Comment by szmerdi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by szmerdi | Hacker News Reader

As a former problem designer for IMO and similar contests, I deeply enjoyed reading this paper. At the same time, I'd like to point out that it was clear Geometry had to be the first topic to give up against AI (i.e., smart knowledge and inference-method indexing) Among math olympiad topics, Geometry problems are often the most "mechanical." Once you can express the problem in terms of coordinates (think XY or complex plane) you're looking at a finite set of steps a computer can use to find a solution. Of course, time limits and human error get in the way of this being practical during the IMO itself. Back in the day, I'd use WolframAlpha to verify geometry proofs for problems I designed (+conjectures) using this approach.

Algebra (especially inequalities) can be similar – pull off some intense calculations and you often have your answer.

Where I'm really excited to see intelligent systems make progress is with Number Theory and Combinatorics problems. The search spaces are far more complex and they often require proving that something is impossible. These are the problems that would be difficult to solve with brute force computation.

As a consumer of those problems, first of all, thank you! Even decades on from high school I occasionally enjoy working on them.

But agree that geometry was obviously going to be first. From what I’ve gathered here, it’s not “brute forcing” in terms of relying on algebraic geometry, vectors, or complex number solutions, but it is brute force in that it’s exhaustively looking for “interesting” constructions.

Geometry was always my worst subject, but even so I felt like if given the right construction the problem was much easier. Unfortunately I never developed the intuition to hit on those constructions quickly. It seems this AI doesn’t either, but it can churn through them much faster — There are only so many perpendiculars and parallels and bisectors you can construct which you can more or less mechanically evaluate (map out all angles and ratios, try power of a point, etc.)

While this is incredibly impressive, it seems like Deep Mind:Kasparov::AlphaGeo:Terry Tao in the “engine vs AI” sense.

I agree Algebra is likely next. Like geometry, more often than not you “just” need a clever substitution or 3, of which there are only so many options to choose from.

Some combinatorics problems I think would also be amenable to this search strategy (e.g., finding things to count 2 ways), but that seems like a bridge further away, and only gets you a subset of problems.

Number theory would be my guess for the final frontier before a perfect 42.

Heh, can’t edit now, but s/Deep Mind/Deep Blue/

I like your positive attitude to this. Do you feel any sense of loss over the possibility your skill (being extremely good in math) might soon be overtaken by machines? Or do you see no possibility of that happening anytime soon?

How did you get into such a position? Is there an application process of some sort?

After verifying solvability, what is the process for selecting the specific problems that will show up in the finished set? Is it by vote or some other evaluation?

Each year, national math olympiad committees submit their toughest problems to the IMO. A select group makes the "shortlist," a pool of ~32 questions (8 per geometry, algebra, number theory, combinatorics). From this pool, the final six IMO problems are chosen through a rigorous voting process.

What makes a great IMO problem? It's all about originality. Ideal problems aren't just about applying advanced theorems, but rather test creative thinking and mastery of fundamental principles. Of course, there were cases in which the IMO committee didn't realize a problem was an obvious corrolary of a grad-level theorem, and some well-read (highschool) students benefited from knowing that!

My Journey: I was once a top-ranked competitor myself. After high school, I joined my country's math olympiad committee.

I expected three-number inequalities to give in first, as there is less of a question about what counts as a proof. I didn't know that the latter problem was already solved in 2000 ( http://www.mmrc.iss.ac.cn/~xgao/paper/jar-gdbase.pdf ).

Someone really should make an adventure game out of synthetic geometry, as it allows for a proof-writing language simpler than Lean's and allows for nice visuals.

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