Rebirth 07: Start adding points from elementary school students

Chapter 278: There is a privilege of speaking frankly

Judging from the speeches of the four international contestants at the opening ceremony, the OI community should have a very high tolerance for complaints about the questions.

It can even be said that I am quite keen on complaining.

“I wonder if you all feel troubled by the poet’s troubles?” The person setting the question on the stage looked like a replica of the contestants present ten years later.

The whole audience booed.

The teaching assistant seemed to be very pleased. "This question is actually not that difficult, otherwise it wouldn't have been put on the first day."

The booing got louder.

“It’s just going to be hard to get a perfect score.”

Everyone laughed wonderfully.

"It seems like everyone wants to get full marks," the question setter clapped his hands, "Then there is some meaning for me standing here to solve the problem today."

Everyone seems to enjoy this light and subtle taste.

"His explanation is quite similar to yours," Chen Fan whispered to Li Yan, "'It's obviously a motion problem', 'Obviously we need to add greed'...but why doesn't he have such a strong sense of pretentiousness as yours?"

Li Yan also responded in a low voice: "The person who set the question said that he would obviously be beaten. I, the person who did the question, said that it was just pretending to be cool."

"Makes sense."

"I looked at the backend results. This time everyone's performance is better than expected. After all, if we want to optimize to full marks, the workload is indeed large, time-consuming and laborious." The teaching assistant's microphone was close to his chin, and his speech was a little unclear. "Also, I saw that the solutions of several excellent students are relatively similar in maintaining the monotonicity of decisions. In fact, we can discuss different approaches."

Chen Fan looked like his butt couldn't even stick to the chair anymore. He wanted to just lift Li Yan up and yell:

“This person wrote down three solutions during the exam!”

What a pity.

"I saw the list of participants and noticed a very interesting student." The teaching assistant smiled and flipped through the documents on the desk. "Li Yan is from Linjiang Xinbei No. 280 Middle School. She is a first-year junior high school student and scored points in yesterday's exam."

There was an uproar.

What are you guys making such a fuss about...it's obvious that everyone knows it.

"Student Li Yan, would you like to come up to the stage and share your ideas on solving the problem with everyone?"

Chen Fan looked on with satisfaction as Li Yan walked up to the podium under the gaze of the crowd - this act of pretending really made Chen unable to sleep or eat.

It can be said that Chen Fan’s problem of pretending to be cool on behalf of Li Yan has become extremely serious.

"Classmates, this freshman is quite handsome and tall."

Everyone laughed and started clapping wildly.

The atmosphere was still very relaxed at this time.

The atmosphere became serious only after Li Yan explained his other two solutions and four ways to maintain decision monotonicity.

Even the person who often made jokes when setting questions earlier entered into an academic discussion.

Then they heard Li Yan say that he had written a manual calculation of monotonicity maintenance on a draft paper, and then wrote three programs and directly compared the efficiency. In the end, he chose greedy and missed a step because the draft paper was too simple.

“So I only got 80 points.”

The atmosphere in the venue suddenly became solemn.

"There's actually no need to spend time and effort to prove the steps you missed. You can just make a table to determine your train of thought. But you still have to write down the actual expression." The person who set the question became very serious.

"So I need to make a suggestion to the organizing committee," Li Yan said seriously, "You shouldn't be able to open only one programming window! I finished writing an algorithm and had to delete it before writing another one. I had already done all the optimizations when I wrote the greedy algorithm for the first time, but I missed it when I deleted and rewrote it."

Who the hell would write a few solutions when participating in a competition?

As soon as these words were spoken, everyone became inexplicably excited and started making all kinds of noises.

"It's amazing..." The person who set the question began to control the situation. "There is no shortage of geniuses in the national competition, but Li Yan is still an impressive one. Well, this is a really pleasant question-solving. Now it's time for you to fight back against me."

The young questioner smiled and looked at Li Yan next to him, "Let's start with Li Yan. Do you have anything to complain about this question?"

I have never heard of such a request in my life.

"Yes." Li Yan nodded. "I want to complain about this, which can also be said to be the biggest problem for me."

The question setter kept a confident smile. He liked to see these young people struggling with the details of some questions. He could often find a very strong sense of resonance in such struggles. "The question text is too mysterious."

The scattered discussions in the audience came to an abrupt end, and the smile on the face of the person who asked the question froze.

"Xiao Ming is an excellent poet who often writes poems for his own amusement. However, he has always been troubled by one thing, which is the typesetting of the poem."

