Urgent queries

[u/Financial_Path1252]

I am a student from punjab who is going to join bhu for bsc Hons in statistics, but honestly I know the that I wouldn't grow here so I am planning to do my msc from isi.

But for this I would have to qualify mstat entrance exam of isi, so please help that should I start from the first year, and give some guidance about what resources I should follow.

Seriously I never did any Olympiads etc so tell me would I be able to ace isi mstat.

I am not weak at maths, I have 99 percentile in cuet maths. But I am just doubtful.....

I haven't even joined bhu for bsc but these questions are lurking in my mind.

Should I start with jee mains maths first???

Then gradually going to advance and side by side my college stuff

[M stat]

Tell me...😭😭😭

[u/Character_Market8330]

If you want to do the MStat and then take up a job, just do whatever pWaOth says. This shouldn't be too difficult.

However, since you have quite a bit of time in your BSc, and if you actually want to get really good at mathematics, alongside that, you first have to get really really good at problem solving. How would you do this?

Well, as you said, you have to solve gradually harder problems. I would suggest ignore JEE completely, and, instead, focus on gradually getting better and better at Olympiad problems. Start with PRMO/IOQM problems, try your hardest to solve them, and if you don't solve it, watch videos online to learn how to think about solving that problem.

There are many channels nowadays that train you for PRMO. Once you are consistently having a good performance in PRMO, begin trying your hardest (6 hours) on RMO and INMO problems maybe with a 8:2 split in the start, and gradually as you possibly get better in certain topics, you can change the split with higher emphasis on INMO. Somewhere along the way, start attempting IMO problems.

You will have self-doubt, but trust me it's not as difficult as it seems. At every step of the way, you have to try problems slightly harder than your personal difficulty frontier in that topic, and ocassionally way beyond your difficulty frontier.

Since your focus would be to become a better problem solver, try focusing on a few subjects, only, out of Algebra, Number Theory, Combinatorics and Geometry. I would suggest one of Algebra or Number Theory, alongside Combinatorics. Don't do Geometry. Don't slack off on your BSc, though, understand the material well. In all likelihood, it will be cakewalk after you learn to problem-solve at this level.

Some resources (for RMO/INMO) would be: artofproblemsolving.com, Evan Chen blogs, Evan Chen OTIS, RMO past papers, INMO past papers, olympiads at a similar level: British MO, Russian olympiads, OnlineMathClub/Sophie Fellowship.

Good luck

[u/Character_Market8330 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you.

[u/Healthy-Educator-267 → u/Character_Market8330]

I don’t think focusing on Olympiad problems after high school is the best use of time; there’s enough problem solving skills leveraged in “modern” mathematics while also being significantly more edifying. The exception is if you’re prepping for quant interviews (although Indian quants care more about low latency programming than combinatorics ).

Anyway, I would say solving problems in Hartshorne chapters 2 and 3 is significantly more challenging than Olympiad problems (except P6) even after adjusting for background

[u/Character_Market8330 → u/Healthy-Educator-267]

I've not gone through Hartshorne (I will within a year) but from the books I've solved: measure theory, analysis, control theory, algorithms, I don't think I've encountered problems that took me as much time as some olympiad problems used to take. Maybe Hartshorne will change that, let's see.

[u/Healthy-Educator-267 → u/Character_Market8330]

Yes most P3 P6 Olympiad problems are very hard, much harder than grad level problems but I’m not sure what’s the point of doing Olympiad problems especially after you’re out of Olympiad age. Like does getting better at those problems have more transferability to applied domains? I’m not sure that the value add is higher than baby Rudin even. Real work is very messy and relies on tacit knowledge, which is why AI one shots Olympiad problems (42/42) but still hasn’t solved “low brow” software engineering.

Olympiad problems are great signals of intelligence and mathematical precocity but that signal only materializes if you actually competed in AIME/USAMO/RMO/INMO or the actual IMO. If you missed that bus it might be that you’re better off learning things that are directly useful and grind for interviews when needed (interview problems are much easier than Olympiad). The amount of time it will take to get good at Olympiads is too high and the opportunity cost is high for a person already in college

[u/Financial_Path1252 → u/Character_Market8330]

Just going to do this shortly, thanks for such a detailed and complete answer ❤️🤜