bookrebus Chapter 17 Obsession with Running
Chapter 17 Obsession with Running
Sunday.
Su Hao woke up earlier than usual.
The morning air seeping in from outside the window carried a biting chill.
By mid-November, winter was already on its way.
Today is the day of the National Mathematical Olympiad Preliminary Round.
Su Hao threw off the covers, got up, and opened the window.
The cool air, like it had been infused with mint, rushed straight into my lungs, instantly dispelling any drowsiness.
He changed into light sportswear and quietly left home.
In the early morning, the surroundings were so quiet that you could hear the leaves falling, but the air was already beginning to ripple with the subtle signs that everyday life was about to awaken.
Su Hao took light steps and began his unwavering morning run.
His almost obsessive passion for running has extremely hardcore reasons.
That Indian mathematical genius named Ramanujan.
This guy died at the age of thirty-two due to malnutrition and tuberculosis.
The cause of death was extremely absurd:
Extremely irregular lifestyle and zero exercise for years.
Aside from eating and sleeping, this guy sits like a stone statue at his desk every day, sacrificing his entire life to mathematics.
For Su Hao, the vast history of mathematics is not a dry chronicle, but an epic written with the blood, flesh and soul of geniuses.
To trace the development of mathematics in the East and West and to glimpse the joys and sorrows of those great souls is a delightful and fulfilling experience.
For example, how did that freak Gauss, at the age of seven, instantly see through the symmetrical aesthetics of arithmetic sequences and calculate the sum from one to one hundred?
For example, Euler, that ruthless man, was able to construct an even larger graph theory universe in pure darkness after losing his sight;
There were even quintessential examples of adolescent delusions like Galois, who, on the eve of being shot and killed in a duel over a woman, was still feverishly engrossed in writing the foundations of group theory...
These almost absurd historical anecdotes were, in Su Hao's eyes, a vibrant pulse.
This also proves that even the big shots were once ordinary people.
They, too, had a childhood like we did, and experienced moments when the absolute rational beauty of mathematics struck their souls.
Sometimes I feel frustrated by logical dead ends, and other times I feel trembling ecstasy when inspiration strikes.
Whenever he used those formulas and got bogged down in profound deductions, Su Hao would always have a near-presumptuous feeling:
He is traversing hundreds of years of time and space, breathing with these ancient and great souls before those yellowed pages.
"Ah, if only Ramanujan could have lived a little longer..."
Su Hao sighed as he ran.
The loss of this Indian mathematician is a loss to the mathematical community that even selling India wouldn't be enough to compensate for.
Ramanujan left behind more than 3,900 formulas and theorems during his short life of 32 years.
A large portion of it was like a book written in the heavens, and it was not until sixty years after his death, at the end of the twentieth century, that it was finally proven by the modern mathematical community with great difficulty.
It wasn't until today, with the exponential explosion of computing power, that people were horrified to discover just how despairingly accurate that Indian man's intuition was.
"If he had lived to seventy, how advanced would science have become by now?"
Although his life was as short as morning dew, the theories of infinite series and continued fractions he left behind still firmly support the dome of modern cryptography and computer science.
Moreover, the theta function, which he casually wrote down in his last letter before his death, is now regarded by physicists as the Holy Grail, used to determine the most important dimensions of modern physics, superstring theory and M-theory.
What drives Su Hao, a perfectionist, crazy, to the point where he even wants to dig the big shot out of his grave and shake him awake, is that his theta function still has countless unsolved mysteries, like black holes.
"These people have a whole host of terrible habits."
He couldn't understand those geniuses.
Why are those names etched in history always so arrogant?
Why do we always leave no proof for groundbreaking propositions, simply discarding them without a second thought and then comfortably passing them on?
Couldn't you have written just a couple more lines?!
The fact that he so confidently made his unfinished ideas public was something that Su Hao, who was used to strict logic, could not understand at all.
Especially Ramanujan, in most cases, when asked how he calculated it, he would say without batting an eye:
The goddess Namakar told him the formula in a dream!
