Vcsms Prime: Best Practice
Vcsms Prime: Best Practice
Best practice
1. Reread the question.
2. Work cleanly.
3. Be aware of your time.
4. Check your work.
5. Learn how to guess.
• Once you have an answer, reread the question, even if you understand it completely. Is your answer in
the proper format? Is it in the correct units? Does it match up with the choices, if there are any?
2 Work cleanly
How to write
• The next most common error of mistakes is misreading your handwriting. If you thought misreading
the question was bad enough, misreading your handwriting is even worse. (“I thought I wrote a 2
instead of a 5, wait, where was my work for problem 9, is this a sine or a cosine?”)
• Write neatly. This is the correct solution to half of your problems in handwriting. It doesn’t have to be
very pretty, it just needs to be legible enough for you to understand what you wrote.
• The reason for legible handwriting is simple enough: you need to understand your own handwriting.
When checking your work, you will refer to what you wrote earlier. When choosing the answer, you will
refer to your solution. Thus legible handwriting is needed.
• Make sure your handwriting is unambiguous. For example, you can write the lowercase L as ` instead
of l, which is easier to understand if you’re writing quickly. Adding the serifs in the digit 1 also helps.
Finally, make sure your x and y look different enough to be differentiable when written quickly.
2 compiled by Carl Joshua Quines
Organize
• The correct solution to the other half of your handwriting problems is organizing your scratch work.
Yes, your scratch work should be organized as well.
• Draw boxes on your paper alloted to each problem. Problem 1 for the first box, problem 2 for the
second, and so on. Or at the very least, indicate with an encircled number which problem is which, and
try to keep your scratch work legible. This will help a lot when you’re checking your answers later.
• Do not, do not try to cram all of your scratch work in a few pages of paper. You can always ask for
more scratch paper, so if your paper is too crowded, don’t add even more writing.
3 Be aware of time
Time management
• The principle of time management is trade-off. How much time should you spend solving and how
much time should you spend checking your work? Should you use your time to solve this problem or
that problem? It is important to make decisions like this quickly and accurately.
• Make sure you always have a rough idea of how much time is left. Wear a watch, and take note of what
time the exam starts and ends. Usually the proctor will write overhead the time left, but it’s always
nicer to have a reference of how much time is left exactly.
Meta-checking
• If you finish the exam early, check your answers.
• If you have a few minutes left and the next problems are too difficult for you, check your answers.
• If you have a few minutes left, and you are a super-accurate person who never make mistakes, it is
better to continue solving than to waste time checking your answers.
• If you rarely catch your own mistakes when checking your answers, it doesn’t make sense to check.
• If the contest does not penalize wrong answers, it is best to guess strategically.
• Remember that correcting an error takes less time than solving a new question. Double-checking your
work is usually a more efficient use of your time than proceeding to the next question. Besides, problems
that were solved are easier than problems yet to be solved, so finding a mistake is faster than solving a
new problem.
• Try to balance your time. If you are very error-prone, it is better to include more checking time at
the end of the exam than to continue solving. On the other hand, if you are accurate, it is better to
continue answering, or increase your speed.
3 compiled by Carl Joshua Quines
Checking methods
• Plugging in the answer is the clearest, simplest method. Use this method whenever possible. In problems
such as finding the value of x, sometimes plugging in is needed to determine if there are extraneous
solutions.
• Plug in an intermediate result. Sometimes the answer asks for something that you can’t plug in – for
example, looking for (2x + 1)2 when you solve for x in an equation. In this case, you can’t plug in the
answer, but you can plug in x.
• Use a different method. For example, complementary counting. If we want to count how many two-digit
positive integers that have at least one 7 as a digit, we can either do it directly (one digit containing
7, both digits containing 7. . . ) or we can do it indirectly (number of two-digit numbers minus the
two-digit numbers without 7).
• Use an example. Consider this problem: two non-zero real numbers, a and b, satisfy ab = a − b. Find
a possible value of a/b + b/a − ab. If you solved this problem using algebra, it may help to use an
example, such as a = 1, b = 1/2.
Meta-guessing
• Consider the following choices:
(A) (−2, 1) (B) (−1, 2) (C) (2, −1) (D) (1, −2) (E) (4, 4)
The pair (4, 4) is a clear outlier. Outliers are most likely not correct choices. If (4, 4) were the correct
answer, then instead of solving the problem, we can merely use intermediate arguments. For example,
if you can argue that both numbers must be positive, or that both numbers must be even, you can
get the correct answer without solving the problem – that would be poor problem design. Thus (4, 4)
should be eliminated during guessing.
4 compiled by Carl Joshua Quines
Educated guessing
• The most common method in solving without actually solving is by example. Consider this problem:
the difference between the squares of two odd numbers is always divisible by:
(A) 3 (B) 5 (C) 6 (D) 7 (E) 8
Choose 1 and 3 as our odd numbers, we see the difference of the squares is 8, thus the answer must be
the last choice.
