HowtoApproachan

OlympiadProblem
(byHoJunWei)
PostedonMarch23,2012bykhorshijie

14Votes

The following article was written by Ho Jun Wei who was an IMO medalist in 2006. He
has trained several members in the Singapore IMO team in the past and was my MO
trainerwhenIwasSec4.HeiscurrentlystudyingMathematicsinCambridgeUniversity.
ThefollowingpostpresentshisinsightsinsolvinganMOproblem.

In this post I shall provide several tips on how to tackle a long Olympiad problem,
particularlythoseinSMO(senior/open)Round2.WhileIdrawmyexamplesmainlyfrom
problems in number theory, the strategies I mention are very general and apply to most
Olympiadproblems.Theopinionsexpressedinthispostareentirelymine,andIacceptthat
everyonehasadifferentwayofapproachingproblems.HereIllsharesomegoodproblem
solving habits Ive picked up over the years, and feel free to share yours too. In trying to
keepthisarticlegeneralandapplicabletomosttypesofproblems,Iverefrainedfromgoing
into very specific methods for particular topics like combi or NT. I may talk about more
specifictechniquesinaseparatepostlater.

First, lets get this clear: there is no substitute for practice. There is no shortcut to
becomereallygoodatsolvingmathOlympiadproblems.Ioncecoachedastudentwholater
achieved a remarkable 2nd place (internationally) and Gold medal at a recent IMO. You
mayknowwhoImreferringto.Whatshissecret?Hespendsanaverageofseveralhoursa
day(oftenupto4or5hours)solvingOlympiadproblems.Overtime,thesehoursputinto
solving problems will help you amass a huge vocabulary of Olympiad tricks, techniques,
theorems and lemmas, and hone your problem solving intuition. Doing math Olympiad is
very much like playing soccer. While a soccer match only lasts for 90 minutes, it is what
happensbeforethematchthattrulydecidesthegamethehoursputintotrainingdailyto
gain incredible agility, stamina, and an impeccable technique. Of course, the strategies

adopted during the 90minute match are also important, but never as crucial as the
trainingandpreparationthatcomesbeforeit.Evenifyouhaveverygoodmatchstrategies,
youwontbeabletoexecutethemproperlyifyoudonthavetherequiredleveloffitnessor
skill.Fitnessandskillcomeswithpractice,andpracticemakesperfect.

AgoodOlympiadproblemisonethatusesveryelementarytechniquesinverycleverways.It
shouldnotrequiretheuseofanyveryadvancedmaththeorems,beyondtheusualhandful
(e.g. Fermats Little Theorem, Cevas and Menalaus, AMGM, etc.). There was an earlier
post by Shi Jie that touches on these (refer to the links above), which I feel is a fairly
comprehensive list (and you should make sure you already know most of these by heart).
These theorems may prove very handy in some problems, but in fact many problems in
SMO dont even require the use of any of these theorems they simply require keen
observation or the clever applications of simple techniques like factorization, pigeonhole
principle, or similar triangles. These simple techniques go a very long way. So my
advice is to invest your time in mastering the basics and how to spot clever ways of using
them, rather than learn fanciful stuff like quadratic reciprocity, group theory, Ramsey
theory, solving geometry problems by inversion/complex numbers or proving inequalities
usingLagrangemultipliers,justtonameafew.PracticallyallSMOproblemscanbesolved
using elementary methods and, occasionally, one or two basic theorems. The only non
standard method that I think may be useful is coordinate geometry, or vector geometry
(dont worry if you dont know these) but even these are not necessary because any
problemthatcanbesolvedinthiswaycanbesolvedusingelementarymethodsaswell.

In the course of coaching Math Olympiad, I find that many students commonly get stuck
onaproblemeitherbecausetheydontknowhowtogetstarted,ortheyverunoutofthings
totryaftersometime.Thewellpreparedproblemsolverwouldnotfacesuchsituations:If
you know your usual theorems, and know your basic tools and techniques, you should
never really run out of things to try. You would first try to change or simplify the
problem if possible, try small cases, then pick an approach, try to prove it and maybe fail,
pick another approach or maybe try to prove a stronger result that you conjectured, find
out that your conjecture was false, move on to another approach, etc. If you have tried
enoughOlympiadproblems,youshouldbefamiliarwithcommontricksandtechniquesfor
particular topics, and you will be able to use these as a starting point for approaching
problems.

