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Maths Society Know It Alls

Sam

Posted: Submitted by Sam on 8 February 2010 - 10:28pm.

Joined: 2007-10-03
Posts: 562

For those of you that know the BBC2 show, we hosted a mathematics Know-It-Alls contest tonight.

Here are the scores:

$\begin{array}{lcccc} &\text{Round 1}& \text{Round 2}& \text{Round 3}& \text{Total} \\ \text{Andrew}& 3& 1:00 (1)& 2 & 6 \\ \text{Callan}& 3& 1:00 (2)& 2 & 7 \\ \text{Chris B}& 1& \text{Retired} & \text{Retired}& 1 \\ \text{Cosmin}& 11& 0:10 (5)& 1 & 17 \\ \text{Orry}& 0& \text{Retired} & \text{Retired}& 0 \\ \text{Rob}& 3& 1:00 (0)& 1 & 4 \\ \text{Sam}& 7& 0:15 (3)& 1 & 11 \\ \end{array}$

And here's how it went:

In round 1, each participant had to share all his knowledge on a particular subject. All important facts get a point, but there are also 5 key points; extra points for getting 3 or all 5 key points. Here are the topics that came up:
Andrew got Homological Algebra
Callan got Differential Topology
Chris got Lie Groups
Cosmin got Algebraic Geometry
Orry got Commutative Algebra
Rob got Galois Theory
Sam got Analytic Number Theory

In round 2, everyone gets a topic and he has to come up with one of three designated key points in the smallest time possible. Tiebreakers happened, involving coming up with a true nugget of knowledge in a given area. Topics were:
Andrew - Group Theory
Callan - Knot Theory
Cosmin - Category Theory
Rob - Graph Theory
Sam - Representation Theory

The tiebreaker was on the topic of topology.

In round 3, each person needs to give as many examples as possible in a given area. Topics were:
Andrew - Nonabelian groups
Callan - Cohomology theories
Cosmin - Mathematicians in Differential Geometry after Riemann
Rob - Graphs
Sam - Mathematicians with Erdös number 1

Cosmin definitely lamed it all the way, props to him!

Sam

Posted: 11 February 2010 - 10:23pm

Joined: 2007-10-03
Posts: 562

Second edition of Know It Alls.

$\begin{array}{lcccc} &\text{Round 1}& \text{Round 2}& \text{Round 3}& \text{Total} \\ \text{Andrew}& 3& 1:00 (1)& 3 & 7 \\ \text{Callan}& 3& 1:00 (0)& 3 & 6 \\ \text{Chris S}& 2& 0:40 (3)& 1 & 6 \\ \text{Cosmin}& 6& 0:05 (5)& 2 & 13 \\ \text{Owen}& 4& \text{Retired} & \text{Retired}& 4 \\ \text{Sam}& 8& 1:00 (2)& 3 & 13 \\ \end{array}$

Note that Andrew's score in the first round is definitely 3 and not 4; sorry if you have heard otherwise.

The tiebreaker for round 2 was to give a nugget of knowledge about number theory (Callan stated the Stark-Heegner Theorem with a mistake, Andrew went for the fact that the product of all different valuations of a rational number is 1, and I went for the Prime Number Theorem), and at the end it was something in group theory. My Feit-Thompson Theorem beat Cosmin's Nielsen-Schreier Theorem!

The topics were as follows:
Round 1:
Andrew: Ring Theory
Callan: Enumerative Combinatorics
Chris: Algebraic Number Theory
Cosmin: Dynamical Systems
Owen: Group Theory
Sam: Fourier Analysis

Round 2:
Andrew: Metric Spaces
Callan: Functional Analysis
Chris: Riemann Surfaces
Cosmin: Geometric Group Theory
Sam: Descriptive Set Theory

Tiebreaker: Number Theory

Round 3:
Andrew: Probability distributions
Callan: Characteristic classes
Chris: Theorems on fiber bundles
Cosmin: Algebraic surfaces
Sam: Chaotic Maps