Thus, they arbitrarily omit all the proof process and simply present you with a cold and aloof final result.
Ironically, there's almost no fault in it!
This made Su Hao so angry that he often grinded his teeth in his dreams.
In Su Hao's eyes, flipping through the biographies of those great mathematicians is simply a bloody and tearful history of exchanging their lives for wisdom and fighting desperately against their health.
Therefore, he has to run.
If you want to explore more distant landscapes, you must never let this physical body break down prematurely!
Huff, huff.
It felt like there was a bellows in my trachea, and at first I couldn't breathe properly.
But once his body got used to running, Su Hao realized that running was not only a physical workout, but also a way to maintain brain health.
The brain, which was originally busy calculating in the background, will unconsciously calm down at a certain critical point.
What follows is a natural surge of inspiration, like a spring, born from the interplay of dopamine and endorphins!
Those answers that you can't figure out even when you're sitting in a chair scratching your head, sometimes suddenly "ding" into your head while you're running, and everything becomes clear, and you feel enlightened.
This step took half a year to complete.
At the beginning, I couldn't even run for ten minutes before I was panting like a dog, but now I can maintain a high pace and run for thirty minutes as if it were flat ground.
Is this the effect of endorphins on the remodeling of neural synapses?
In the distance, a familiar figure appeared in the thin mist.
"Hey! Su Hao! Come quick, come quick, take some freshly picked cucumbers and tomatoes home!"
Uncle Cui, who grows crops in greenhouses, saw Su Hao from afar, his eyes lit up, and he immediately waved enthusiastically at him.
"Thank you, Uncle! My mom will definitely like it!"
Su Hao accepted it with a smile.
Now he's practically a lucky charm in town, able to get by anywhere with his good looks.
After driving around the town for a long time, Su Hao returned home carrying the groceries.
I felt a slight warmth throughout my body, and my mind felt cleared and reorganized, more so than ever before.
"You're back! Why did you bring so much stuff again? Go wash up and get ready for breakfast!"
Lin Wan quickly came forward and took the plastic bag from Su Hao's hand.
When Su Hao finished washing up and sat down at the dining table, he was slightly taken aback.
Today's breakfast was unusually lavish.
"It seems my parents are even more nervous than I am."
"Mom, just eat whatever you normally eat. Putting extra strain on your digestive system will actually reduce blood flow to your brain..."
"I have an important exam today, so I need to eat well before going out!"
Without saying a word, Lin Wan put food into his bowl.
In fact, Lin Wan tossed and turned in bed all night, practically turning the sheets into pancakes, and barely slept a wink.
Although they knew in their hearts that their son was extremely outstanding, as parents, they could not help but feel anxious at the threshold of fate.
She got up half-asleep and busied herself in the kitchen, unknowingly preparing this large table of dishes.
Wow! So much delicious food!
My younger sister, Su Hui, with her hair all messy and probably because she got up too early, still had her eyes half-closed when she let out an exaggerated scream and plopped down on the chair in front of the dining table.
Father Su Zhe looked at his daughter, his tone stern:
"This was specially prepared by your mother so that your brother could get good grades."
"Then there's nothing to worry about!"
Su Hui mumbled incoherently as she ate.
"Is there anything my brother can't do?"
"Questions that even Mom and the teacher couldn't answer, I asked him, and he could give me the answer in a second."
Children's innocent words, like a gentle spring breeze, brought a relaxed atmosphere to the slightly tense dining table.
......
A key high school in the city.
When Su Hao arrived at the examination hall, the entrance was already packed with people, giving it a zombie apocalypse feel.
"Goodness! It looks just like a wet market!"
This year's National Mathematical Olympiad preliminary competition was held in various provinces and cities. In the examination area where Su Hao was located alone, more than 500 top students flocked to the venue.
One teaching building simply couldn't accommodate everyone, so the students were split into three buildings.
At first glance, it felt like all the students in the province who knew a little bit about math and had some brains had gathered here for a martial arts tournament.
The preliminary round of the International Mathematical Olympiad is extremely brutal. It uses the coldest numbers to precisely select the top sixty people from among numerous participants across the country.
