"Cultivation of curiosity in high school" is a sentence that Mr. Yau Shing-tung mentioned repeatedly at the 2023 Yau Science Award Finals Award Ceremony, and the winning work of the 2023 Yau Science Award in Mathematics is the best embodiment of this statement.

The Yau Science Award "made its fortune" from the Mathematics Award. The 2023 Mathematics Gold Medal project continued the glory of 2022 and once again won the Science Gold Medal. The project level and personal achievements deserve recognition.

Embark is an educational institution focused on improving the background of young people. It provides special Yau Science Award training courses to help students achieve excellent results in competitions, thereby adding luster to their applications to top universities in the United States. Recently, we invited Mr. S, Academic Director of Embark Science and Engineering, to bring you a Yau Science Award Training Webinar for the Yau Science Award. During this period, Mr. S reviewed the results of the 2023 Yau Science Award Mathematics Finals and shared his unique views on this track. And the interpretation and analysis of the winning works provide valuable reference for students preparing for the Yau Science Award in 2024. Let us review this wonderful lecture together.

What is the Yau Science Award?

S.-T. Yau High School Science Award is a scientific innovation award for middle school students initiated by mathematics master Mr. Shing-tung Yau in 2008. It is a scientific competition based on "scientific research academic papers" and "professional academic defenses". It advocates innovative thinking and teamwork, and abandons test papers. and standard answers, and participate in the competition by submitting an essay.

S.-T. Yau High School Science Award has developed from a single mathematics award fifteen years ago to today's mathematics award, physics award, chemistry award, biology award, computer award and economic and financial modeling award, and has been selected into the white list of the Ministry of Education competitions in the 2022-2025 school year. , has a high influence at home and abroad.

Three competition areas of the Yau Science Award

• Mainland China Division

Students from major middle schools in mainland China (high school students only), each subject will be judged in southern and northern areas. The mathematics award also has an eastern division.

• Asia Division

In addition to mainland China, middle school students from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and other Asian countries

• North America

In addition to Asian countries, middle school students from other overseas countries

If you are lucky enough to enter the finals of the Yau Award and win the award, you will have the opportunity to receive a letter of recommendation written by Mr. Yau Shing Tong himself. Even if you don't win an award, this complete scientific research experience and thesis results can become an indispensable finishing touch in your application.

Why participate in the Yau Science Award?

Have international influence

Up to now, the Yau Science Award has been successfully held for fifteen times, with more than 2,000 middle schools and more than 12,000 teams participating, covering more than 30 domestic provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and many overseas countries such as the United States and Singapore, with a total of more than 461 student teams. Nearly 850 people have received awards, and more than 450 well-known professors and scientists from around the world serve as judges or consultants for the awards.

Successfully assisted application

More than 1/2 of the award-winning middle school students have been recommended to study at well-known Chinese and foreign universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Harvard, MIT, Yale and Princeton. Embark has customized the Yau Science Award training program for students to help them stand out in the competition. Many of them still persist in academic research after entering their ideal universities.

Yau Science Award Mathematics Evaluation Criteria

As the quality of mathematics entries continues to improve, the track is becoming more and more "volumey" and the subject review is becoming more stringent. Teacher S summarized the evaluation elements of mathematics track in recent years into the following five points:

Summary of judging criteria:

1.Relevance to mathematical disciplines (pure and applied mathematics, statistics and probability)

2. Originality of research ideas (selection of research topics) and/or research concepts (selection of research methods)

3. Creativity in problem solving and methodology

4. Rigor in mathematical derivation

5. Potential value for future mathematics development

A good beginning is half the battle, and a topic suitable for the Yau Science Award will make the contestants even more powerful. For students, in addition to paying attention to their own topic selection, they also need to pay special attention to research methods, and the results must be able to maximize theoretical and methodological innovation. Embark provides students with comprehensive guidance and support through its specially designed Yau Science Award Training Guide to help them stand out in the competition.

Interpretation of Yau Science Award-winning Mathematics Works

Among the 2023 mathematics award-winning works, most of the projects use modeling methods. Similar to computer science, many projects that are close to life are very popular.

The winning works of the 2023 Mathematics Gold Medal and Science Gold Medal

Students came up with short and quick DIT or dDIT solutions that solved the problem almost immediately, and the paper compiles more important such examples, each of which demonstrates the wider application of this powerful theorem. Additionally, the project discovered that DIT and dDIT can be used to prove many other theorems in geometry and to further extend their proofs.

One thing that stands out about the project is that all the solutions proposed in the article manage to completely avoid the use of conics, proving the fact that the concept of conics, usually associated with the study and application of DIT, is simply not necessary. Finally, the project makes an interesting application type of this theorem: the imaginary realities, which is a beautiful concept and extension of Desargues' involution theorem.

We can see the student's ability in solving problems and proving other theorems of Desargues' involution theorem and its duality, as well as his in-depth exploration of various extensions of the original theorem. Combining her speech at the award ceremony, we can see that she has reverence, enthusiasm, and curiosity for mathematics. This heartfelt love will allow her to go further on the academic path of mathematics.

Award-winning innovative math projects

Many topics in mathematics in previous years were pure numbers. This topic uses mathematical modeling. However, this model was not built by the students themselves, but used a mature medium-sized enterprise model to establish a system of differential equations, using weighted homogeneous polynomials and characteristic curves to obtain two types of invariant algebraic surfaces.

The author of this project is a diver himself. He uses swimming take-off as a research point and tries to establish parabolic and differential equation models to find an optimal diving angle to achieve a very good water entry state. This project is very consistent with our imagination of modeling. At the same time, this topic is also a mathematical topic that is very related to physics.

How to find a research question of interest?

For middle school students, interest is very important if they want to conduct a complete scientific research. Therefore, how to find a research question that interests them is very critical as the first step for middle school students to start scientific research.

Based on Embark’s many years of experience in providing students with Yau Science Award professional training, the following three questions are very critical for students to start a scientific research experience:

What kind of research do you want to do?

Have you dived into some more advanced or complex math content?

If so, do you have any branches of mathematics that interest you?

If not, what aspects of mathematics are you better at?

After the research content is determined, how to complete the topic?

It is not necessary to fully master all branches of mathematics, just be able to master the subject matter

Explore possible solutions to research problems

Now that you know the problem to research, are you ready?

Evaluate projects objectively based on your own knowledge and abilities

Properly arrange the project cycle and conduct regular reviews

If you want to help your dream school application through scientific research projects, project selection, time management and a good mentality are all key elements. When doing scientific research, remember not to start work left and right, but to emphasize consistency and extensibility. Taking interest as the starting point and the blessing of self-motivation will make scientific research more effective with half the effort! . If you are interested in mathematical research , you can fill out the form on the right for Yau Science Award Training Consultation. Embark will provide students with professional guidance on project selection and management to help you achieve greater success in your scientific research.