You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein: Adventures and Misadventures of Young Mathematicians
M. ShifmanBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
"Two essays written by well-known mathematician Ilan Vardi, who is currently living in France, constitute the book's core. The first essay presents a thorough analysis of contrived problems given to "undesirable" applicants to the Department of Mathematics, Moscow University. The second essay is an in-depth discussion of solutions to the International Mathematical Olympiad of 2000, with emphasis on the comparison of the Olympiad problems to those of the Moscow University entrance examinations." The second part of the book provides a historical background of a unique phenomenon in mathematics that flourished in the 1970s and 80s in the USSR. Specially designed math problems were not used to test students' ingenuity and creativity; rather, they served as "killer problems," to deny "undesirable" applicants access to higher education. The focus of this part of the book is the 1980 essay Intellectual Genocide by B. Kanevsky and V. Senderov, published here for the first time.Synopsis
"Two essays written by well-known mathematician Ilan Vardi, who is currently living in France, constitute the book's core. The first essay presents a thorough analysis of contrived problems given to "undesirable" applicants to the Department of Mathematics, Moscow University. The second essay is an in-depth discussion of solutions to the International Mathematical Olympiad of 2000, with emphasis on the comparison of the Olympiad problems to those of the Moscow University entrance examinations." The second part of the book provides a historical background of a unique phenomenon in mathematics that flourished in the 1970s and 80s in the USSR. Specially designed math problems were not used to test students' ingenuity and creativity; rather, they served as "killer problems," to deny "undesirable" applicants access to higher education. The focus of this part of the book is the 1980 essay Intellectual Genocide by B. Kanevsky and V. Senderov, published here for the first time.