Posted by Martin Orr on
Wednesday, 06 July 2005 at 19:29
Each of the last three days we have done a practice exam. The first was easy, and if you assumed the same medal boundaries as last year we would have got 4 golds, 1 silver and 1 bronze and been placed second to China. I scored 20/21. Yesterday was rather harder, I was the only person to get question 3, but I scored 21. This morning was very hard and no one got more than one question. I think I did get one but it hasn't been marked yet.
In the afternoons we have generally relaxed for a while, then done a sheet of problems. Today we went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where they have a large collection of tropical butterflies (live, flying around in an artificial rainforest). It must require a lot of work to maintain this and the associated exhibition, to ensure that there are always creatures in the correct stage of their life cycle in the different displays. They have huge racks of butterfly pupae and we saw a staff member come and collect all the butterflies that had emerged today.
And if you are interested in the weather it is now raining, very heavily and has been since we left the museum. (Are rain drops really bigger in hot countries?)
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Martin
Tags
imo, usa
Posted by Martin Orr on
Sunday, 03 July 2005 at 21:41
We travelled yesterday to Houston, Texas for our training camp. This meant leaving home at 5:30 am, and then a six-hour time zone change. Staying in continuous, mostly natural light for 22 hours, with 30-minute dozes at peculiar points during the flight should have destroyed my natural sleep cycle; then a solid 9 hours sleep has got me synced up to Houston time.
On the way I went through Gatwick South Terminal, which strikes me as probably the worst designed airport terminal I have been in: I came out of the domestic baggage reclaim area, and straight into Continental Airlines check-in area (of course this is where I wanted to be, but I doubt it is where most people want to be when they come out of domestic baggage reclaim).
The people in immigration impressed me favourably. They seemed fairly good-humoured and efficient. Matthew was caught out though on being asked to prove that he was going to leave the country, since he didn't have our tickets. Some others were in difficulty simply on being asked when they were going to leave. One thing they are good at is realising that they can make use of the time you are standing in the queue to check your forms are filled in correctly. In Gatwick, the American security people were even better: they actually moved with you in the check-in queue, while asking the questions about did you pack your own bags etc. in great detail.
The temperature here is very hot and it is reasonably humid. It looks like what you would expect a hot country to look like (well I do anyway): brown and green, with softly-coloured buildings and everything fairly spread out.
We are staying in Rice University, where we have a very nice chef who cooks wonderful meals (even for vegetarians) and is continually offering more dishes - except there is far too much of everything already. Perhaps this is because there are very few other people about.
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Martin
Tags
imo, usa
Posted by Martin Orr on
Friday, 01 July 2005 at 21:09
Yes, I know the week isn't over and it's two days since I last posted but I shall post again for the last time before I go away, to Texas until 11th for training and then to Merida, Mexico for the IMO itself, during which time I shall adopt a different posting strategy (any time I get a computer, probably every 3 days or so).
About the question of post length, I have to say posts look far longer on the blog than when I am writing them - the text box I enter them in is much wider (perhaps this is to do with me using a wide screen laptop to post from). Does anyone know:
1. Is it a bug in the Blogger software that when I choose to display N days, it still displays N posts?
2. Surely there is a quicker way of making a new post than the four clicks I have to go through ATM from my front page?
3. Is there a Blogger bug-reporting page?
Anyway, I have managed to do a couple of things in that short space of time. Primarily the Leavers' Service yesterday, followed by barbecue. Especially pleasing for me was getting the printed Yearbook, given all the work I put into producing it. I also was awarded the Lord Grey Award for Excellence, "the highest accolade we can give in the College" (Dr Mulryne, 2003 Prize Day Address). There was a severe shortage of coffee shop space on Botanic Avenue following this service. The idea that I might well never see many of these people again is a hard one to get round (I will be heading for Poland on results day).