Everyone actually laughed a few times, and even the person who asked the question looked a little unnatural.

"Look, I just read the beginning of the question, exactly as it was." Li Yan was very relaxed. "Everyone will laugh, and you will feel embarrassed, that's right. During the exam, your mind is full of thoughts about solving the questions, and this kind of useless information can't enter your mind at all. But after solving the questions, it's embarrassing to look back at them."

“The ability to filter out ‘useless information’ is also a necessary skill required by the competition.”

"I support this point." Li Yan nodded. "The ultimate goal of doing exercises is not just to win a medal. The ultimate goal of ability training is application. If you know how to solve a difficult competition problem but have no idea how to meet the needs of a specific project, or if you don't have the initiative in scientific research, then it's not worth it."

Perhaps in other situations, Li Yan's words would be regarded as "low EQ" and "seeking attention", but here, everyone really thought seriously about his remarks.

This is also the reason why he is willing to speak out his "real thoughts".

"You are absolutely right. I didn't expect that students in the first grade would have such cognition." The person who set the question expressed his affirmation.

"So this question seems even more mysterious."

Then he was hit in the face.

“My original intention was to train everyone to refine their needs when facing actual projects.”

"Then it should be more closely connected to reality. The title should quote the background of a poet and then talk about the layout of the poem. Everyone has read poetry and knows the layout of poetry. It is definitely not the same as the title where consecutive short sentences are separated by spaces and placed on the same line, let alone a standard line... This is poetry."

"I know that, but a question is just a question after all..." The person who set the question licked his upper lips, feeling pressured.

"You said earlier that you want to train people to be able to extract requirements. If the question itself is just a shell, then you are only training people to be able to break through the illusion."

Li Yan turned to the contestants present and said, "It's like the math problems we did in elementary school, with the son walking in front and the father chasing behind, or storing water while pumping it out. These types of questions first have content to test the test takers, and then give them a realistic skin. They are not helpful for improving your ability to abstract needs, nor are they useful for improving your ability to solve practical problems."

Unexpectedly, everyone expressed strong resonance.

"For example, I want to integrate a community's takeaway orders and have my own delivery team. There is a takeaway ordering platform with merchants. I need you to write an algorithm to distribute the orders." Li Yan said with full aura, "The specific algorithm requirements for this project need to be found by ourselves."

Li Yan stopped there. He was not going to use the podium as a place to recruit talents, so he suddenly changed the subject:
"I like this question very much. There are many ways to solve it. The basics are easy but it's hard to get full marks. If it weren't for this weird story, I might give it five stars. But considering that I was misled by the 'typesetting' thing for a while, it took me several unnecessary minutes to understand this question, so I can only give you four stars."

Li Yan left the stage amidst the audience's explosive laughter and applause. The person who asked the question did not fall into unspeakable embarrassment, but expressed his high appreciation for Li Yan.

The most he said was "How is it possible that he is only in the first grade of junior high school?", and when Li Yan responded, "It's too late for me to start studying because I didn't skip a grade," he showed a relieved expression.

He is just like Li Yan's impression of OIers: wearing glasses, introverted, focused and pure.

"Good fellow, do you have a purpose for pretending to be awesome?" Chen Fan covered his mouth and exclaimed, "Look for experts who are interested in this project and recruit them to your team. Your calculations are very good... just flick the jade beads lightly, and the sound will shake China!"

"I haven't thought about it that much. Pretending to be cool is all about finding a sense of existence. If you succeed, you will find a sense of existence. If you have a sense of existence among the crowd, you will naturally attract all kinds of like-minded people." Li Yan smiled and said, "You can understand that I am just pretending to be cool, and everything else is just ancillary value."

"Don't you think that's a bit blunt?"

This kind of question certainly won't come from contestants who are in the second stage.

They basically thought that Li Yan’s speech was awesome.

So this is a question from an adult, coming from Dong Chengliang who was walking with Chen Fan and Li Yan on the campus after dinner.

"Teacher Dong, is it a bad thing to be frank?"

"It's good and bad, it depends on the situation."

"There is a situation where the speaker does not need to worry about what others think."

Dong Chengliang raised his eyebrows, "Good for you, Xiao Li."

Li Yan smiled softly, "What do you think I'm fighting for?"

"Young people are full of vigor and vitality." Dong Chengliang sighed.

"A man remains a boy until he dies." Li Yan also sighed.

"I will always love young and beautiful girls exclusively." Chen Fan sighed.