• Sometimes the choices help in solving the problem. Consider this: two non-zero real numbers, a and b,
satisfy ab = a − b. Find a possible value of a/b + b/a − ab.
1 1 1
(A) −2 (B) − (C) (D) (E) 2
2 3 2
Seeing the choices, we see that the answer is a number. We plug in a = 1 to see that b = 1/2 so the
answer is 2. We are sure this is the only answer because only one answer can be correct.
• Here’s another problem: let a, b, c be real numbers such that a − 7b + 8c = 4 and 8a + 4b − c = 7. Find
a2 − b2 + c2 .
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 4 (D) 7 (E) 8
Again, seeing the choices, the answer is a number. Thus we can simply let c be anything, for example,
we can let c = 0 to reduce it to a linear equation, and then we can compute the answer.
• Instead of solving the problem, sometimes we can plug in the solutions one-by-one and see which one
works. Consider this problem: in triangle ABC, BD is the angle bisector of ∠ABC, and AB = BD.
Moreover, E is a point on AB such that AE = AD. If ∠ACB = 36◦ , find ∠BDE.
(A) 24◦ (B) 18◦ (C) 15◦ (D) 12◦
The easiest method is to simply plug in each of the answers as ∠BDE and see which one does not
result in a contradiction, which gives us the answer.
Choice elimination
• Parity is one way to eliminate wrong answers. Consider the difference between the sum of the first 2003
even counting numbers and the sum of the first 2003 odd counting numbers.
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 2003 (E) 4006
Without computation we see the answer must be odd. Thus we can exclude three of the choices already.
Parity is also an easy way to check your answers, as outlined below.
5 compiled by Carl Joshua Quines
• Partial knowledge is helpful in solving. Consider solving for the number of non-negative integral
solutions to a + b + c = 6.
(A) 22 (B) 25 (C) 27 (D) 28 (E) 29
Even if you do not remember the exact formula, you may remember that the answer is a binomial
coefficient that involves the number 6. The only choice that appears in the first 10 rows of Pascal’s
triangle is 28.
• Estimation is an important tool. Sometimes we do not need an exact answer to eliminate a wide range
of choices. Consider this: let n be a 5-digit number, and let q and r be the quotient and remainder,
respectively, when n is divided by 100. For how many values of n is q + r divisible by 11?
(A) 8180 (B) 8181 (C) 8182 (D) 9000 (E) 9090
By the meta-guessing rule of removing outliers, we want to remove the last two choices: they are the
only two that at least 9000. We confirm this with a quick estimation: there are 90000 5-digit numbers
and about 90000/11 = 8182 of them are divisible by 11, so we estimate near the first three choices.
• Sometimes you can eliminate all the choices as to produce the correct answer, without solving the
problem. Consider solving for the non-zero value of x that satisfies (7x)14 = (14x)7 .
1 2
(A) (B) (C) 1 (D) 7 (E) 14
7 7
This can be solved very quickly: 1/7 does not work because the left-hand side will become 1 while the
right-hand side will not, 1 and 7 cannot work because left-hand side will be odd and the right-hand side
will be even, and finally 14 will make the right side too big. Thus the answer is 2/7, no solving needed.
• A final example: suppose we want to know the product of all odd positive integers less than 10000.
10000! 10000! 9999! 10000! 5000!
(A) 2
(B) 5000 (C) 5000 (D) 5000 (E) 5000
5000! 2 2 2 5000! 2
By the outlier-removal rule, we would remove the middle choices and the last choice, as we suspect that
the numerator should be 10000!. We confirm this: take a prime number and see what power it belongs
to the answer. Let’s see we have a prime number p that is slightly below 5000. Then p should appear
in the answer exactly once (2p would be even, 3p would be too big).
Now we look at the choices. Prime p appears in 5000! once as the factor p, and it appears in 10000!
twice as p and 2p. It appears in choice (A) zero times, in choice (B) and (C) twice, so the answers are
either (D) or (E). But we can eliminate choice (E) as it does not contain any odd primes between 5000
and 10000, thus the answer is (D), confirming our meta-guess.
Quick reminders
• The PMO Qualifying Round is tomorrow, October 22. Please come on time. Latecomers will be left
behind, for real. Okay, probably not. But don’t be late anyway.
• Don’t forget to bring a pen and a pencil. Last year’s test required a pencil, best to be safe. And please
make our school look decent, and remember to bring sharpeners and erasers, rulers and compasses, or
whatever paraphernalia you need – it’s degrading to borrow from one’s seatmate.
• Eat well and gets lots of sleep. Don’t get sick (which is what happened to me the first time I joined the
PMO). Worry about schoolwork after the PMO – after all, it’s the sembreak.
Much credits to Tanya Khovanova, of whom much of the material is borrowed from.