Hello everyone, I’m Zhou Qisen from the High School Affiliated to Xi’an University of Technology. I won the gold medal in the 36th Chinese Mathematical Olympiad in 2020, entered the national training team, and was recommended to the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University.
Let me talk about my own competition experience first: the first time I participated in the competition was the Hope Cup Mathematics Invitational Tournament in junior high school. At that time, I had no idea about the competition, but because I was interested in mathematics, my math scores were better. , I successfully won the gold medal in the Hope Cup competition, which gave me a deeper feeling for mathematics.
In the summer vacation of the second year of the new year, I learned about the competition and the specific effect on entering higher education. Combining my own love of mathematics, I started a journey that lasted more than four years.
In the beginning, it was actually self-study and classes with senior seniors. Later, in the third year of junior high school, with an attitude of trying, I signed up for the first time in the National High School Maths League and made the number sequence problem in the second test of that year. , Got the second prize of the province.
In the first year of high school, it was also because of my inadequacy to study the questions, and the level of the second test was not particularly improved. Although the first test was considered good, the second test was not completed, which led to an explosion of mentality to hand in the paper in advance (this practice) Not advisable, I hope students will take a warning), the result is still the second save.
In the subsequent studies, I began to look for problems in the process of my own problem solving, such as impulsive questioning, reluctance to write, and not paying attention to the basic thinking methods, etc., and improved one by one. In the summer vacation of the new high school, I got the first class in the Southeast Mathematics Competition. Award, won the sixth place in Shaanxi Province in the second league and entered the provincial team.
When training in the provincial team, perhaps because I was not very confident about myself at the time, and did not pursue the results of the winter camp, so I did not listen to the class too seriously and did the questions. Fortunately, the combined questions on the second day of the exam were more for me The appetite was made at the last time and won a silver medal.
After returning, I made up for the college entrance examination course for a while, and started to suspend classes for the final sprint before and after returning to school in April. In fact, the pressure in my heart was relatively high at that time. After all, in the last year, if you don’t work hard, you will have no chance (and you didn’t enter the provincial team. It's shameful), but because I feel that I haven't made any significant improvement in my level within a year, I was nervous before the exam. Fortunately, I played relatively normal in the league. I won the third place in Shaanxi and entered the provincial team smoothly.
The final training actually went smoothly. I went to various winter camp training courses and discussed with my classmates and got a lot of inspiration. What makes me most happy is that one month before the exam, I suddenly felt that my own level had made a qualitative leap. I also figured out many problems that I didn't understand before. At that time, I established some confidence.
This year’s winter camp exam was a particularly difficult experience for me. After the first day, when I recalled the questions I had done on the first day, I suddenly realized that I wrote the root number 4 as 4, which led to two questions on the first question. The answers were all wrong. At that time, my mentality exploded and I went to bed early that night. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. The next day I felt that I couldn’t join the team anyway, so I just took the test and prepared to go back to the college entrance examination. Under the circumstances of letting go of the pressure, I performed perfectly. I completed the three questions of the day in about two hours (perhaps It's also because it's relatively simple), in the end, it's dangerous and dangerous.
Generally speaking, my race journey is fairly stable, but there are always some incredible mistakes in each game. Fortunately, the result is good in the end, and I can be considered worthy of the efforts of the past few years.
About brushing
For junior high school students who are just starting out, it is necessary to use books such as "New Method" and "Broad Vision" to solidify the basic knowledge of junior high school, which is also conducive to subsequent progress.
For the trial, I personally recommend the two books "A Mathematics Tutorial" and "A Trial Training Course", but I still need to do more simulation questions in the later stage to improve.
For the second test, you can use the second test part in "Small Series" and "Olympic Classics". After the winter camp, you can do the more difficult tasks such as "Proposition Man Lecture", "Towards IMO", and "Intermediate Mathematics" (Supplement 2) book.
About learning
In fact, it is necessary to pay attention to many usual habits in learning competitions. I will summarize them as follows:
1. Pay attention to the reasonable allocation of normal thinking and examination time
Usually you should think more, read the answers less, exercise your thinking ability, but try to practice fast thinking, after all, the second league test time is tight, if you devote all your time to one question, it will easily lead to no time to think about other topics .
2. Pay attention to the multi-write process
In the exam, the score depends on the completeness of your writing process, not on whether you made this question. If your process is incomplete, but you claim that you have made this question, there is no point. Therefore, you must make your process as perfect as possible when doing every question.
3. Pay attention to the balanced development of the four modules
In Gaolian, if you want to enter the provincial team, you can actually do three questions in relatively weak provinces. So you can choose one to study number theory and combination, but for the winter camp, you need to study four pieces at the same time. The topics of the winter camp are very random. For example, the three-does combination of 18 years and the three-does number theory of 20 years are all years that extremely test the ability of a player in a certain module, so if a certain area is not well studied, it may appear. The results are not up to expectations.
About mindset
In fact, you still have to relax and have sufficient confidence in your own level. It’s not easy to perform normally during the test. If you perform well on the first day of the test, of course you don’t need to be nervous, because as long as you are not rushed and perform normally on the second day, you can get good grades on the test. If you don’t perform well on the first day, then you don’t need to be nervous, because the result is already determined (although it doesn’t sound very good, but I relied on this turnaround this year), so just play freely.
Finally, I would like to thank the two competition coaches Jiang Ximing and Jiao Heping from the High School Affiliated to Xi’an University of Technology for their teaching to me, thank all the teachers who have guided me carefully on the road to the competition, and thank the teacher He and other teachers for their encouragement and support. Not open to your teachings.
I hope that my little experience sharing will be helpful to all readers and friends, and I hope everyone can achieve their own satisfactory results!
More information about math competitions can be viewed on the official website of Mathematics Education