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Prep Overview

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21 views2 pages

Prep Overview

Uploaded by

DhananjayareddyThanakanti
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© © All Rights Reserved
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MATHEMATICAL OLYMPIAD FOR GIRLS (MOG)

PREPARATION SHEET

INTRODUCTION

There is no set syllabus for MOG. The questions are designed to be non-standard, requiring
ingenuity in application of mathematical ideas and techniques. On the other hand, the questions
do fall into a few distinct categories and there are some basic techniques which it is useful to know.
The idea of this sheet is to outline these for everyone's benefit, but more importantly to make clear
the philosophy and what is expected in terms of full solutions. The work expected and the way it is
rewarded are fundamentally different from GCSE and A-level. Candidates should NOT be
discouraged if marks are low. It is the experience, the challenge and the opportunity to think
protractedly about a problem which are important.

It should be clearly understood that all solutions require rigorous justification (proof) and not just
conjectures based on pattern-spotting. It is perfectly possible that candidates may get say 1/10 for a
question for which they think they will get full marks! The most likely reason is that they have not
understood that they have to PROVE their assertions - of course proofs can take many different
styles, and as long as an argument is valid and complete it will gain full marks, even if it is
inelegant. A knowledge of proof by induction is highly desirable. It is also important to be
systematic in listing possibilities and to make such systematic enumeration explicit. It is important
to understand the meaning of the phrase "if and only if" and also be familiar with factorial notation
and terms like arithmetic progression, rational numbers, natural numbers and similar descriptions.

Candidates should have the confidence to THINK and try different approaches. There is a
temptation to believe that there is some formula which they should know but don't, which might
lead some to abandon a question without giving themselves a chance. Whilst this may be the case,
it is more likely that if they took time to try things out and get into the problem, they might come up
with a method which might work.

GEOMETRY
For MOG, nothing much is expected beyond the circle theorems done for GCSE including the
Alternate Segment Theorem. It is useful to be able to identify cyclic quadrilaterals and then use
circle properties, even when circles are not mentioned in the question. Many questions, certainly
for EGMO level, will require some construction, so some imagination is needed. Also for EGMO it
may be helpful if candidates know the four main centres of a triangle - the circumcentre,
orthocentre, incentre and centroid and basic results concerning these, and also Heron's formula for
the area of a triangle.

TRIGONOMETRY
Knowledge of the Cosine Rule and the FULL Sine Rule (including 2R) is assumed. Obviously the
more fluent candidates are with double angle formulae etc, the more weapons they have in their
armoury, but questions relying on these would be unusual and probably susceptible to other
methods.
FUNCTIONAL EQUATIONS
Candidates often seem to be fazed by questions, such as Q13 on the preparation sheet. They need to
have some idea of substituting in values or expressions into these fairly abstract equations in order
to find out things about the functions. It is probably simply a question of trying one or two before
sitting the MOG.

ALGEBRA
Understanding of quadratics, the Factor Theorem and its use in factorising say x3  y3 are assumed.
The only inequality (apart from the fact that all squares are non-negative) which is assumed for
MOG is the AM-GM inequality, that for any set of positive numbers the Arithmetic Mean 
Geometric Mean, with equality when all the values are equal. For further Olympiad papers such as
BMO2, a knowledge of the Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality might be useful, which states that for all
real numbers a1, ..., an, b1, ..., bn , (a1b1 + ... + anbn)2  (a12 + ... + an2)(b12 + ... + bn2).

NUMBER THEORY

At MOG level, most questions in this area will involve finding integer solutions to equations (i.e.
Diophantine Equations) for which an understanding of factorisation and the significance of primes
is essential. A common situation is to find integer solutions of, say, xy + x + y = 2004 or similar
which relies on realising that xy + x + y + 1 can be factorised to (x + 1)(y + 1). Some knowledge of
modular arithmetic may be particularly helpful at higher Olympiad level such as BMO2. MOG
could use (implicitly) arithmetic modulo 10, so the idea of extending this is quite important.
Number bases, rules for divisibility and the idea of parity are all helpful.

COMBINATORICS
For MOG a knowledge of Binomial Coefficients should be sufficient. It might be useful to know
the Pigeon-hole Principle (basically that you can't fit pigeons into boxes without some sharing if
there are more pigeons than boxes) particularly for higher level Olympiad. Most questions in this
area will just rely on these few ideas. It is also helpful to have some idea of recurrence relations in
building up a method of counting. Another useful idea is to represent situations using vertices and
edges as in Graph Theory.

HELPFUL TEXTS AND RESOURCES


An extremely helpful book for anyone preparing for MOG is A Mathematical Olympiad Primer by
Dr Geoff Smith (£11). Booklets of BMO1 and their solutions are available for £2.50 per volume
which could also be helpful. Both can be purchased via the UKMT website at www.ukmt.org.uk
Past BMO1 papers (no solutions) can be downloaded from the BMO website at
www.bmoc.maths.org and useful Senior Mentoring sheets can also be downloaded from the
UKMT website.

Web sites
UKMT www.ukmt.org.uk
BMO www.bmoc.maths.org
EGMO www.egmo2012.org.uk

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