Snarky Repartee

The comments by Madaha here brought back a couple of math-related memories that I want to share here. So flashback to the 11th grade again, in my new hypercompetitive school, where I’m taking a while to adjust and not doing great in the weekly exams etc. At the same time though, I’m learning an immense amount and am in some ways enjoying this really challenging environment. Now the state we lived in put out a magazine meant mainly for math teachers and school students where they showcased interesting theorems or techniques. It was a fairly low-budget affair but quite enjoyable. So my then best friend (and later ex-boyfriend) N and I decided to write a small article for the magazine because we believed, in our naivete, that we had found a new way to prove Euler’s formula.

However misguided this may have been, the article we submitted generated enough interest on the part of the editor of the magazine that he decided to come down and speak to us at the school. So of course he contacted our math teacher — let’s call her U. Now U was a perhaps well-intentioned person, but her way of teaching was to terrorize everyone she believed was stupid, while those who were deemed intelligent enough were often given a free pass on homework. N was one of U’s favorite students. After being contacted by the magazine editor, U asks N to come meet her after school and they have the following conversation:

U: So I see that you and ____ have decided to write an article together.

N: Yes, ma’am, we did.

U: So why did you decide to write the article with her? Is she really that intelligent? (Notice too the subtle way in which U dismisses any possibility that the idea for the article could have been mine.)

N(slightly shocked): Yes, ma’am she is very intelligent.  

U: Hmmph. Well, there’s no point in being intelligent if no one else knows it.  

Once N got home, he called me up and recounted this conversation to me. I don’t recall my reaction to it exactly, except that I felt quite angry and told the whole thing to my parents, who were quite as angry as me about it.

Fast forward one year and it was time for the annual Olympiad examinations. While I participated in all the Olympiads, I’ll just discuss the Math Olympiad here. I had written the Olympiad preliminary examinations the previous year but had not understood most of the paper. It was a testament to how much I learnt during that one year that what had seemed gibberish then now seemed quite understandable. Now to understand this anecdote you also to have understand the complicated structure of the Math Olympiad examinations in that state. At the very highest level we had the International Math Olympiad with participants from all over the world. Below that level was the Indian National Math Olympiad with students from all over India. In order to be allowed to write the INMO one had to get a high enough rank in the Regional Math Olympiad. There were two ways in which one could be allowed to write the RMO: 1) There was a preliminary examination held at school — let’s call it Exam A. Students who did well enough in this exam were allowed to write another exam — let’s call it Exam B. If they did well enough in Exam B, they were allowed to write the RMO. 2) Schools were allowed to nominate 4 students who would be allowed to write an Exam C. If they did well enough in Exam C, they would be allowed to write the RMO. Whew!

So all the interested students from my school sat down to write Exam A. I immediately noticed something interesting about the scoring structure. Each question had four multiple choice options. If we got a question right, we got 1 point and if we got it wrong 1/4 of a point was deducted. It doesn’t take a lot of math to figure out that if we were to randomly answer every question, we would get 1 question right out of every four = 1 point - 3(1/4) points = 1/4 point for every four questions. That doesn’t sound like a lot but I decided that my best strategy would be to ignore that there was negative marking at all and just answer the exam as though there were no penalties for wrong answers. The questions were mainly interesting number theory problems and geometrical questions. I really really suck at geometry. I decided that my best bet, since I was planning on answering every question anyway, was to use a piece of paper to approximate the lengths that we were supposed to figure out and whittle down the number of possible answers and then guess.

Well guess what? My strategies/dirty tricks paid off and I found that I had been selected to write Exam B. So had three other students, all boys. Now it was the custom of the school to nominate whoever scored the highest in Exam A to write Exam C. But surprise, surprise, this year U decided to break with that tradition and nominated N to write Exam C instead of me. I was really really angry. I think I would have made a bigger fuss than I did (which was none at all) if N had not been my best friend and hadn’t been preparing for this exam for years. In any event, I managed to clear Exam B, so was allowed to write the RMO, while N did not manage to clear Exam C. Ha to you, U. Preparing to write the RMO was an experience in itself — the school got a local math prof to give us preparatory classes. He informed me that in all his years performing this function I was the first girl to reach this level. Well no wonder really, with people like U making the decisions. I ended up not doing that well in the RMO (one the reasons was that the RMO happened to be held on the same day as our school’s fairwell party and I had to write the exam wearing a sari — not recommended). But I’m still glad I got that far.