You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein: Adventures and Misadventures of Young Mathematicians - Hardcover

M Shifman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 981256358X ISBN 13: 9789812563583

Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company, 2005

Synopsis

This groundbreaking work features two essays written by the renowned mathematician Ilan Vardi. The first essay presents a thorough analysis of contrived problems suggested to undesirable applicants to the Department of Mathematics of Moscow University. His second essay gives an in-depth discussion of solutions to the Year 2000 International Mathematical Olympiad, with emphasis on the comparison of the olympiad problems to those given at the Moscow University entrance examinations.

The second part of the book provides a historical background of a unique phenomenon in mathematics, which flourished in the 1970s-80s in the USSR. Specially designed math problems were used not to test students' ingenuity and creativity but, rather, as killer problems, to deny access to higher education to undesirable applicants. The focus of this part is the 1980 essay, Intellectual Genocide, written by B Kanevsky and V Senderov. It is being published for the first time. Also featured is a little-known page of the Soviet history, a rare example of the oppressed organizing to defend their dignity. This is the story of the so-called Jewish People's University, the inception of which is associated with Kanevsky, Senderov and Bella Subbotovskaya.

About this title

Review

This book is an interesting examination of an unfortunate period in the Soviet Union. It also contains many interesting mathematical problems requiring not much advanced mathematics. It is ironic that the Soviet anti-Semites' distinction of who was Jewish was the same as that of the Nazis: one Jewish grandparent. --Mathematical Association of America

Edition details

• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 981256358X
• ISBN 13: 9789812563583
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: M. Shifman