## Posts

### Edge querying in graph theory

In this post, I will present three graph theory problems in increasing difficulty, each with a common theme that one would determine a property of an edge in a complete graph through repeated iterations, and seek to achieve a greater objective. ESPR Summer Program Application: Alice and Bob play the following game on a $K_n$ ($n\ge 3$): initially all edges are uncolored, and each turn, Alice chooses an uncolored edge then Bob chooses to color it red or blue. The game ends when any vertex is adjacent to $n-1$ red edges, or when every edge is colored; Bob wins if and only if both condition holds at that time. Devise a winning strategy for Bob. This is more of a warm-up to the post, since it has a different flavor from the other two problems, and isn't as demanding in terms of experience with combinatorics. However, do note that when this problem was first presented, applicants did not know the winner ahead of time; it would be difficult to believe that Bob can hold such a strong
Recent posts

### The importance of "intuition" in geometry

Hii everyone! Today I will be discussing a few geometry problems in which once you "guess" or "claim" the important things, then the problem can easily be finished using not-so-fancy techniques (e.g. angle chasing, power-of-point etc. Sometimes you would want to use inversion or projective geometry but once you have figured out that some particular synthetic property should hold, the finish shouldn't be that non trivial) This post stresses more about intuition rather than being rigorous. When I did these problems myself, I used freehand diagrams (not geogebra or ruler/compass) because I feel that gives a lot more freedom to you. By freedom, I mean, the power to guess. To elaborate on this - Suppose you drew a perfect  diagram on paper using ruler and compass, then you would be too rigid on what is true in the diagram which you drew. But sometimes that might just be a coincidence. e.g. Let's say a question says $D$ is a random point on segment $BC$, so maybe

### LMAO Revenge

Continuing the tradition of past years, our seniors at the Indian IMO camp(an unofficial one happened this year) once again conducted LMAO, essentially ELMO but Indian. Sadly, only those who were in the unofficial IMOTC conducted by Pranav, Atul, Sunaina, Gunjan and others could participate in that. We all were super excited for the problems but I ended up not really trying the problems because of school things and stuff yet I solved problem 1 or so did I think. Problem 1:  There is a   grid of real numbers. In a move, you can pick any real number  ,  and any row or column and replace every entry   in it with  .  Is it possible to reach any grid from any other by a finite sequence of such moves? It turned out that I fakesolved and oh my god I was so disgusted, no way this proof could be false and then when I was asked Atul, it turns out that even my answer was wrong and he didn't even read the proof, this made me even more angry and guess what? I was not alone, Krutarth too fakesol

### Mathematics - An Art of Thinking

"Mathematics is not about numbers, equations, computations, or algorithms: it is about understanding." — William Paul Thurston, American mathematician In a previous blog , I spoke a lot about what mathematics isn’t. However, I don’t think I spoke quite enough on what mathematics truly is. Here's how I began that blog. "When we’re young we begin by learning the steps to add – we’re given the rules and we must learn to repeat them – no questions asked. Why does carry forward work the way it does? Well, no questions asked." However, I believe that the essence of truly understanding mathematics lies in the questions you ask – and the first one, the most fundamental one, is also probably one of the hardest questions you would and could find – What really is Mathematics? Something that differentiates explaining what mathematics is from explaining a lot of other concepts is that mathematics was not really ever invented . If a young student angry about excessive math h