A few Jumbled Thoughts on Problem Writing
by djmathman, Apr 26, 2017, 5:03 AM
as well as a few questions to think about.
oops maybe this wasn't the right blog to put this on but who cares!
- My view of mock contests is somewhat strange. On one hand, I think that they're very useful for giving people practice in terms of how to write them. In fact, that's basically how I got my start in problem writing. Before my NIMO stint, I wrote or helped write five mocks: 2012 Mock AMC12, 2012 Mock AIME II, 2013 Mock AIME I, 2013 Mock AMC 10/12, 2015 Mock AIME I. Over time, you can start to see how my problems have evolved over the course of my high school years (e.g. when looking at my homemade problems pdf in chronological order). Even though one may never actually learn tips and tricks to writing questions, mock contests help with experience, and IMO they're much more useful for the writers than they are for the contestants. (Problem writing is just as much a skill as problem solving is; I'm not an olympiad god or anything, but I'm still able to pump out problems which are halfway decent on a consistent basis.)
On the other hand, though, I'm now opposed to writing any mocks or even putting any of my problems on others' mocks (sorry guys!). More on this later. - Somewhat related to the above, I'm of the opinion that one of the best ways that the AMC/AIME/USAMO can keep up high problem quality is by essentially recruiting fresh high school students once they graduate. As I've probably stated before, contestants are quite knowledgeable about which tricks are standard and which tricks are less so, and in this regard they're perhaps able to write problems for these contests which are in a sense much more aesthetically pleasing to more experienced contestants. (This might be able to help combat the somewhat decline in difficulty of the final fives as of late.)
That being said, this opinion might not be universal. From a conversation with BOGTRO:I'm not sure how I feel about this, but there are some good points here.Quote:BOGTRO:
w.e like
almost all the college contests are
significantly better quality than aime
so honestly probably makes more sense to put things on
college contests for visibility purposes
because we have a sense of "nice"-ness that is highly attuned to what olympiad-y people find nice
djmathman:
tbh i think this is a problem
not that college contests shouldnt be good
but that good people should be writing for more influential contests
oh
thats true
i guess we have bias
but still
BOGTRO:
like a couple of hmmt problems this year that iw as like
very against including
were apparently regarded as the nicer problems
so to some extent i think it makes sense for olympiad people to stick to writing olympiad-esque contests and
randos to write rando contests like aime
(in terms of contestant base) - What actually constitutes a "nice" problem? I guess it varies a lot from person to person, but for me, a lot of the niceness of a problem has to do with how interesting the problem statement is. Indeed, this is often the reason why I almost exclusively write problems forwards: it allows me to construct problem statements which are naturally interesting to me. That being said, this has its drawbacks. I think this is best exemplified with this problem from CMIMC 2016. Objectively, one can consider this a bad problem since the solution is so nasty (and to be honest I'm still not sure if it's entirely correct...). However, I actually like it a lot, if only because the problem statement is extremely interesting. Perhaps if the
was made smaller these two notions of niceness would coincide. - With regard to CMIMC 2017: I'm actually extremely proud of the contest we put together. Many of the problems are super nice and natural (especially Geo and NT - it's still possible to write nice number theory!), and IMO it contains some of my finest work. (In my nostalgia trip, I half-seriously mentioned to MSTang that I thought this contest was one of the best ever, to which he caught my overshadowing bias with
Whoops!)MSTang wrote:i think this is one of the highest quality contests ever assembled from an overall standpoint -- me on mwmt
However, the one biggest drawback was the wacky difficulty. This was especially present in Geometry, where the highest score was a 6/10! (This list included several MOPpers or MOPpers-to-be.) This, of course, leads to another question: how much does bad difficulty put a damper on the quality of a contest? Difficulty which is too easy or too hard causes more clustering toward the high or low ends respectively, but how big of an issue is this? Also, if a problem sweeps people in contest, does that mean the problem was a waste, and that it should have gone onto some other contest instead? - Despite all my thoughts above...
Still don't have an answer to this, but it seems that we might get lots of good incoming freshmen this year so I might be able to focus more on the other contests now. It's also worth noting that this is the reason why I don't write much for NIMO anymore - I just don't find it worthwhile enough to submit my best problems there anymore, especially considering that I need to optimize the use of every single good problem I write now since I don't know if/when my juices will end and I will no longer be of use to the CAMC.February 27, 2017 wrote:I've always had a nagging worry about whether CMIMC is actually a worthy venture to pursue, and the reason for this lies mainly in my other major problem commitment: the AMCs. I remember bugging the AMC office for months before finally getting the confirmation to write for AMC/AIME, but now that I've been involved with the process for a little while I'm not sure if I'm helping out as much as I should. I would love to write original and fresh problems for the AMCs, but my problem writing is taken up by CMIMC for a very long time, and considering that we don't have very many problem writers on staff, I need to churn up lots of problems in order to fill a 75 problem test.
All of this leads to the following ultimate thought: have I been wasting 60+ problems by putting them on the CMIMC instead of proposing them for the AMC10/AIME12AMC12/AIME - contests which carry more weight and are in the grander scheme of things probably more important to focus on?
was made smaller these two notions of niceness would coincide.oops maybe this wasn't the right blog to put this on but who cares!
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