FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Me and my webpage
Who are you?
Why are your papers so boring?
What is the copyright status of your papers?
What software do you use to draw your
graphics?
What are PS files and what am I
supposed to do with them?
Various
What is the
QEDMO?
Please tell me of some
good online sources for geometry.
Please tell me of some
good books on geometry.
Please tell me of some
good online sources for inequalities.
Please tell me of
some good books on inequalities.
Why are you not active on the
MathLinks forum anymore?
Please
delete/edit/move/merge some MathLinks post for me!
Please give me the IMO
Shortlist [insert year of last IMO here]!
Can you solve the
following problem for me?
Who are you?
Since 2006, I am a student of mathematics at the Ludwig
Maximilian University in Munich. I was
born in Moscow in 1988 and have moved to Germany in 1996. I have
spent my school years in Münster and Karlsruhe, Germany,
participating in mathematical olympiads like the Bundeswettbewerb
Mathematik, the Deutsche Mathematik-Olympiade (both German
mathematical competitions) and the International Mathematical
Olympiad.
Have won first prizes in the 1st Rounds of the Bundeswettbewerb
Mathematik 2001-2006, as well as in the 2nd Rounds of the
Bundeswettbewerb Mathematik 2003-2005 (where I gained third
prizes in 2000 and 2002), and became Bundessieger 2003, 2004 and
2005. Participated in the Deutsche Mathematik-Olympiade since
2002, and gained a 1st prize in the 41th olympiad 2002 (Hamburg),
an honorable mention in the 42th olympiad 2003 (Bremen), a 2nd
prize in the 43th olympiad 2004 (Essen) and 1st prizes in the
44th olympiad 2005 (Saarbrücken) and the 45th olympiad 2006
(München). Silver medals in the 45th IMO (International
Mathematical Olympiad) 2004 and in the 46th IMO 2005, and gold
medal in the 47th IMO 2006.
Now I am mostly busy with studying university mathematics, with a
particular passion for (but alas, not a particularly good
understanding of) algebra, especially constructive algebra. This
keeps me from updating my website more often, but I still spend
some time on olympiad mathematics.
Why are your
papers so boring?
I guess this is either due to the subject or to the length of my
papers.
As for the subject: This website contains a lot of stuff I have
written since 2002 (when I was 14 years old). Some of it is
pretty much junk, some just stands was posted in order to answer
some people's questions, some other notes I have written while I
was bored... don't expect to find anything sensational.
As for the length: Yes, I am perfectly aware of the fact that a
proof that takes half of a page in someone else's writeup often
takes two pages in mine. I am trying to keep the proofs as
detailed as possible - not only in order to make them
understandable to less experienced readers (as far as this is
possible - some of the proofs use rather advanced background),
but also to make maximally sure they have no flaws - mistakes
often hide in "trivial" or "left to the
reader" clauses. I am sorry for the obvious consequence of
the proofs becoming considerably longer this way... If you are
experienced in the respective fields, you will be able to
speed-read much of my notes anyway.
What also boosts the length of my notes are the many big
graphics. I believe that in times of harddisks with terabytes of
storage space, some additional 30KB coming from more (vector!)
graphics in a geometrical text are not much of a waste.
What is the
copyright status of your papers?
All parts of my webpage - this means all files
accessible through an URL beginning with http://www.oocities.org/de/darij_grinberg/ or with http://www.cip.ifi.lmu.de/~grinberg/ and accessible through a hyperlink
from another such URL (*) -,
except for the documents listed under "Eine
unvollständige Liste von Lösungen anderer Teilnehmer:" at the German
page (these documents are written by other people and may or
may not be public domain),
are public domain, i. e. you can
use them in whatever way you want without asking me for it,
That said, it remains idiotic to put one's name under others'
work, but I believe that not everything that is idiotic must be
forbidden.
(*) Why this? Well, sometimes I exchange some data
between my home computer and my university account by uploading
them on my webspace (without linking to them on this website,
naturally). Of course, they are not public domain.
