Slice of life of the OTIS GM

Power Overwhelming 2023-09-07

Here’s a snapshot of what running OTIS looks like these days. Starts from last Sunday afternoon until Monday lunch. Timestamps indicate when the action was completed (rather than started).

Sunday 13:04: Process a late financial aid request from someone who forgot to request it earlier.
Sunday 13:14: Edit OTIS website to clarify that if you haven’t had your registration approved within 48 hours, then you should email Evan to ask.
Sunday 13:15: Process a student who wants to drop the fall semester and come back to re-join in the spring.
Sunday 13:55: Answer a question from a student on Discord on applying AM-GM on the inequality that I was trying to do in my head when I failed my driving test 11 years ago.
Sunday 14:04: Fix a reported typo in the problem statement of China TST 2015/2/3 in the OTIS materials.
Sunday 14:10: Follow up on questions related to the driving test inequality.
Sunday 14:14: Student reports that the solution to problem 3 in the BFW functional equations unit is incorrect. Fix the solution.
Sunday 14:25: Fix a bug on OTIS website that would double-count units towards your level if you submitted the same unit in different years.
Sunday 14:35: Write unit tests for problem set grading script, because apparently I somehow managed to never do that.
Sunday 14:48: Merge pull requests to clean up the level system and to remove an unused view.
Eat lunch. Yes, at 3pm.
Watch a few episodes from A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Work on stuff unrelated to OTIS. Sleep a bit.
Sunday 21:03: Answer an email about the rational root theorem based solutions to Shortlist 2012 A4.
Sunday 21:09: Answer an email from a student about motivating the construction in BAMO 2020/4.
Sunday 21:13: Write hints for the problem ARML 2023 T-6 on the OTIS website, since a student emailed asking for hints and none were written yet. Notice a typo in the ARML 2023 T-6 solution and fix it.
Sunday 21:18: Rewrite hints for IMO 2004/4 since the ones currently on the OTIS website don’t make sense.
Sunday 21:18: Process a unit petition from a student who wants to work on the Homography unit.
Sunday 21:19: Process an OTIS registration from a new incoming student.
Sunday 21:20: Read a submission for Int Poly and mark it as completed.
Sunday 21:27: Read a submission for Entry Combo and mark it as completed. Include a short comment about JMO 2021/4 in the feedback.
Sunday 21:27: Read a submission for AIME Geo and mark it as completed.
Sunday 21:30: Read a submission for Expon NT and mark it as completed. Include a short comment that checking ${2^{16}+1}$ is prime only requires you to try two different prime numbers, ${97}$ and ${193}$ , because any prime divisor has to be ${1 \pmod{32}}$ .
Sunday 21:32: Read a submission for Harmonic and mark it as completed.
Sunday 21:34: Read a submission for Rigid and mark it as completed.
Sunday 21:36: Read a submission for Entry Combo and mark it as completed.
Get ready for bed.
Sunday 22:05: Respond to a student who can’t figure out how to log in to the OTIS website because they never set a password.
Go to sleep.
Wake up and sit down at computer.
Monday 07:03: Read an email from a student asking about Singapore 2022/5. Read through the problem statements and posts on AoPS, and think for a bit.
Monday 07:39: Decide that the Singapore problem is actually pretty good. Write up solution completely and add it into the Global unit.
Monday 07:46: Read a submission for Config Geo and mark it as completed.
Monday 07:50: Read a submission for Induction and Recursion II. Student notes that there is a better solution to USAMO 2013/2 than the one I have in the OTIS lecture notes. Read through the solution posted on AoPS. The solution has a neat symmetry idea that I’d missed, but the handling of the edge cases looks slightly off.
Monday 08:35: Rewrite the OTIS solution to incorporate the symmetry idea, cutting the length of the OTIS solution significantly. Post briefly on AoPS pointing out the fix for posterity.
Monday 08:36: Process unit petitions from students; one student wants to switch difficulties of Russian Combo, one student is switching from the Formulas unit to AIME Geo, one student is requesting the Global and Local unit, one student is requesting the recently created Integration Bee unit.
Monday 08:37: Read a submission for Equality and mark it as completed. Include a short note that the student’s solution to the Taiwan problem (one of Evan’s favorite problems of all time, by the way) is backwards.
Monday 08:47: Read a submission for Inversion and Spiral and mark it as completed. Student has included a question about motivating the construction of the points ${X}$ and ${Y}$ in the solution to Russia 2014. Edit the OTIS solution to make it more clear by defining ${X}$ and ${Y}$ as the arc midpoints directly rather than as the intersection of lines with circles. Then decide that the dotted circles in the solution are too hard to see, so edit the diagram too to make the circles solid unsaturated colors, and move some point labels around. Increase diagram size from 9cm to 12cm.
Monday 08:49: Read a submission for Gen Func and mark it as completed. Include a counterexample to the student’s proposed construction for Putnam 2003 A6. Notice that the Putnam URL is missing from the database, and add it in.
Monday 08:52: Read a submission for Entry Combo and mark it as completed.
Monday 08:55: Read a submission for Invert and mark it as completed.
Monday 08:58: Read a submission for Expon NT and mark it as completed.
Monday 09:00: Read another submission for Expon NT and mark it as completed.
Monday 09:02: Read a submission to Anti Problems and mark it as completed.
Monday 09:04: Read a submission to Func Eqn and mark it as completed.
Monday 09:05: Read another submission for Entry Combo and mark it as completed.
Monday 09:15: Read follow-up email about Shortlist 2012 A4. Realize that the reply I gave last night was incorrect.
Monday 09:30: Reply to student about 2012 A4 indicating that I don’t know the answer to their question, but will ask around. Post on AoPS and OTIS Discord asking if anyone understands how rational root theorem was used for the 2012 A4 solution.
Monday 09:34: Answer an email from a prospective student complaining about being unable to afford coaching, indicating that OTIS is need-blind and the student is welcome to apply to my program.
Monday 09:44: A different student replies on the OTIS Discord indicating they also don’t see how rational root theorem was used for 2012 A4, but suggesting how Vieta can be used to patch. Report back the Vieta patch to the original email question.
Finally get out of chair to eat breakfast.
Do some unrelated work for OTIS.
Monday 11:43: answer another email from another prospective student asking if OTIS is a good fit and if there is financial aid.
Monday 12:15: answer a question from a student who is unsure whether they paid for OTIS or not, because they just left the page that said “please check back later” open overnight expecting something to happen.
Monday 12:21: update the payment success page to redirect to the invoice page after 10 seconds so that the above issue never happens again.
Monday 12:25: email a potential instructor for OTIS.
Monday 12:30: answer a question about multiplicatively of the Jacobi symbol from a student.
Monday 12:38: answer a question about the walkthrough to ELMO 2013/1 from a student.
Monday 12:42: respond to a suggestion about writing a unit on conic geometry.
Monday 13:00: respond to yet another student who can’t figure out how to log in to the OTIS website because they never set a password.
Nap for a bit.
Monday 14:08: respond to a follow-up question about ELMO 2013/1.
Monday 14:23: update the login view with instructions indicating that if you never set a password, you should log in with whichever social connection you used to register, because, well, there’s no password.
Monday 14:35: finish rewriting the solution to ELMO 2013/1, because the one in the database was terrible.
Head out for lunch.