Sunday, 14 July 2024

Singapore IMO Team Off to Bath, UK

From left: Akash Thiagarajan, Raphael Teng, Zhang Juntao, Drew Michael, Zhao Yaoqi, Yang Yihan

Sunday, 7 July 2024

SIMO Retiree Blog

SIMO Retiree Blog

Recent posts:

Musings about the IMO - July 06, 2024, by Dylan Toh

SMO Open 2024 ??% Speedrun - June 29, 2024, by Glen Lim

Connecting problems  - June 29, 2024, by Gabriel Goh

Some CTST rewrites - June 24, 2024, by David Lin

Reim - June 15, 2024, by Lee Ker Yang

Allowable sequences - June 09, 2024, by Lim Jeck

Puzzles and math - June 02, 2024, by Aloysius Ng

Curves with many torsion points - May 25, 2024, by Yap Jit Wu

Too lazy to integrate - May 18, 2024, by David Lin

Vieta’s formulas and 𝜁(2) - May 13, 2024, by Ang Yan Sheng

A nice story problem from Germany - April 21, 2024, by Low Choo Ray

Painting by Numbers - April 14, 2024, by Lucas Boo

Elliptic Curves v2.0 - April 07, 2024, by Dylan Toh

Lattices for prime factorization - April 01, 2024, by David Lin

Intro to Linear Algebra - March 24, 2024, by Tan Wee Kean

Optimising your Solutions - March 17, 2024, by Ng Yu Peng

My Top 100* Theorems in Mathematics - March 09, 2024, by Ang Yan Sheng

More Rectangular Tilings - March 03, 2024, by Glen Lim

Sum of Squares and Cubes - February 25, 2024, by Yap Jit Woo

Who's Afraid of Topological Proofs? - February 19, 2024, by Etienne Ong

and More...

Wednesday, 3 July 2024

Bangkok Trip 28 Jun to 2 Jul


Mango Sticky Rice Kakigori, After You Dessert Cafe



Steamboat Dinner at MK Restaurant, Big C

Lunch at Chatuchak Weekend Market

Day Trip at Mekong River and Floating Market


Maeklong Railway Market

Sunday, 9 June 2024

Invitation: IMO Alumni Reunion July 20–23 in UK (applications open)

This is posted on behalf of Po-Shen Loh.

Dear IMO alum,

I am happy to inform you that there is a new tradition at the IMO: the alumni reunion. I am the IMO Foundation Vice President for Advancement, and served for a decade as the USA IMO Team Leader (2014–2023). I was a contestant at IMO 1999. I am ordinarily also a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University. 

As an IMO alum, you are invited. The goal of this event is to build a strong long-term network among IMO alumni, which will provide value for everyone involved. It overlaps with the last two days of the IMO itself, so you would get to meet your country's IMO team. Then, the alumni will go off on a 2-day excursion together to Blenheim Palace, Oxford, Bletchley Park, and Cambridge. The total event is 4 days long: July 20–23, 2024. 

All details of this summer's IMO Alumni Reunion information are now public, at https://imof.co/reunion/reunion-2024. The application window is also already open. 

In short: all past IMO alumni are invited, but we have a capacity limit of 50 spots this year, because it is the second year of the IMO Alumni Reunion's history. To be fair, the selection system for which 50 will attend is based purely upon time-of-application (proximity to 00:00 UTC on June 6), combined with a mechanism to balance attendance across countries. The full details are on the reunion webpage. 

I hope you will find this to be a useful new tradition. It could help alumni find jobs, hire great candidates, and even recruit terrific students. It also could help build new friendships across borders. I had the luxury of attending many IMO's as a country's Team Leader, and my personal experience is that this network is one which will strongly benefit anyone who invests their effort in building meaningful relationships. Alumni are currently responsible for the costs, but that may change in the future if additional donations are received. 

If you know other IMO alumni who might be interested, please forward this message to them.

I hope to see you at an upcoming IMO reunion, as the IMO travels from continent to continent. Even if you are not able to make it to this one, if you would like to be informed of future IMO reunion details each year, please leave your non-expiring email contact information here.  

Best, 
Po-Shen Loh

Wednesday, 29 May 2024

SMO 2024 (Open Section) Answers

SMO 2024 Open Questions

SMO 2024 (Open Section) Answers
1. 1540
2. 69
3. 4
4. 99999
5. 3
6. 2025
7. 110
8. 5
9. 17
10. 160
11. 10
12. 10
13. 3
14. 81
15. 2
16. 17
17. 4
18. 2516
19. 761
20. 1009
21. 2
22. 24
23. 45 (edited)
24. 441
25. 146 (edited)

The above SMO Open answers are provided by Mathlete Training Centre. Worked solutions (真题解答) by MTC are here. Watch Way's solution review here (live on 30 May, 4 pm)

Tuesday, 28 May 2024

SMO 2024 (Senior Section) Answers

SMO 2024 Senior Questions

SMO 2024 (Senior Section) Answers
1. D
2. B
3. D (edited)
4. A
5. D
6. 64
7. 242
8. 506
9. 3
10. 2048
11. 145
12. 8099
13. 128 (edited)
14. 965
15. 25
16. 40
17. 9
18. 160
19. 72
20. 609
21. 521 (edited)
22. 129
23. 21
24. 94
25. 26

The above SMO Senior answers are provided by Mathlete Training Centre and Way Tan. Refer here for MTC's worked solutions (考题解答). Watch Way's solution review here.

SMO 2024 (Junior Section) Answers

SMO 2024 Junior Questions

SMO 2024 (Junior Section) Answers
1. D
2. D
3. B
4. C
5. C
6. 76
7. 89
8. 17
9. 1825
10. 10
11. 19 (edited)
12. 5
13. 9920
14. 23
15. 72
16. 25
17. 2451
18. 32
19. 16
20. 3
21. 504
22. 360
23. 15630
24. 45
25. 3360 (edited)

The above SMO Junior answers are provided by Way Tan. Watch the solution review here. Refer here for worked solutions by Mathlete Training Centre.

Friday, 24 May 2024

IOI 2024 Singapore Team


The 36th International Olympiad in Informatics 2024 (IOI 2024) will be hosted by Alexandria, Egypt from 1 to 8 September 2024. 

The IOI 2024 Singapore Team comprises the following students: 
Brian Xiao Boyang, RI Year 2 
Kang Yiming, RI Year 6 
Sun Beichen, HCI Year 5 
Yaw Chur Zhe, HCI Year 6 (IOI 2023 Silver, IOI 2021)

Wednesday, 15 May 2024

ChatGPT (clear winner) vs Meta AI

ChatGPT (3 separate searches):




Meta AI (2 separate searches):



ChatGPT is clearly more accurate. Meta AI seems to confuse Lim Jeck with Lim Li and Lim Min.