, you dash one way, then you dash the other way. However, it is not as easy as it seems. Every character has a "dash" state, and a "run" state. When you first tap the control stick one way, you are in the dash state. Depending on your character, after 7-18 frames (remember, 60 frames = 1 second), your character is in the run state. If you tilt the control stick the control stick the other the way, you will do a turn-around animation,
Read more

Jack and Ten of Diamonds on Fourth and Fifth Street

Welcome to my blog, Jack and Ten of Diamonds on Fourth and Fifth Street. I am Tri Do, a junior at University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. This is a blog for my class  Non-Fiction Writing,  however I may continue to use this blog after the class has ended. Now, you may be wondering "What does the title of the blog mean?" The title is related to a game of Texas hold'em poker,  one of my all-time favorite hobbies. I started playing poker in 4th grade during Spanish club. We were playing Five-card draw , the version of poker everyone first learns. I don't remember the details of that session, however I remember it as being a much more fun card game than Go Fish or Vietnamese card games my parents played when they were young. In middle school, one of my friends had poker chips, and taught my brother and I how to play Texas hold'em,  the most popular form of poker. I remember a lot of fun times and dumb plays I did (like betting the limit on a pair of A
Read more

School of Smash: Directional Influence

Directional-influence (DI) is a technique that can change the outcome of your "fate". Before your opponent lands an attack, you can input your stick in certain directions so you can change the direction of your launch. DI can help you survive longer, or you can escape combos if you DI correctly. There are two types of DI: Survival DI, and Combo DI. Survival DI is when you alter the knockback direction towards the upper corners of the screen, so you would survive when normally you wouldn't. Combo DI is when you DI away from the attacker so your attacker cannot hit you with another attack. Given that Survival DI involves DI-ing up and in, and Combo DI involves DI-ing up and away, the combo game in Melee comes down to DI mix-ups. Survival DI-ing a weak move can result in getting comboed, while Combo DI-ing a strong move can result in dying at lower percent, therefore bad DI happens all the time, even at high-level Melee. Smash DI is when you alter your position during
Read more