Prematchpreparation:Theorems,Lemmas,Techniques

1. Youshouldalreadyknowalltheusualtheoremsbyheart,andifpossible,

understandtheideasbehindtheirproofsaswell.Thesetheoremsformpartofthe
backboneofyourthinkingprocess.Theyareacrucialpartofyourtoolbox.
2. Buildupyourarsenaloflemmas.Thesearesimpleresultsthatarenotformal
theorems,butcanbeveryhelpfulintacklingmorecomplexproblems.Forinstance,
didyouknowthatthecentroid ,circumcentre andorthocenter
arecollinear,with

?Orthat

if and only if the prime is of the form

ofatriangle

hasanintegersolution
? A sizeable collection of lemmas

can only be built up by doing more problems. The more lemmas you know, the
moretoolsyouhaveatyourdisposal,theeasierstandardproblemswillbecome.
The IMO team that I had the privilege of coaching had their personal self
compiled handbook of geometry lemmas and 100 standard inequalities which
they knew by heart, and that proved very useful because some hard problems
becamealmosttrivialonceyouknewoneortwooftheselemmasbeforehand.
3. Knowyourtechniques!!!Thesearegeneralmethodsorapproachestosolvinga
particular type of problem. For instance, when faced with a polynomial problem,
wecanconsiderapolynomialintermsofitsroots,intermsofitscoefficients,orin
terms of a quotient and remainder using the remainderfactor theorem. These
multiple perspectives give us many things to try! For inequalities some common
techniques are smoothing, expandthenAMGM or substitution. In geometry, a
commontechniqueistodrawoneormorehelpinglines(cleverlychosen).Another
usual approach is to show that certain points are concyclic / collinear, and there
areotherlessstandardmethodslikecoordinategeometry.Incombinatorics,things
like pigeonhole principle, invariance principle, extremal principle, double
counting, finding recursions or bijections are very useful. In number theory,
techniques like modular arithmetic, bounding, factorization are widely used. For
problems of the form show that (something) is true for all integers , a viable
technique may be induction. This is the most important point, because many
students run out of things to try too quickly. With a large bag of techniques
available, you will always have many approaches to pry a problem from different
angles.ThiscanonlybeattainedbysolvingmoreOlympiadproblemsandlearning
newtechniques.Iwilltalkaboutgeneraltechniquesforcombinatorialproblemsin
anotherpost.

ToillustratewhatImeanbythewellpreparedproblemsolverneverrunsoutofthingsto
try,letuslookatanSMO(senior)2004problem:Findallintegerpairs

thatsatisfy

. It is a good habit to first find easy solutions like

. The fact

that a solution exists already eliminates some possible approaches (like using modular
arithmetictoprovethenosolutionsexist).Itiseasytoseethatweonlyneedtoconsiderthe
casewhen
RHS > 0 so

arenonnegative,since

isasolutioniff

. It is also natural to first factorise the LHS as

isasolutionandclearly
. At the

start it is intuitive to try approaches like taking mod 16, or bringing the 1 to the LHS and
factorising it as a difference of two squares to see if you can deduce anything (usually it
givessomeconditionsonparity).Alternatively,youmaytrytoconsidercaseswhen or is
evenorodd.Somestudentsmayrunoutofthingstotryatthispoint.However,ifwehad
doneenoughofsuchproblems,wellhavemanyotherthingstotry.Forinstancewecantry
particularcasesbyputting

or

resultorinsight.Indeedwewillfindthat

, to see if these particular cases give any

givessolutions.Anotherfairlystandard

approach is to find some bounds on the solutions (e.g. show that or or

cannotbetoolarge).Inthiscase,justbylookingattheequationwecantellthatif
becomestoolarge,thenLHS>RHSsonosolutionscanexist.Forinstance,if
then

, so by comparing with RHS we find that

whichreducesittojustafewcasestocheck.Infactitturnsoutthatweneed

therebyreducingtheproblemtoafewcasesthatareeasytosolvebyhand(Exercise:Verify
thattheonlysolutionsare

).

If trying to bound the solutions didnt work, some other possible ways we could have
messedaroundwiththisproblemare:takemod ,weget
trysubstituting

somaybewecan

andrewritetheexpressionasaquarticpolynomialinyandtry

to factorise. Or we could conjecture that there are infinitely many solutions arising from a
clever construction (e.g. like

for all integers

) which we

wouldtrytoguessandderive.Theseapproachesmaynotleadtoanythinguseful,andour
conjectures might be wrong, but at least we never run out of things to try. Given more
experience, it is easier to tell what approaches may work, which ones will lead to a dead
end, and what conjectures are more likely to be true, thereby making our problem solving
processmoreefficient.Thepointisthatwedontrunoutofapproachestotry.

Duringthematch:Howtobeeffectiveatyourgame

1. Wheneverpossible,alwaystrysmallcases (or extreme cases) first to make sure

you understand the problem and see how it works, possibly obtaining trivial
solutions (Note: In a geometry problem, trying small cases means drawing the
diagramindifferentwaysorconsideringdegeneratecases,ininequalitiesitmeans
tryingtospottheequalitycaseortestingextremevalues).Ifyourelucky,bytrying
small cases you may be able to spot a pattern or gain some insight as to why the
problemworksinacertainway,whichcouldleadyoutothesolution.Orperhaps
you could make a smart conjecture by observing small cases (as in the above NT
problem, one might try out particular values e.g.
trying

mayhelpyourealizethat

gives solutions, and

cannotbetoolarge).

