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December 22, 2004
Theorem on 12
Mir, Belarus - Tournament of Towns Summer Conference
From my log on the Tournament of Towns in Toronto website:
The conference was driven by the willpower to research rather than competition. On the first day, we were presented with a few projects: series of connected tasks. We were to choose one or two of them to work on during the week. There aim was not to prove one main theorem, but rather develop a technique.
Janos and I teamed up to prove the Theorem on 12. Progress went well underway. The jury responsible for the problem promised the first team who solved it a prize. Can you believe it - we were that team. So we claimed our surprize - a big, green, juicy watermelon. Now, if in Gorodets, there was no beds, in Mir, there were no knives. But luckily, we had scissors. It was a bloody mess, and we had established a reputation of having the messiest room at the conference. Half the watermelon went to waste.
Originally, we handed in our papers to Dorichenko, but we found Skopenkov to be friendlier (in terms of marking). After the Semi Final, we were given additional problems. In one of them, we found out that we could classify the entire theorem in just a few cases (up to affine transformation). Thats like making us do hard work the old fashioned way and then spitting in our faces.
Posted by Oleg Ivrii at December 22, 2004 03:08 PM
Comments
Couldn't you have dismantled the screw in the scissors to make a knife? Or eaten it outside your room?
Posted by: aSo at December 22, 2004 03:28 PM
Its like playing a chess game where both sides win. As I said before, you are the best at what you do: solving problems and making a mess.
Posted by: VLA at December 22, 2004 03:48 PM
Adrian, that's a terrible idea =). Since he was at a castle, there must have been lots of rocks around... so, the logical choice would have been to smash the watermelon into edible bits!
Posted by: Tout at December 22, 2004 03:53 PM
or you can eat the whole thing as i always do
Posted by: Eric C at December 22, 2004 04:59 PM
OLEG! The link to the messiest room is broken! FIX. OR DIE.
Posted by: aSo at December 22, 2004 08:58 PM