Math wizards ready for the big one

MUMBAI, June 2: The Spice Girls, Tom Cruise, Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit and the likes don't really interest them. But mention Leonhard Eu...

MUMBAI, June 2: The Spice Girls, Tom Cruise, Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit and the likes don8217;t really interest them. But mention Leonhard Euler, Karl Friedrich Gauss, Pierre Simon de Fermat, Bernhard Riemann, David Hilbert or any mathematician of repute and these lads may skip a beat in excitement.

This year8217;s six mathematics wizards, who will be representing India at the International Mathematical Olympiad IMO to be held at Mardel Plata, Argentina, on June 24 and June 25, may look like boys-next-door, but they have all undergone some really tough training for a month in the city to crack any mathematical problem or puzzle of IMO calibre.

The squad was announced at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education on Monday. Chetan Balwe and Satyen Kale of Pune, Nilesh Dalvi of Rourkela, Abhinav Kumar of Jamshedpur, Rishi Raj from Ranchi and Sumit Sanghai from Mumbai will represent the country at this year8217;s IMO.

Girls may outperform boys in board examinations but they are scathing about why there was not a single girl among the 42 who cleared the Regional Mathematical Olympiad RMO.

8220;Girls are dumb creatures who are only good at mugging, which is why they are not seen here,8221; declares Kale. According to the boys, solving problems at the IMO or IIT-JEE requires genuine intelligence and deep physical insight. Girls, they say, can only face question papers that are routine or less strenuous on the brain.

It is a fact that questions at the RMO and the IMO 8212; often compared to Cambridge University8217;s Wrangler examination 8212; are invented by mathematical experts every year and are never repeated. In both, marks are not given for the final answer but for beautifully structuring the solution Dirac8217;s famous remark, 8220;Physical equations should have mathematical beauty8221;, would apply perfectly here.

Surprisingly 8212; or, given our society, not so surprisingly 8212; these would-be-Ramanujans aren8217;t too keen on making a career out of mathematics because it does not pay. 8220;You can8217;t do it. Employment prospects are very dim here,8221; they say in unison.

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All of them have already fallen in love with computers, which should be more rewarding than ending up as a math teacher or scholar. But given the chance, some of them would pursue mathematics at Princeton, Harvard, Cambridge or Oxford but not in India, which they feel has a very poor standard in math education and research.

Asked if an MBA attracted them, Rishi Raj sneered, 8220;It may be a hot craze for crazy people but not for us.8221; Any butterflies in the stomach with the big event coming up? Rishi shoots back, 8220;You can say we have butterflies in our brains rather than in our tummies!8221;

What about Deep Blue8217;s win over Gary Kasparov? 8220;It was not a victory for the machine. Man is superior when it comes to problem-solving,8221; they say.