Jimu News reporter Zhou Dan
In the past two days, the news that Jiang Ping, a 17-year-old technical secondary school girl, unexpectedly entered the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, continues to dominate the hot searches. While netizens paid attention to Jiang Ping, they also became interested in the competition itself.
What kind of competition is this? How difficult are the questions? What are the highlights this year? Why does it attract so much attention? Jimu News learned about it.
The final will be held on June 22
Jiang Ping (Picture source: Alibaba)
On June 13, the 2024 Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition announced the final list. Jiang Ping, a 17-year-old technical secondary school student from Jiangsu, advanced to the twelfth place . Among the top 20 finalists, except Jiang Ping, the others are from well-known universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Cambridge.
Jimu News reporter learned that the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition (hereinafter referred to as "Asai") is the world's largest online mathematics competition. Since 2018, this year is the sixth time. "Asai" was initiated by the China Association for Science and Technology, Alibaba Charity, and Alibaba DAMO Academy. It is the first of its kind in the field of mathematics. There is no registration threshold and the entire competition is online, creating maximum participation space for mathematics enthusiasts from all over the world.
So far, the oldest contestant is over 80 years old and the youngest is only 8 years old. The preliminary round focuses on enjoying the beauty of mathematics, while the final round emphasizes the cutting-edge of academic research. As of 2024, there will be more than 250,000 contestants.
This year's "Asai" finals will be held from 0:00 to 24:00 on June 22. Contestants can choose any consecutive 8 hours to answer within the cycle.
html On the 115th, a reporter from Jimu News saw on the official website of "Asai" that this year's finals are divided into five tracks, namely: Algebra and Number Theory, Geometry and Topology, Analysis and Equations, Combination and Probability, and Applied and Computational Mathematics. Players need to select a track before entering the answering interface (once the track is determined, it cannot be changed). There are a total of 6 questions in each track, and awards will be based on the scores of the contestants. The winners ofwill eventually share more than 4 million yuan in prize money. Among them, there are 5 gold medals, each with a bonus of 30,000 US dollars; 10 silver medals, each with a bonus of 15,000 US dollars; 20 bronze medals, each with a bonus of 8,000 US dollars. There are also 50 excellence awards, each with a bonus of US$2,000.
People familiar with the matter revealed that in addition to receiving cash prizes, the winners may also get the opportunity to cooperate with Alibaba Damo Academy or other related organizations, as well as participate in subsequent training and exchange activities.
is open to AI for the first time this year.
As technology continues to advance, the players participating in the competition have also changed.
This year, "Asai" is open to large artificial intelligence (AI) models for the first time, inviting AI models to participate in challenging competition problems. AI teams also have the opportunity to compete for prizes of up to US$10,000.
reporters learned from DAMO Academy that the AI Challenge attracted 563 teams from around the world to sign up, mainly from world-renowned universities, institutions and companies, including Peking University, Tsinghua, Oxford, Chinese Academy of Sciences, AWS, ByteDance, etc. Most of them They have a professional background in AI, and some are from mathematics, physics and other majors. Statistics show that among the participating teams, those born after 2000 account for more than 50%. The younger generation is becoming a new force in AI and enthusiastically explores the mathematical upper limit of AI in various forms.
However, although the average score of the participating AI teams has reached the average level of human players, it is still far behind the mathematics masters. AI's highest score was only 34 points and it missed the finals. On June 13, "Asai" announced the final list. 801 people successfully advanced. The AI team failed to reach the final score line and missed the final competition. Why does
have poor AI performance?
reporter learned that the core of the problem is still due to the limited mathematical capabilities of the basic model. Although AI can get basic points through knowledge retrieval and other methods when it comes to solving and proving questions, once it involves subsequent in-depth analysis, AI begins to experience "knowledge illusions." Especially when faced with multiple-choice questions, most AIs appear to be "confused".
According to reports, the results of this AI challenge will be announced in June at the same time as the results of human players. The top three AI players will receive bonuses of US$10,000, US$5,000, and US$2,000 respectively.Yin Wotao, a member of the
"Asai" organizing committee and head of the Decision Intelligence Laboratory of DAMO Academy, said: "Mathematics is the crown of human wisdom, and the AI Challenge is an active attempt that will help us continue to break through the capabilities of AI. The upper limit brings more possibilities."
Previous contestants "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"
reporters found that in the past "Asai", there were many mathematics "masters" participating, such as Peking University's "Wei Shen" Wei Dongyi won. won the first gold award.
Jiang Ping's entry into the finals this year sparked heated discussions. In fact, in last year's "Asai", a courier boy also attracted the attention of netizens. Among the finalists announced for the 2023 Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, only 685 of the more than 50,000 applicants from around the world were shortlisted, accounting for 1.3%. Among them is Sun Jinyuan, a Tianjin express delivery boy with a college degree.
On June 7, 2023, a reporter from Jimu News contacted Sun Jinyuan for an interview. He introduced that he graduated from a vocational college in Tianjin in 2018, studying a major that had nothing to do with mathematics. "But I like mathematics and find solving problems particularly interesting." After graduation, he delivered express delivery during the day and solved mathematics at night. He was once obsessed with Euler's constant and spent two weeks proving 13 formulas related to Euler's constant.
Sun Jinyuan (Jimu News Information Picture)
Euler’s constant, also known as Euler-Maskerone constant, was first defined by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. It has wide applications in natural logarithms, complex numbers, calculus and other fields. Proving Euler's constant is a difficult task because it is an irrational number and there are still many unsolved mysteries about its mathematical properties.
In addition, many students from Wuhan also signed up to participate in the competition, and some of them have achieved good results.
For example, in the 2022 "Asai", among the four Gold Cup winners, Chen Zekun from Peking University and Rao Zhenghao from Brown University were both born in 1996 and are both from Wuhan.
Chen Zekun was admitted to the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University in 2015. His postgraduate studies were recommended to the Beijing International Mathematical Research Center. He once participated in "The Strongest Brain" and was labeled as a "mathematical geek". His research field is number theory. Rao Zhenghao was admitted to the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University in 2015 and admitted to Brown University in 2019 to pursue a PhD in basic mathematics. His main research directions are hyperbolic geometry and hyperbolic three-dimensional manifolds.
Talking about the significance of "Asai", Tian Gang, Chairman of the Chinese Mathematical Society and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "The Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition is the first mathematics competition independently organized by a Chinese enterprise. It is very important to stimulate the public's enthusiasm for mathematics and promote mathematics. Education and the development of Chinese mathematics will play a major role. "
comes with past papers. Everyone is welcome to try it!
Part of the test questions in the 2023 qualifiers
The classic test question in the 2022 qualifiers "Tiger and tiger are powerful"
The classic test question in the 2020 qualifiers "Master Zhang's spinning noodles"
(Source: Jimu News)