My posts on the MathLinks forum, the PEN forum, the Hyacinthos newsgroup and
in other internet resources are public domain as well,
with the exception of:
- quoted text (text inside "Quote&quoot; tags);
- attachments to posts (some of these are public domain, some
arn't);
- posts on MathLinks beginning with the seentence "The
author of this posting is:" (in fact, these are posts made
by others which were lost during a hacker attack on MathLinks,
and which I reposted because I happened to have backups of them).
What software do you use to
draw your graphics?
I got asked this several times. Unfortunately, the answer is
unlikely to help anyone.
First, my notes are written with Scientific
Workplace (SWP) - a (commercial, and,
for its quality, way overpriced) graphical LaTeX user interface.
It generates somewhat messy LaTeX code, with a few additional
features - the one I use is the ability to include WMF vector
graphics.
The graphics are drawn with the dynamic geometry software Euklid DynaGeo by Roland Mechling. As far as I know, this software is
distributed in German only (and being written for school use
mainly, it is not even the best choice). Then, through the
Windows clipboard, these graphics are either directly exported
into SWP as WMF, or first edited in MS Word and then exported
into SWP as WMF.
As you could have guessed, this way of handling graphics is very
prone to bugs, and I would not recommend this to anyone, even in
the unlikely case you have both SWP and Euklid DynaGeo installed
on your computer. I would sincerely like to know a better way to
get geometric sketches embedded into TeX files in a vector format
(please don't tell me about bitmap-based solutions, I don't like
pixeled lines).
What are PS files and
what am I supposed to do with them?
Some papers on this site are downloadable in PS (= PostScript)
format only. These are notes I have written some years ago when I
wasn't able to convert from TeX to PDF yet. You can view
PS files under Windows by installing the following two
programs (in this order): -- Being not experienced, I can
only hope that the below instructions will work. --
You will actually use GSView to read PS files;
Ghostscript is just required for GSView and will run
automatically when you use GSView.
Note that GSView can also read most PDF files (more precisely,
all PDF files without Adobe gimmicks such as encryption).
However, GSView is not capable of antialiasing (or, if it is,
Adobe Acrobat Reader is much better at it), so you can use GSView
as the default viewer for PDF files instead of Acrobat Reader,
but some PDF files (mostly those that have been scanned or use
low resolution fonts) will look very ugly in GSView. GSView is
not free of bugs, but so is Acrobat Reader, and GSView takes less
time to load than Acrobat Reader.
What is the QEDMO?
QEDMO stands for QED Mathematical Olympiad. The QED is an organization of German mathematical olympiad
participants based in Bavaria who organize meetings and seminars
for each other. From late 2005 on, some of these meetings feature
a math fight (an oral mathematical contest, with two teams
solving questions and debating the solutions in front of the
blackboard) called the QEDMO. The problems are of varying
difficulty (some very basic problems occur on every QEDMO, but a
few of the problems have the level of an IMO problem 3). These
math fights are usually organized by Daniel Harrer and me, with
problems partly taken from different sources, partly invented by
ourselves (Peter Scholze has also done some work here).
Until now (June 2007), four QEDMO's have been performed. Proposed
solutions for the number theory and combinatorics problems are
usually written by Daniel Harrer, and those for the geometry and
algebra problems are written by me. The former will be avaliable
as soon as the QEDMO gets an official website; the latter are,
upon completion, downloadable from the QEDMO section of my website.
However, all of these solutions are in German. If you are
searching for solutions in English, you can try searching for the
problems on the
MathLinks forum.
However, you can download the statements of the problems in English. I have tried to retrace the sources of the
non-original problems, but this turned out more difficult than I
expected.
Please tell me of
some good online sources for geometry.
Please visit the links
section of this website.
[I will be glad to know if you have good links that can be added
to this section!]
Please tell me of
some good books on geometry.
I hope you mean elementary geometry, as opposed to
topology, differential or integral geometry which are absolutely
different fields of mathematics.
