Adjustment Training

Breaking-In Training

After downloading the materials, Teacher Liu dismissed everyone and said that if their review wasn't too busy, they could take a look at these materials when they went back today.

Tomorrow, they would gather in the school computer lab and start their first breaking-in training.

After Teacher Liu dismissed the class, Lu Zhou shouldered his computer bag and went to the library to continue his frantic writing.

As for those materials on the USB drive, he hadn't even had time to glance at them.

After all, for him, compared to the school's tasks, the system's tasks had a higher priority.

Aside from writing papers, Lu Zhou also occasionally carved out time to teach Chen Yushan a few advanced mathematics problems.

To be honest, this guy's mathematical foundation was worse than average, and she had completely returned a lot of things to her teachers. He also didn't know how she had managed to score an 85 (by her own account) in advanced mathematics during her freshman year.

"Don't you guys in the Business School study math?" Completely defeated by a function limit problem, Lu Zhou rolled his eyes and quickly wrote out the solution on a scratchpad, mercilessly complaining out loud, "The teacher definitely went over this exact problem as an example in class."

Chen Yushan blushed, unconvinced, and stubbornly argued back, "I study economics and management, not accounting. There are so many things to memorize, how would I have time to study math?"

"I remember the Economics and Management Department also has to study accounting and statistics..."

"Shut up, lunch is on me."

Lu Zhou decisively shut up, thinking to himself that she shouldn't be polite, she should just ask if she had any questions and definitely not hold them in.

It would be best if she treated him to dinner as well...

When other people treated him to meals, Lu Zhou would feel somewhat indebted. Even if his own financial condition was average, he would find an opportunity to treat them back.

But if Chen Yushan wanted to treat him to a meal...

He freeloaded off her meals without the slightest bit of politeness.

Why should he return a meal that he freeloaded through sheer skill?

He had helped her go through advanced mathematics concepts from start to finish without even charging her tutoring fees, so freeloading a meal or two wasn't going too far, right?

After the library closed, Lu Zhou returned to the dorm and busied himself for a while longer, finally finishing the first mathematics paper.

The value coefficient of this paper should be the highest among the ten papers, and the system rated it at 30 points of experience. Considering that some of the conclusions in this paper were supplementary explanations to his previous paper, Lu Zhou prepared to try submitting it to the journal Communications in Mathematics and Applications again.

As for the remaining nine computer science papers, his target for submission was Modern Communications and Geographic Information Technology.

As a non-core journal, this domestic journal rarely needed to charge review fees and page fees, didn't care much about whether contributors had grant support, and even offered a manuscript fee of 150 yuan. Compared to those succubus bitches who only stared at the pockets of scientific researchers, this journal was simply a breath of fresh air in the world of "ordinary journals"!

Nine papers could net him 1,350 yuan!

After uploading the mathematics paper, it was already two in the morning.

Seeing that the time was not early, Lu Zhou closed his laptop, yawned as he lay on the bed, and listened to the rising and falling snores of his roommates as he slowly drifted off to sleep.

The next day, Lu Zhou learned his lesson and didn't arrive too early. He timed it right, stepping into the computer lab right on Teacher Liu's heels. As a result, after entering the lab, he discovered that he wasn't even the last one to arrive. When he and the teacher walked in, only Wang Xiaodong was sitting in the lab.

"Morning."

Lu Zhou smiled and greeted him as usual, expecting this arrogant top student to ignore him, but unexpectedly, he let out a muffled response.

"Morning."

Although it was only a single word, it could still be considered a breakthrough of no small scale.

Lu Zhou felt a comforting sense of emotion in his heart.

To be honest, as for the strength of his own team, he wasn't worried at all; the only thing he worried about was the compatibility issue among the team members. He believed that he wasn't the only one agonizing over this problem—Teacher Liu must be agonizing over it as well.

If he could act as a lubricant within the team, taking along student Lin—that pitfall of a teammate—didn't seem like such a bad thing after all?