If you can squeeze into this range, it's equivalent to getting a guaranteed admission to a top university.
In every corner of the corridors and classrooms, many students were completely immersed in the oppressive atmosphere before the exam.
A guy sitting in the front row clasped his hands together and closed his eyes, as if praying for the divine intervention of mathematical geniuses throughout history.
Another girl wearing thick-rimmed glasses muttered to herself, as if reciting an exorcism incantation, repeatedly reciting the formulas in her notebook.
This tense atmosphere, as if they were about to undergo a tribulation, was something Su Hao had never seen before.
"quiet."
As the proctor—Qiu Jianguo, a professor in the mathematics department of one of the top universities in China—entered the classroom, the noise instantly subsided.
Qiu Jianguo's sharp gaze swept over the group of young people who were sweating profusely, and he shook his head inwardly.
I was too nervous. The true beauty of mathematics requires absolute calm.
"The National Mathematical Olympiad Preliminary Round is now beginning. The exam will last three hours and consist of twenty-five questions, all of which are multiple-choice questions with five options each."
This is the highest-level examination for selecting the nation's top mathematical talents, and its difficulty is far beyond that of ordinary tests.
I hope everyone can calm down and perform to their best ability, leaving no regrets.
drop--
The shrill sound of a bell pierced the corridor.
The exam papers and answer sheets were distributed in a flash, and like a war without gunpowder, the battle officially began.
Will there be any interesting new question types?
I've heard that every year in the preliminary rounds of the International Mathematical Olympiad, in order to weed out those pseudo-geniuses who only know how to cram for problems and select the truly outstanding geniuses...
Those old professors who set the questions would rack their brains to come up with some extremely bizarre and twisted questions.
Su Hao's heart began to beat slightly faster.
That's the excitement a hunter feels when he sees his prey.
Open the exam paper, the first question.
What is the probability of getting two heads when four coins are tossed at the same time?
Su Hao: "...?"
That's it?
A probability problem that couldn't be more basic.
You can easily solve it with your eyes closed using combinations or binomial distribution.
Su Hao didn't even touch the draft paper; he simply twirled his pen and filled in the answer sheet.
Time taken: Two seconds.
Qiu Jianguo, who was on patrol, happened to walk up to Su Hao.
Seeing that the candidate didn't even glance at the scratch paper before filling in the answer sheet, Professor Qiu's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
"Too impatient. Even though it was an easy question, skipping the verification step shows a bad attitude that won't get you far."
Question 2.
How many different ways are there to color the four vertices of a square using red, blue, and green?
"ha!"
Upon seeing this question, Su Hao couldn't help but almost burst out laughing in the quiet exam room.
The person who set this question is quite interesting; it's a coloring problem.
This reminded him of the "Four Color Theorem," which the mathematical community has yet to fully solve using human methods.
Su Hao always keeps in mind those age-old problems that have yet to be successfully proven.
Whenever a new clue flashes through his mind, he tries to verify it with a feasible new approach.
"However, compared to the Four Color Theorem, this kind of idiotic problem isn't even worthy of carrying its shoes."
It can be easily solved by directly applying Burnside's lemma.
The rotation group has an order of 4. Let's calculate the number of coloring schemes that remain unchanged under each rotation...
Su Hao's wrist didn't pause for a moment, and he smoothly selected the correct answer again.
Time taken: four seconds.
Professor Qiu Jianguo, who was standing to the side and behind, was about to take a step, but suddenly his foot was nailed to the spot.
"This kid doesn't even bother with a draft? He just fills in the answer sheet?! What kind of joke is this?!"
This is the Olympiad! Not the driving test's theory exam!!
Qiu Jianguo's pupils constricted slightly.
The first question was fine with mental arithmetic, but the second question involved orbit counting in permutation groups.
Even if a regular high school student memorizes the formulas, they still need to draw the axis of symmetry for rotation and reflection on paper to prevent mistakes!
This kid...did he just perform a homomorphic mapping of a group directly in his mind?!