{"id":2774,"date":"2019-09-16T00:12:30","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T04:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/?p=2774"},"modified":"2019-09-15T12:39:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T16:39:51","slug":"its-not-a-competition-but-were-still-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2019\/09\/16\/its-not-a-competition-but-were-still-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not a Competition…But We’re Still Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life is full of ironies and contradictions. Case in point: I write for two competitions (Who Wants to Be a Mathematician, and MATHCOUNTS), but I never have participated in a math competition myself. I hadn\u2019t even heard<\/b> of the Putnam until graduate school. It gets better: while I now write for and have helped students prep for competitions (not the ones I just mentioned, don\u2019t worry. I know what a conflict of interest is.), \u201cthe jury is still out\u201d as to whether or not I think they\u2019re good ideas.<\/p>\n

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I have personal experience with competition, just not math competitions. From the age of five to nineteen I studied (classical) piano. When I was closer to five than to nineteen, a competition meant I wore fancy black clothing, got to spend hours in the car with my father, only 10 minutes playing in front of a stranger, and then the day would end somehow with me consuming ice cream.<\/p>\n

But as I got older,\u00a0I realized only one person wins a (piano) competition. The pressure to win, from any and all sources, made competition a high stakes game (though an increasingly not-fun game). When competition is more than just a trophy, but also a step towards “the next level” stakes are even higher. The psychology and pressure and amount of time involved can become so negative, that–like me–one day you just quit playing.<\/p>\n

So why do I write for math competitions? Part of it is Joe Gallian\u2019s Project NExT line of \u201cJust say \u2018yes\u2019\u201d\u2014a piece of advice I suspect may be about as healthy as competitions<\/a>. Still, I have been known to say \u201cno\u201d: most notably, I\u2019ve refused offers to contribute to the AMC 10\/12. Perhaps I\u2019m deluding myself, but I feel the competitions I write for are the equivalent of the \u201cice cream afterwards\u201d experiences. The stakes, compared to the AMC 10\/12, or the ARML, or the AIME, or the Olympiads, or the Putnam, are much lower for these kids.<\/p>\n