You're All Genius Kids in This Year's Class
A perfect exam paper should include a mix of questions of varying difficulty, from low to high, so as to select talented students without depriving most students of the joy of learning.
To ensure that over 50% of the junior students pass, the proportion of questions of low to medium difficulty will be set at 70%.
The remaining 30% of the highly difficult questions are left to math geniuses; this is standard practice.
Shen Qi is still somewhat soft-hearted; over 70% of the test questions Sun Erxiong gave him were highly difficult.
Shen Qi set ten questions: five fill-in-the-blank questions and five proof questions.
On the last day before New Year's Day, Shen Qi handed the completed exam paper to Sun Erxiong.
After looking at the exam paper, Sun Erxiong jumped up. "Shen Qi, this is just a first-year student's final exam, not a selection of Outstanding Youth!"
"Professor Sun, do you mean the questions I set were too difficult?" Shen Qi asked tentatively.
"Shen Qi, you're only suited for research, not for mentoring newcomers," Sun Erxiong said, hitting the nail on the head. "A newcomer following you will go crazy in less than two months."
Shen Qi looked quite innocent. "This... I've already lowered the overall difficulty of this Advanced Algebra exam to the normal level. Actually, this is the second edition; the first edition was at the nightmare level, which I felt was inappropriate, so I adjusted it to the normal level."
"This is your logic!" Sun Erxiong rolled his eyes at Shen Qi. "Take the last question you gave us, for example: the Grassmann inner product of three-dimensional hypercomplex numbers, the Hamilton quaternions product of two vectors, and finding the determinant expression. Quaternions and vectors aren't difficult, but the breakthrough point you set was the Laplace operator... I didn't even get to that point!"
"Professor Sun, your teaching pace is too slow. I remember you already covered that when we were freshmen."
"Your class is full of child prodigies... Alright, Genius Shen, you can leave now. This is none of your business. In the end, I'll still have to step in and correct the exams," Sun Erxiong said.
"Completely change it?" Shen Qi was somewhat frustrated; all his hard work over the past few days had been for nothing.
"No need to change everything, keep half of the questions you set. At least the second to last one, the proof question, your approach was very clever. You made good use of the Jacobi theorem. It takes a few twists and turns to complete the proof, but it's not beyond the scope of the curriculum. It's a brain-teasing question, but it's just the right amount of brain-teasing." Sun Erxiong expressed his satisfaction and appreciation for the few questions Shen Qi set.
Good news followed one after another after New Year's Day.
Shen Qi finally got full marks this semester, scoring 100 in both of his physics major courses, "Mathematical Physics Methods" and "Fundamentals of Cosmic Physics".
Shen Qi has already earned half of the credits for his second major in physics, and his average score has returned to around 99.
The paper, "A Class of Bounded Analytic Strong Singular Integral Operator Along Homogeneous Curves," took more than half a year to complete and was finally published in the English edition of the Journal of Mathematics, Series B.
Shen Qi felt happy as he affectionately stroked the sample copy. This was his seventh paper published since he started university, and his second SCI paper.
"New achievement! Congratulations, host, for publishing an SCI mathematics paper. The basic reward is 15,000 Academic Points, multiplied by the main mathematical talent coefficient of 2.0, resulting in a final reward of 30,000 Academic Points. Please confirm."
"The host has published seven papers in less than two academic years since entering university, activating a new achievement task, 'Diligent Paper Writing Award.' If the host publishes ten papers in two academic years, a special task reward will be granted."
The rewards for the "Diligent Paper Writing Award" achievement task are as follows: 1. A base reward of 100,000 Academic Excellence Points, which will be issued in a lump sum on the day the task is completed. If all 10 papers are mathematical papers, you can enjoy a 2.0x main talent bonus;
2. Starting immediately upon completion of the task, the new indicator of diligent paper writing will be activated. If the host publishes no fewer than 5 papers every two years, each paper will have its base reward value for academic excellence points multiplied by its impact factor (for mathematics papers, an additional 2.0 times the main talent bonus will be applied), and the resulting value will be the final reward value. If the impact factor of the journal in which the paper is published is less than 1, it will be calculated as 1.
In three semesters, less than two years, Shen Qi produced seven papers. He was indeed very diligent. Most students don't even manage to produce seven papers by the time they graduate with a master's degree.
The system has issued a new task: if Shen Qi can collect ten papers by September of this year, he will receive a special reward.
Great minds think alike. Shen Qi and the system were of the same mind. His previous goal for himself was to publish 10 papers before going abroad.
The rewards for special missions are very attractive; the first reward is a one-time grant of 100,000 academic points.
For Shen Qi, it's actually 200,000 academic points. He definitely needs to collect ten math papers and make good use of the rules.
The second reward is an even bigger benefit: although most mathematics journals have an impact factor (IF) of less than 1, there are always a few top-tier mathematics journals with an IF of over 1.
By publishing papers to earn academic points, Shen Qi was actually given a new integration coefficient by the system, namely IF.
After special processing by the system, this coefficient is ≥1.
This made Shen Qi very excited, so much so that he couldn't sleep.
Admittedly, even the world's most prestigious mathematics journal, Ann Math, has an impact factor that doesn't exceed 5, hovering between 3 and 4.
On the contrary, comprehensive journals that serve general readers easily have impact factors exceeding 5, or even 10.
The impact factor (IF) of journals such as Nature and Science has consistently exceeded 30, with an average of around 40, and occasionally surpasses 50.
Let's take the average. If you publish a paper in Nature or Science, the base reward is 15,000 academic points, multiplied by an IF of 40... That's pretty exciting!
However, Nature and Science magazines almost never accept mathematics papers, so Shen Qi was glad that he chose physics as his second major.
Of course, this is for the future, a long-term plan.
The most urgent task is to complete the special achievement mission and gather ten papers as soon as possible.
Fortunately, Shen Qi was prepared; he only needed to publish two more new papers. The SOS project paper was basically slated to be the eighth one.
On January 5th, Shen Qi was assigned by Sun Erxiong to be an invigilator, responsible for maintaining exam discipline in one exam room.
This exam room is for first-year Mathematics Department students. Today's final exam is for Advanced Algebra.
The first-year Mathematics Department has two classes, with a total number of students twice that of the second-year Mathematics Department.
As the total number of people increases, the number of girls also increases.
There are five girls in the first-year Mathematics Department, that's great!
Shen Qi wandered around the examination hall, observing the actions of his direct junior brothers and sisters.
Shen Qi had only just seen the final version of the Advanced Algebra exam paper.
This exam paper has ten questions, five of which were set by Shen Qi, and the other five were changed by Sun Erxiong, making them significantly easier.
Shen Qi quietly walked up behind a girl and secretly observed her.
This first-year female student Mathematics Department has a hairstyle very similar to Ou Ye's: long, straight, black hair with a relatively smooth texture.
However, the math skills of the second black-haired girl were far inferior to those of the first black-haired girl; Ou Ye, who was in the same class, could easily outperform the second black-haired girl.
"Can't even do this simplest fill-in-the-blank question?" Shen Qi was getting anxious; this girl's mind wasn't on math. If it were Ou Ye in her freshman year taking the exam, the Calculation Ji could have gotten the correct answer just by mentally calculating.