2. Restatetheproblemindifferentways.Ageometryproblemthatasksyouto

showthat

is perpendicular to

that

may be a disguise for asking you to show

(check that the two conditions are indeed

equivalent, this is a lemma!). This restates a problem of angles to one of length,

which may be useful if the conditions in the problem give you information about
length. An inequality problem may sometimes be transformed by means of a
suitable substitution. In other words, try to write equivalent formulations of the
sameproblem,therebychangingtheoriginalproblemtosomethingthatspossibly
easiertoprove.(takecaretomakesurethatthenewproblemisindeedequivalent
to,andnotstrongerthan,theoriginal!)
3. Wishfulthinking.Thisisaveryusefulstrategytokeepinmind.Bycareful
observationorbytryingsmallcasesyoumayconjecturethatcertainthingsmaybe
true,uponwhichtheproblemwouldbealoteasier.Forinstance,onemaywishif
onlythecircumcentreliesonthislineorifonlythisnumberisalwaysaperfect
squareoronemayconjecture,aftertryingsmallcases,thataparticularfunction
is surjective/monotonic. Another example: If youre given a combi problem that
asks for what values of n does (a certain property) hold? You might try small
cases then guess that it works only when n is a triangular number or power of 2,
for instance. Now try to prove that wish/conjecture, because it might just be true
andmakeyourlifemuchsimpler.
4. Prove something stronger than the original problem. This is rare and difficult to
spot, but sometimes can be the only way to solve a problem. For instance, ShiJie
has shown in a previous post how some inequalities can be proven by proving a
strongerinequality.Therearesomeinductiveproofsthatworkonlyifyouprovea
strongerstatement(becauseitalsostrengthensyourinductionhypothesis).
5. Dont be too fixated on any particular approach too early in the game.
Whenfirstexploringaproblem,keepanopenmind,thinkofdifferentapproaches
totheproblem,andseewhatinformationeachofthemwillgiveyou.Donotspend
too much time on any single approach or conjecture, especially if youre not sure
itstherightone.Forinstance,ifyoumakeaconjectureandtrytoproveitbutkeep
failing,itmaynotevenbetruetrytodisproveitinstead.Havingsaidthat,dontbe
aschizophrenicandkeepjumpingfromoneapproachtoanotheryouriskgiving
up the right idea too quickly. How long you should spend on one particular
approach is a very subjective matter, and in fact it is a judgment skill that comes
withexperiencei.e.morepractice!
6. Always try easy/obvious approaches first before moving on to more adventurous
things.
7. Lookattheconditionsorconstraintsgiven.Ifyouhaventusedaparticular
condition yet, ask yourself why it may be helpful. If an inequality has constraints
like

,itisusefulforhomogenizingorsubstitution.Ifithasaconstraintlike
,thismaybeacluethatyoushouldusesometrigonometricstubstitution.If

a combi problem has conditions like every two students did 5 questions in
common, then clearly you have to consider some suitable quantity where this
constraint would give you some kind of equality/inequality. If youre given a
number theory problem like find all integer solutions

to

, then

takingmod4ormod3shouldbeuseful.

Finally,letslookatarecentSMO(Open)2010problem:Let
sequences of integers defined by

beatwo

and for
.Provethat

, we have

isthedifferenceoftwocubes.

How do we start to prove something like that? Clearly we dont need stuff like Fermats
Little Theorem or the Chinese Remainder Theorem here. The experienced problem solver
willimmediatelyseetwoviablestrategiesforthisproblem:inductionon (westillneedto
figureoutwhatthehypothesisshouldbe),orbyclevermanipulation/guessworktoguessa
closedformfortherecursivesequence.Inanycase,themostobviousthingtodofirstisto
look at small cases: It is easy to work out that
. We also find easily that
point,basedonthe

and
and

. At this

casesthesharpproblemsolvermightalreadyhaveasuspicion

andmakeaconjecture,whichonecanconfirmusingthe
work out the cubes for

case. If not, we can try to

. It is less obvious what consecutive cubes this will give,

because the numbers get big and unmanageable very quickly for large . But by letting
and some simple calculations we obtain
which we easily solve to get

. Look at the value for

fishy? It becomes very natural to wish that

again smell something

, which is true and very

easy to show by induction. Moral of the story? Try small cases to see how the problem
works! This is what I mean when I say that many SMO problems dont require any
theoremsatall,butsimplyrequireastuteobservationskillsandfamiliaritywithelementary
techniquesandapproachesforsuchproblems.

If youve read the entire post till here, thanks for taking the time. I hope I managed to at
least shed some light on how to approach an Olympiad problem. Id like to reemphasize
thattheonlywaytoimproveistodomoreproblems(itsgoodtolookatsolutionsandlearn
fromthemwhenyourecompletelystuck,orevenwhenyoumanagedtosolvetheproblem).
For starters, if you dont know the usual handful of theorems, go learn them first. Then
keepbuildingupyourbankoftricks,techniquesandlemmas(forinstancebyreadingthis
blog often and trying more problems), and youll find that in time to come, you wont run
outofideasandapproachessoeasilywhenfacedwiththesepeskylongproblems.