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Martin
Tags
blogger, blogging, imo, methody, yearbook
Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 06 June 2005 at 17:38
I began the week in Oundle for a Maths camp - the final selection of the team for the IMO. On Tuesday we sat NST (Next Selection Test) 1. This is an IMO-style exam i.e. there are three questions in 4.5 hours. It was however an easy exam and I had solutions to all the problems in 70 minutes. After working out a solution, it is necessary to write it up carefully so that the markers can understand it. I spent the rest of the exam doing that very slowly and carefully, ensuring there were no holes at all and since I had so much time, even provided a summary of each solution to guide the marker and cross-referenced the page numbers between rough work and final solution. I still had quite a bit of time to spare. In all, four out of the eight squad members claimed three questions although they did not all get full marks on every question.
I missed NST 2 on Wednesday because I had to come home for my French oral. In this oral you debate a topic of your own choice for five minutes: I had chosen to argue against nuclear energy. I first did this topic at Christmas, when we were only given a choice of five topics; to my surprise I ended up the only one choosing nuclear energy (Kathleen initially chose to be for it but switched to a different topic). When I first picked the topic, I did not feel strongly either way; the more I researched it the more convinced I became against it. Then I left the topic for several months until Easter when it came time to choose the A-level topic. To make things easy and since I had been the only person doing it at Christmas (and would therefore almost certainly be the only person to do it for the A-level since you have a completely free choice), I stuck with nuclear power (although unfortunately I had kept my presentation and some other French notes, but little of my original research). When I got back to thinking about it again, I became less and less convinced that it is a bad thing. Apart from the nuclear waste argument: it seems to me foolish to produce all this dangerous waste we don't know what to do with, although again I am no longer as convinced of the unfeasibility of some options as I was.
Following your chosen topic, you speak on at least two other topics of the examiner's choosing for another ten minutes. He asked me about the environment (a natural thing to follow on from nuclear power), the pace of modern life, and the European Union. The EU was an obvious choice given the referendum on Saturday; in conversation however it arose from the previous question, when he had asked about the 48-hour EU limit on the working week, and I mentioned the French 35-hour week. I think I did fairly well, though looking back I'm not sure how much I did to justify my opinions as well as state them. The examiner seemed nice enough, and he phrased his questions very slowly and ponderously; that fits with my style of answering them, which is hopefully a good thing.
The rest of the week I have had off, as I don't have an exam until Thursday coming. I spent much of my time on the computer, ordered a laptop on Friday of which I am eagerly awaiting delivery, went to a Make Poverty History rally in Belfast on Saturday and completed a first draft of my Gloria.
I have also spent quite a bit of time doing Maths - I have been working through all the questions 2 and 5 from the 1990 IMOs. If you don't know about the IMO, you will ask: why questions 2 and 5? Well in each IMO there are two exams, questions 1, 2, and 3 on the first day and 4, 5 and 6 on the second day. Questions 1 and 4 are (relatively) easy, 2 and 5 of medium difficulty and 3 and 6 are hard. Each question is marked out of 7, making a maximum total of 42. In 2002 and 2003, 29 marks were required for a gold medal; in 2004 it was 32. So you can see that to get a gold you really need to get questions 1, 2, 4 and 5. If they are perfect, that makes 28 marks so you can pretty well assume that you still need a mark or two on 3 or 6; depending on the difficulty of the paper, how many additional marks are required will vary a bit, but a full extra question ought to be sufficient.
Questions 1 and 4 usually are quite straightforward if you are well trained and the UK works very hard on knocking them off like clockwork: in 2003 we got 82 marks out of a possible 84, placing us in third place on these 2 questions (while we were tenth overall, with something like 3 marks in total on questions 3 and 6). I should have no trouble with those questions, which is why I have been practising on 2 and 5. I have now tried all the 2s and 5s back to 1996 and got almost all of them in under an hour, which is a good thing. Questions 3 and 6 are often out of my reach, but as explained above I need to make some progress on them so I will try a range of questions 3 and 6 later.
What have I been reading this week? Molière's Le Misanthrope: it's seventeenth century French drama, not the best thing to read before your French oral (like reading Shakespeare to improve your spoken English, several of the grammatical rules and words have changed). So I've been thinking in iambic hexameter in French.
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Martin
Tags
alevels, imo, languages