First, please visit the links section of this website
to find some online literature. It has the advantage that it is
free and doesn't take time to ship. You can learn a lot
from the Cut-the-Knot
website and from Kedlaya's
Geometry Unbound. Leites'
translations of books by Victor Prasolov are invaluable to a
problem solver who wants to get better in geometry.
Now you say that reading from monitors is bad for your eyes, that
you want to train your geometry skills while lying in bed or
sitting on a bench and ... Okay, you want books, in the very
old-fashioned, offline meaning of this word.
The first choice is obviously
H.
S. M. Coxeter, Samuel L. Greitzer, Geometry Revisited
(this one has been printed several times, and as far as I know,
the editions only differ in the solutions to the exercises - the
newer ones have partly better solutions). The first three
chapters of this book contain some real common knowledge on
triangle geometry and radical axes theory. However, the
"introduction into projective geometry" chapter is
anything but an introduction into projective geometry, and the
way inversion is introduced is far from complete.
The next textbook is
Nathan
Altshiller-Court, College Geometry.
This has been reprinted in 2007 after having been elusive for a
long time. It contains nearly all plane geometry you might need
on contests.
Along with this book,
Roger
A. Johnson, Advanced Euclidean Geometry
has also been reprinted. While I would not recommend this for
olympiad training, it can be helpful for a more serious study
since it contains a number of lesser known results.
Then, there is
Ross
Honsberger, Episodes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Euclidean Geometry.
This one is really fun to read if you are into elementary
geometry. Much of the content can help you in mathematical
olympiads as well - though, for an IMO gold medaillist with focus
on geometry, this one will be rather like a collection of simple
exercises (which can still be of use).
I have now put up a page for errata in
these three books (some other books may also be included).
Unfortunately, this is pretty much all books I can recommend -
apart from the (also rather few) German and Russian ones I won't
itemize.
Please tell me of
some good online sources for inequalities.
Here is some random stuff I found useful. In fact, I have never
learnt inequalities systematically in online sources - most of my
basic knowledge comes from the German IMO training, and the rest
is experience from solving MathLinks
problems and reading others' solutions.
Thomas Mildorf
has a
nice script on inequalities.
Hojoo Lee is
rather known for his
"Topics in Inequalities".
Kiran Kedlaya has another
text similar to the two above.
This
MathLinks topic is partly of interest, and the whole Inequalities
Theorems&Formulas section has a number of interesting
discussions, along with tons of spam.
If you read German, Robert
Geretschläger has his
script as well.
Anyone knows more sources? Just tell me...
Please tell me
of some good books on inequalities.
There are several books by the (Romanian) GIL publishing house on olympiad-style inequalities. Two of them are in
English. Please don't ask me how to order books published by GIL
from outside Romania - apparently this has not been organized
smoothly yet :( . Let me make some words about these two books:
Vasile Cîrtoaje, Algebraic Inequalities - Old and New
Methods, Gil: Zalau 2006.
This one is 480 pages long and features many interesting tactics
and examples on solving inequalities. Unfortunately, you are not
likely to enjoy all these 480 pages, because many of the modern
methods for solving inequalities include applications of calculus
and involved computations. However, a lot was done to
keep these ugly parts at a minimum while keeping the whole power
of the new methods.
The RCF ("right convex function"), LCF (guess what this
means) and EV (equal variables) theorems as well as the AC
(arithmetic compensation) and GC (geometric compensation) methods
provide a means to solve >95% of olympiad inequalities using
rather straightforward - not nice, but doable - computations. All
of these methods are extensively presented with numerous
examples. A short chapter underlines applications of the
(underrated) generalized Popoviciu inequality. Finally, and - in
my opinion - most importantly, a lot of exercises with solutions
are given which don't require any strong new methods, but just
creative ideas and clever manipulations.
Pham Kim Hung, Secrets in Inequalities (volume 1), Gil:
Zalau 2007.
This one has 256 pages, and is remarkable for mostly avoiding
computations. Numerous creative ideas can be found here - I was
particularly surprised about some of the applications of the
Chebyshev and rearrangement inequalities. Besides, a good
introduction into the applications of convexity is given. I would
recommend this book to olympiad participants who look for
challenging problems and intelligent techniques without the aim
to be able to kill every inequality.