Probably.

Just as he was letting his mind wander, student Lin finally arrived fashionably late. Fortunately this time, she was only fifteen minutes late, not too long.

Professor Liu Xiangping didn't lecture her as usual, just gave a faint smile, motioned for her to find a seat, and then began today's class.

According to the training schedule, today was breaking-in training, meant to cultivate tacit cooperation among team members.

In order not to waste too much time, the problems weren't set to be very difficult; they were the kind that could be solved on the spot.

Teacher Liu provided a string of fictional China Telecom user data and set up more than 20 items, requiring them to use mathematical modeling to classify users by consumption habits and design products targeting different user groups.

Because the data were all fictional, the appendix of the problem didn't give the data source, providing only a single Excel spreadsheet.

The knowledge required for this leaned more toward statistics than calculation, and even touched quite a bit upon economics and product management. Compared to yesterday's appetizer, the difficulty of this problem had undoubtedly increased significantly.

It wasn't that pure mathematical formulas were completely useless for such practical application problems; rather, the difficulty of these kinds of problems didn't lie in the mathematics itself, but in how to translate such problems into mathematical problems.

Fortunately, the problem itself wasn't very complicated, at most involving a bit too broad a range of knowledge. Lu Zhou conceptualized for about half an hour, first using statistical knowledge to classify the user groups, and finally applying matrix algorithms to solve the two problems in the prompt.

Holding a few sheets of scratch paper, Lu Zhou walked over to Wang Xiaodong's side and placed the paper on his computer desk. "Modeling is done, I've already emailed you the file. The rest of the process was calculated by hand and written on the paper. I'll leave the task of organizing the formulas and inputting them into the computer to you, is that okay?"

Wang Xiaodong nodded, concise and to the point: "No problem."

A top student truly lived up to the name; with two top students joining forces, the efficiency was naturally extraordinary.

Lu Zhou quickly completed the mathematical modeling work, and Wang Xiaodong quickly finished programming using the lab computer, taking less than two hours back and forth. Work that was originally expected to take a whole day was completed in just this little amount of time.

After inspecting Lu Zhou's and Wang Xiaodong's results respectively, Professor Liu couldn't stop exclaiming in praise. He had led five sessions of the Mathematical Modeling Competition, and these two were the most talented students he had ever seen.

Lu Zhou smiled and gladly accepted the teacher's praise. As for Wang Xiaodong, he remained expressionless as usual, though one could tell from the corners of his mouth curving upward that he was still quite pleased in his heart.

The initial breaking-in training went smoothly.

However, the only problem came from Lin Yuxiang...

Although this guy had written quite a few Student Union work reports, she had never written a paper before. She even had to Baidu the formatting requirements of a paper right there on the spot, sitting blankly for nearly half an hour without making any progress.

Wang Xiaodong wore an awkward expression. After all, he had patted his chest and guaranteed to the department leadership that Lin Yuxiang could competently handle this task, yet before the competition had even arrived, she dropped the ball during the first round of breaking-in training.

Though Lu Zhou wore a faint smile on his face, a string of profanities was running through his heart.

You say, since you're someone who does student work, just properly do your student work. In the future, join the Party when you're supposed to, take the civil service exam when you're supposed to, with a brightly blossoming future ahead of you—why on earth do you have to come crowd our space and meddle in this?

To take a step back, even if you want to slack off, you should at least slack off properly. At the very least, take some time to Baidu how to write a paper and what to say during the defense when the time comes, right? What use is there in only knowing how to act pitiful and play cute when push comes to shove? Can it be eaten as a meal?

It really pisses me off!

Teacher Liu wasn't angry, however. He just smiled and comforted Lin Yuxiang, who kept apologizing, and then had Wang Xiaodong guide her in paper writing before calling Lu Zhou out to the hallway.

Lighting a cigarette and glancing at the two students in the computer lab, Teacher Liu smiled and said, "Well, have you thought about that suggestion I mentioned to you yesterday?"