Cooperation

"16 minutes and 10 seconds! That's an amazing time!"

Inside the stadium, spectators with even a little knowledge of long-distance running exclaimed in amazement as Shen Qi won the men's 5000-meter race with a time of 16 minutes and 10 seconds.

Most of the referees were physical education teachers. They commented, "16 minutes and 10 seconds—that's the level of a second-level athlete. For an amateur Mathematics Department student to achieve this time? Has Shen Qi gone mad? The king of amateur long-distance running at Yenching University?"

Shen Qi not only had a seizure, but also cramped up. After crossing the finish line, he lay on the track, completely exhausted.

System: "New achievement! Congratulations, host, for winning the school-wide race! Reward: 5000 academic points!"

With the help of Zhou Yu'an and others, Shen Qi returned to his dormitory, completely exhausted.

The school's long-distance running festival is an amateur-level track and field competition, and the system rewards top students with only 5,000 points.

Regardless, Shen Qi has earned back the points he gained from investing in sports upgrades, so this was a worthwhile investment.

Eighteen or nineteen-year-olds are really healthy. After a good night's sleep, Shen Qi was back to normal the next day, full of energy and as strong as ever.

For the next two months, Shen Qi will focus all his energy on his studies.

There are many academic matters to attend to. Four math papers are still unfinished, and he hasn't earned the credits for mathematical analysis and Analytic Geometry. He also needs to catch up on some general education courses... All of this needs to be completed before mid-January so that Shen Qi can go home for the Chinese New Year.

In the first week of November, Shen Qi put aside all his other duties and spent his days going back and forth between the library and his dormitory, focusing on writing his second paper, "A Class of Solutions to Vector Calculus".

Shen Qi felt that this paper lacked any profound mathematical content; it merely provided a calculation method, which might be good for boosting academic credentials, but it was unlikely to resonate with or impress his fellow mathematicians.

Where should one submit these papers that are merely for quantity and to gain attention?

After thinking for a while, Shen Qi made a decision: to submit his work to the "Mathematical Innovation Herald" published by Sun Yat-sen University, which was the same mathematics journal he had submitted his first article to.

Partly due to his advancement to level 7 in mathematics, Shen Qi wrote papers extremely quickly. He completed two mathematics papers within a month, even while juggling departmental duties and sports activities.

According to History of Mathematics, the fastest paper writer in history was Euler, who published 886 papers in his lifetime.

Euler was an Academic God who entered the University of Basel at the age of 13 and began writing papers at that time.

Until his death at the age of 76, Euler averaged 14 papers per year. These are highly professional academic reports, not Xiao Bai articles. Euler's rate of paper publication was truly astonishing.

Euler was exceptionally talented, hardworking, and wrote and updated his work every day. It would be an injustice if such a person didn't become a god. Therefore, Euler became a god among gods, a platinum-level mathematical genius.

According to Shen Qi's incomplete statistics, Euler's peak period of paper production was between the ages of 17 and 27, during which he wrote an average of more than 30 papers per year, or more than two per month.

In the later stages of his career, Euler focused on teaching and organizing his academic system. His writing speed slowed down, but he still maintained an output of 3-5 papers per year.

Everyone needs a goal to strive for, and Shen Qi set his sights on Euler in his youth. "Before I turn 27, I want to complete 300 new papers. If Euler could do it, why can't I?"

"In Euler's time, there were no computers, no internet, and certainly no LaTeX. Writing papers relied entirely on pen and paper. Euler was truly remarkable; with such primitive methods, he managed to write nearly 900 papers in his lifetime. He was a word-writing maniac, also known as the human word-writing machine— Euler."

In mid-to-late November, Shen Qi completed his third paper since starting university, titled "Two Analyses of Linear Combination Algebra".

According to Shen Qi's self-assessment, the level of his third paper is between that of his first and second papers, so it would be best to submit it to a journal that falls between core journals and general journals.

Authors should have a clear idea of which journals to submit their papers to.

If you submit papers on conventional Mathematical Analysis methods and algebraic calculation extensions to Ann-Math, they won't even give you a second glance.

Papers on topics such as "A Proof of the Hodge conjecture" and "A Mathematical Analysis of the P versus NP problem" are unlikely to be understood by ordinary domestic journals. Of course, this is just an analogy; currently, no one can prove the Hodge conjecture or the P versus NP problem.

