Timeline for What kind of context is good to add to a contest math question?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
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| Jul 24, 2020 at 16:33 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | @WillJagy LOL. That always reminds me of the story. A dude visits a doctor and starts talking - A friend of mine suspects that they have caught a VD. How can he tell for sure? The doctor replies - Just whip out the "friend" and we'll take a look. | |
| Jul 24, 2020 at 16:28 | comment | added | Will Jagy | Jyrki, there are a million "My friend told me this problem," see math.stackexchange.com/questions/3764736/… | |
| Jul 24, 2020 at 16:16 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | Agreed @KReiser. So far it doesn't look very good. I may elaborate on this later. My preconceived impression was that people in contest training are generally more capable of following certain kinds of suggestions in comparison to a typical homework help seeker. This impression may say more about me than about the asker :-) | |
| Jul 24, 2020 at 16:14 | comment | added | Xander Henderson Mod | @JyrkiLahtonen I was just about to suggest that this answer be added as an answer to the "How to ask a good question" thread, with the heading "How to ask a good question about a contest problem." It seem that you already had this idea. Great minds, or lowest common denominator? :P | |
| Jul 24, 2020 at 16:13 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | Point taken @amWhy :-) That's why my default plan is to add the fruits of this thread to that "master guide". Either edit a link leading here into WW's question or post a summary. Let's see how this plays out. | |
| Jul 24, 2020 at 1:16 | comment | added | amWhy | I agree with @KReiser. I don't think questions tagged "contest math" deserve any special treatment already addressed in the post "How to ask a good question". That contest questions need to include the year/date and contest name is an added requirement. But making a special set of criteria for contest questions, as opposed to questions in general, isn't necessarily helpful. I don't want to have to refer to two or three or five, or eight posts to recommend to users how to ask a good question, across the board. | |
| Jul 23, 2020 at 22:42 | comment | added | KReiser | Something similar to this advice on attempting easier cases is already a part of the guide on how to ask good questions - specifically, advice like picking special cases or smaller numbers is mentioned in the avoid "no clue" questions post. While this information is useful, I'm not really sure it advances the discussion much. | |
| Jul 23, 2020 at 18:48 | comment | added | lulu | It is often the case that there is an apparent, if inelegant, mode of attack and a thoughtful sentence or two describing such a method (perhaps including an indication as to why it is computationally unwieldy or the like) would go a long way. | |
| Jul 23, 2020 at 18:46 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | @Batominovski That is exactly the concern that lead me to adding the next sentence. Oversimplification is not very convincing as effort. | |
| Jul 23, 2020 at 18:45 | comment | added | Batominovski | I also am very sympathetic towards geometry and combinatorics problems. I have been totally stumped with these questions, without any insight what to do. Combinatorics questions sometimes offer no simplifications. For geometry problems, sometimes you can at least draw some lines, but I'm not sure that saying "I have drawn these lines/circles and got nowhere" is an acceptable context for most critics. | |
| Jul 23, 2020 at 18:45 | comment | added | Batominovski | Would you count saying something about the equality cases in an inequality question as a good context, however trivial the equality cases may be? In most cases, it doesn't require too much effort. | |
| Jul 23, 2020 at 18:27 | history | answered | Jyrki Lahtonen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |