Ansatz 2021 finals

Ansatz Finals
Research & Conducted By Amrit

Rules
1. 24 questions.
2. Pounce/Bounce format. +10/-5 on pounce. Get all parts correct on
pounce.
3. Don’t mock yourself by googling. Any ﬁshy behaviour will lead to
immediate disqualiﬁcation. (I mean it !)
4. QM is god !

Pounce & Bounce Format
1. Suppose the question is direct to team 1.
2. I read the question. Other teams (2, 3, …, 6) who know the answer can
pounce in a certain time limit.
3. Make sure you know all the parts in the answer right if you pounce unless
stated otherwise. +10 if you get the answer right else -5.
4. Suppose team 3 and 5 pounced.
5. I now ask team 1 to answer. If team 1 gets it right we move on else the
question will bounce to teams who did not pounce, i.e. teams 2,4 and 6.
6. If team 2 gets the answer right we move on else move to team 4 and so
on.

Trial Question
Whose ﬁrst tweet and what does it say ?

I’m feeling lucky in Binary.

1.
____ _____ is pictorial representation of something that is of greatest interest to
mathematicians, number theorists in particular. This "pictorial representation" is made
by arranging the aforementioned objects of interest in a particular fashion. When
plotted for sufficiently large number of data points, a beautiful picture appears with
certain diagonal lines that relates to some major unsolved problems in mathematics
such as Landau's problems. A European mathematician discovered this "pictorial
representation" while doodling during a "boring" scientiﬁc meeting and it was
subsequently popularized by famous Mathematical games column of Scientiﬁc
American.
FITB.

Ulam’s Spiral by Stanislaw Ulam

X
2.
Although mathematics is full of unsolved problems and conjectures, the following list
of open problems occupies a special place in scientiﬁc community.
● Yang–Mills and Mass Gap.
● Riemann Hypothesis.
● P vs NP Problem.
● Navier–Stokes Equation.
● Hodge Conjecture.
● Poincaré Conjecture.
● Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture.
What’s so special about these problems ?

Millennium Prize
Problems
By Clay
Mathematical
Institute.
Solving any one of
them will fetch you
a million dollars.

X
3.
What obvious distinction does this
“document” holds which essentially answers
a question simply by two ﬁgures ?

Shortest published
mathematics paper !

X
4.
He is a prominent ﬁgure in Indian politics. Due to his witty and outspoken character,
he is often found in controversies.
He attended Hindu College, University of Delhi, from where he earned his Bachelor's
Honours degree in Mathematics. He then took his master's degree in Statistics from
the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He was later recommended by Hendrik S.
Houthakker and went to study at Harvard University where he received a PhD in
Economics in 1965.
When he was a student at ISI Kolkata, the then director of the institute Mahalanobis,
due to a personal rivalry with his father, made sure his test scores were not good.
Ultimately, he published a paper in Econometrica proving that Mahalanobis work on
Fractile Analysis was plagiarized proving both his brilliance and fearless nature.
Who is he ?

X
5.
Emerging as a folk art in 80s, X evolved as
a pointillist pop-art form that makes use of
a famous mathematical puzzle Y.
Practitioners of X has increased
substantially in last few decades such as
Invader who has also presented his(er) work
at prominent art-exhibitions. Y also earned
a permanent exhibit in New York’s Museum
of Modern Art. X is also emerging in India
lately with fans making portraits of their
favourite creators using Y.
What is so special about these paintings?

Paintings made of Rubik’s
Cube
X : Rubikcubism

X
6.
Which widely used mathematical
function would replace X ? (Don’t
over think !)
Who tweeted this ?

7.
This humorous mathematical measure was developed by an American mathematician
in a blog about seven years ago. This method assigns a percentage to books by using
Kindle's popular highlights (the most highlighted passages marked by Amazon
Kindle readers). Greater the number of such passages in the book greater is the %
assigned to it. Using this percentage one can make an inference about the book.
Give me the name of this measure that would remind you of a late scientist which
surprisingly has a connection with the Pi-Day.
What inference, i.e. what does this measure indicates ?
Surprisingly, the aforementioned scientist’s most famous book X turns out to have
one of the lowest % according to this measure thereby earning it the title of “the
most ______ book of all time !”. ID X.

Hawking’s Index
“how far people will, on average, read through a book
before giving up !”

8.
X was killed by a Roman soldier during Siege of Syracuse despite orders that he
should not be harmed. The last words attributed to X are "Do not disturb my circles",
a reference to the circles in the mathematical drawing that he was supposedly
studying when disturbed by the Roman soldier. X’s tomb is adorned by two
mathematical objects - a reference to a theorem that X considered the greatest
discovery of his lifetime. The theorem states that the volume of one object is
two-thirds of the volume of the other object.
ID X and what are those mathematical objects ?

Archimedes
He found that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of a
cylinder that encloses it.

9.
The following problems are a class of problems designed by mathematics
departments of a European state in 20th-century. These problems were framed to
have an elementary solution (so as to avoid scandals) that were almost impossible to
ﬁnd in given time constraints. Due to this, these problems were an eﬀective method
for universities’ sinister plan to deprive mathematical knowledge to certain sections of
society.
What is the apt name that was given to these problems ?

Jewish Problems (or Coffin Problems)
Used by USSR universities to prevent Jews
from pursuing mathematics.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

10.
Given is the famous Renaissance painting called School of Athens by Raphael that
features a number of ancient mathematicians and philosophers. Give me the names
of mathematicians. (Pictures on next slide).

11.
Pythagorean theorem is
considered to be the most proven
mathematical theorem of all
time. Many famous people have
given a proof of the theorem
such as Da Vinci and former
POTUS James Garﬁeld. However,
the following proof is believed to
have been authored by 12 year
old X (and used almost 20 years
later in what can be called as the
greatest theory discovered by
humanity).
ID X.

Einstein’s boyhood proof
of Pythagorean Theorem

12.
A Phd from Oxford, John Cumming is a computer scientist and a security specialist.
His work is mostly in the ﬁeld of computer science. Besides his work, he maintains a
blog whose description is “The troubled thoughts of a caustic coder. Mostly code
but sometimes rants, randomness and politics.” One ﬁne day about a decade ago,
he stumbled upon a tweet by Stephen Fry which resurfaced sad feelings in his mind
and made his blood boil considering that the subject of the tweet did so much for
humanity and saved so many lives yet was treated so badly by his own government.
He wrote a blog about the topic and eventually initiated a movement to correct a
historical wrong. The movement gained a lot of support and eventually came to
fruition.
What did he do ?

Petition for an apology for what UK
government did to Alan Turing !

13. (Free points)
Give me the obvious name of
this painting. (Two key-words
suffices)
Also, the answer to the
question.

Mental Arithmetic. In the
Public School of S.Rachinsky

14.
X, one of the leading research university, attracts brightest mathematical talent from
all across the world due to its mathematics department which has been described as
the strongest in the world. X is known for its eccentric affection towards mathematics
which is reflected in the events X has organized in the past such as integration bees
or the world famous number duel that gave birth to the largest named number.
Following this tradition, X’s admission office in recent years published its results on a
very specific date alluding to A and a very specific time alluding to B. The choice of
date and the time is done very smartly so as to please everyone as the mathematical
community is divided on the issue of which is superior - A or B.
Give me X and what specific date and time.

MIT declaring admission results on
14th March (Pi Day) at 6.28 PM (Tau
Time).

15.
In order to check the validity of a
popular saying, a design team
from Germany developed an
algorithm. The basic idea was to
cover the digital transportation
map of Europe by a grid of more
than 450,000 cells. The algorithm
was then applied to compute
whether link between each of these
cells and a certain place, leading
to the shown ﬁgure. Thicker lines in
the ﬁgure indicates more frequent usage across all paths. It was inferred that saying
was true. (To be precise, almost true).
What am I talking about ?

16.
Person on the left loved to teach epsilons and hence this photo. ID people in this
photo featuring two remarkable mathematicians.

17.
Soon after defeating Tipu Sultan, the Britishers initiated a project aimed at
preparing a rigorous measurement profile of Indian subcontinent. The project entailed
people who excelled at fields like spherical trigonometry and hence the then surveyor
general of India started looking of a mathematician with necessary competencies. To
his success, he found a bright mathematician from Presidency College, Kolkata. The
mathematician was made a part of the project and he went on to make significant
contributions to the project. However, his greatest contribution came when one
morning in 1852, the mathematician rushed to the room of Surveyor general all
excited and exclaimed that he made a certain discovery.
What discovery that stills holds ?

Radhanath Sikdar discovering the
height of Mount Everest thereby
establishing that it is the tallest
mountain in the world.

18.
X obtained both B.Sc (Hons) and M.Sc degrees from Rajasthan University. He also
holds PhD in Mathematics from Rajasthan University.
He turned author by sheer accident. He was doing his PhD from Rajasthan University
when a senior teacher who taught linear algebra passed away. "There was a vacuum
because there was no standardised Indian textbook for the subject. The only book
that could be used was by a foreign author and very expensive. I had scored 100% in
the subject. So I stepped in to write my ﬁrst book in 1986. It was not only adopted in
the university but continued to be used for the next 10- 11 years," he said in an
interview.
ID X who is also the author of a famous line of mathematics reference books
that we all must have encountered at some point in our lives.

19.
Influenced by anthropometric studies, X wanted to identify what factors influence
European and Indian marriages and if the Indian side came from specific castes.
Using caste-specific measurement and available data, he concluded the sample
represented a mix of Europeans mainly with people from Bengal and Punjab and
involved the higher castes more than the lower ones. This led to a statistical metric to
find how much a point diverges from a distribution.
What metric ?

Mahalanobis Distance
after P.C Mahalanobis (father of Indian statistics)

20.
Inspired by an Australian geo-statistician who did a
similar kind of work, Gonzalo Ciruelos, an
Argentinian mathematician tried to find an answer
about a geographical question. He did so by first
formulating mathematical definition of property that
the question involves leading to the shown formula.
He then tried finding a circle that maximizes the
formula. He did so using an iteration scheme with the
circumscribed circle and inscribed circle as initial
values. What am I talking about ?

https://gciruelos.com/what-is-the-roundest-country.html

21.
Although, Internet has facilitated a lot of important discoveries, it has also paved
way for self-proclaimed geniuses to make big claims without any solid proof or basis
or incorrect proofs. This led an online website that maintains a famous mathematical
database to create an elaborate rating method for these groundbreaking claims
based on already existing method of the same kind for physics. Following are a few
parts from the method.
Give me this aptly named rating method/measure/scheme.

22.
• Material : 14KT Gold
• Diameter : 63.5 mm
• Weight : 169 g
• Finish : Sandblasted, Engraved, Gold Plated & Lacquered
• Unit Price : approx. 5,500 CAD.
• Sculptor : R. Tait Mckenzie
What am I talking about ?

23.
GM Leffler was a Scandinavian mathematician who made chief contributions to
Complex Analysis. He taught mathematics at University of Helsinki. He also founded
Acta Mathematica - one of the leading mathematical journal. Throughout his entire
life, he was an ardent advocate of women rights making sure that 1903 Physics Nobel
went jointly to Pierre and Marie Curie and not just Pierre. He was also instrumental in
appointment of Sofya Kovalevskaya as ﬁrst women university professor of
mathematics in northern Europe. Despite his remarkable contributions towards
development of mathematics and women rights, he is known for a rather scandalous
“alleged” event that makes the mathematical world incomplete in a sense.
Give funda.

He was allegedly the person with
whom Alfred Nobel’s mistress ﬂed
due to which there is no Nobel Prize
in mathematics.

24.
Around 2400 B.C., the ancient Sumerians noticed that the Sun’s annual path across
the sky was ~ X days. In order to track the Sun’s motion, they decided to divide the Y
in X degrees.
The Y has been known since before the beginning of recorded history. Early science,
particularly geometry and astrology and astronomy, was connected to the divine for
most medieval scholars, and many believed that there was something intrinsically
"divine" or "perfect" that could be found in Y.
ID X and Y.

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