Why are you not active
on the MathLinks forum anymore?
In fact, I am probably more active than you think, as I rather
often do some moderator jobs on MathLinks such as moving topics
and deleting spam, but indeed this is not the interesting kind of
activity. In fact I would be glad to spend more time solving
problems and posting their solutions, but I don't have this time.
Note that I am slightly more active on a younger forum called Problems
in Elementary Number Theory (PEN). If
you cannot access this forum because it is offline (what happens
sometimes due to the server), you can find the source code of my (relevant)
posts here.
Please
delete/edit/move/merge some MathLinks post for me!
Okay, give me a link to your post. However, please note that
- I am never going to remove any mmathematical content
without a very good reason. When you post
something on MathLinks, you are giving it away to the community
and you should not be able to take it back again. (And experience
shows that people who want their mathematical posts deleted often
happen to be cheaters who want others to solve an olympiad
problem for them and then to have it deleted in order to cover
the tracks.)
- I am only a moderator in the Olympiad seection, the College
section and parts of the National Olympiads subforum. This means
that, among other things, I can move topics from the Olympiad
section into Pre-Olympiad, but I cannot move topics from
Pre-Olympiad into the Olympiad section.
Please give me the
IMO Shortlist [insert year of last IMO here]!
Chances are high that I don't even possess the Shortlist.
However, even if I do, I am not entitled to distribute it
further.
Most people who ask me about shortlists do know pretty well why
these are kept confidential until the next IMO. For anyone else:
The Shortlist of year t contains the problems that were
"almost" selected for the IMO of year t. There
are y (usually y is approximately equal to 30)
such problems, and 6 of them are finally selected as the IMO
problems. The other y - 6 problems are used by various
countries in their team selection tests for the IMO of year t
+ 1. Therefore, publishing these problems can make team selection
in other countries unfair, as some participants will know the
selection problems in advance from the internet.
Of course, nowadays everybody discusses everything online, and
there are various places where IMO Shortlist problems leak into
public access. I, among other training participants, found it fun
to hunt down such leaked problems through the internet in my IMO
training times - but we were "fair" enough to take them
from publically accessible websites only (rather than asking
people for them via mail) and to disclose our knowledge to the
team leaders (what did not stop us from intentionally creating
havoc by doing this as late as 1-2 days before the actual test,
so that the whole test had to be rewritten in these 1-2 days...
so much for actual fairness). If you are into this kind of games,
nothing keeps you from doing your own googling but I won't
provide you any undisclosed data.
Wait until IMO t + 1 to find the IMO Shortlist t
freely accessible online, most likely with solutions.
Can you solve the
following problem for me?
I am sometimes getting private messages over webfores with people
asking me to solve mathematical problems.
Unfortunately, I mostly do not have the time to reply to such
messages. First of all, don't ask me for help with combinatorial
geometry, as I have really no experience in this area.
Pretty much the same holds for functional equations. I am rather
experienced with geometry and inequality, but currently I
do not want to pursue these fields any further, so
please don't confront me with them any more.
Linear algebra and commutative algebra questions will
most likely be answered, as I like these fields. But
don't expect me to write full solutions for your homework. I will
most likely give hints and answer questions on understanding. I
will think about your combinatorics/graph theory questions if I
find them interesting, but alas I am not too good in
combinatorics.
I am pretty clueless about analysis and topology, so you should
not expect much from me.
But actually, rather than telling the problem to me via a private
message, you could do the following: Post the problem on the MathLinks forum and then send me, as a private message, a link to the
problem statement. This has the consequence that, if I don't have
the time, someone else might help you as well, and the solution
posted will be probably of help to other people who also want to
see a solution of that problem.
A sidenote: Don't try to cheat on contests by asking others to
solve the contest problems for you. People on MathLinks talk with
each other and may find out that the problem you asked them for
was from a running contest. And moderators on MathLinks can see
both your IP and your email addresses, and they can send this
information to the contest organizers.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Darij Grinberg