For his third paper, "Two Types of Analysis in Linear Combination Algebra," Shen Qi submitted the PDF version to Tongji University's "New Journal of Mathematics."

Here's a brief summary of the submission methods for the three papers.

Shen Qi submitted his first paper, "A Solution for Three-Dimensional Hypercomplex Numbers," to the Journal of Mathematical Research at Zhejiang University. This is a national core journal with an impact factor (IF) of 0.302.

For his second paper, "A Class of Solutions to Vector Calculus," Shen Qi submitted it to the "Mathematical Innovation Herald" at Sun Yat-sen University. This is a general journal, not indexed by SCI, and has no impact factor.

For his third paper, "Two Types of Analysis in Linear Combination Algebra," Shen Qi submitted it to Tongji University's "New Journal of Mathematics," a national core journal with an impact factor of 0.219.

There are two papers left to be drafted, namely questions 23 and 26 from the "36-question secret paper".

Shen Qi values Problem 23 the most. In proving this problem, he introduced a new proof method. He decided to stagnate for half a month to a month to complete a paper based on Problem 23 and submit it to a high-impact mathematics journal in China. He will choose one of the four major domestic mathematics journals: Journal of Mathematics Sinica, Annals of Mathematics, Advances in Mathematics, and Mathematical Herald.

The derivation logic of question 26 is not complicated, but the amount of calculation required to convert it into a paper is very large. Shen Qi is about to go into seclusion, and the latest he may emerge is in mid-to-late December. He will be very busy during the end of the year, as final exams for all subjects will be released in a concentrated period.

Shen Qi needs an assistant to help him complete the paper conversion for question 26, and the most suitable candidate is Ou Ye.

Shen Qi sent Ou Ye a WeChat message: "Coffee shop near the school gate, meet up in 10 minutes."

Ou Ye replied, "So?"

Shen Qi: "I need your help with a paper. Do you remember question 26 in the 36-question practice paper on Advanced Algebra? You pointed out my calculation oversight."

Ou Ye: "Okay."

Shen Qi took his laptop and USB drive and went to a coffee shop off campus.

Ou Ye arrived later, and the two joined together.

"Come, sit next to me." Shen Qi patted the booth, his computer sitting on the table in front of him.

Ou Ye sat down and stared at the LaTeX document on Shen Qi's computer screen.

"Did you take your medicine?" Shen Qi asked.

Ou Ye, without looking to the side, said, "I ate it."

Shen Qi then asked, "What would you like to drink?"

Ou Ye took a thermos from her bag. "Warm water."

"Ou Ye, don't try to save me money. How much can a drink cost? You even brought your own water!" Shen Qi waved his hand, summoning the waiter.

"It's reassuring to have it all by itself," Ou Ye said, unscrewing the lid of the thermos and taking a small sip of warm water.

The waiter approached Shen Qi and politely asked, "Sir, what would you like to order? Our signature dish is Caramel Macchiato."

Shen Qi: "I'd like a glass of warm water, please."

The waiter was embarrassed. "One of you brought your own water, and the other ordered water. Sir, this is a coffee shop."

"I don't like coffee, and neither does she. Thank you."

"Even ordering plain water costs extra." The waiter was still polite, but inwardly he thought, "This man and woman are such Quirks, coming to a coffee shop only to drink plain water."

"Okay, the charge is reasonable. We are reasonable college students; we can't possibly drink your water for free." Shen Qi nodded, dismissed the waiter, and pointed to the laptop screen, saying to Ou Ye, "Based on the paper for question 26, I've prepared an outline. Please expand upon this outline with detailed derivations and calculations. The calculations are quite extensive, so I hope you can complete the first draft by December 15th and then submit it for my review. We'll co-author this paper. Any problems?"

Ou Ye fell into deep thought, "I don't fully understand your outline."

"Ou Ye, your logical comprehension needs further improvement. It's been almost three months since the start of the semester, and you haven't made much progress." The outline Shen Qi drafted did indeed have rather disjointed logic, so he immediately revised it, asking as he did so, "Do you understand the Elimination Method? If not, go look it up yourself."

Ou Ye: "I understand."

Shen Qi: "This means that if the Jacobian determinant of ui with respect to xi is zero, then the function is not independent, and vice versa. I won't write out the formula; you can fill it in yourself. If you don't understand, go look it up."

Ou Ye carefully noted it down. "Oh."