1 in 3000 Feature

1 in 3000: Derek Liu

Jacob Zhang

Into the mind of mathematician Derek Liu, an International Math Olympiad Gold Medalist

Pencil in hand, Derek Liu (12) wanders through a foggy forest, searching for his solution. A set of alluring trail heads is all that is visible.

“You never know which one to take,” Liu, an International Math Olympiad Gold Medalist, said. “You can’t see far in front of you, so the only way to tell is by going down one and seeing where it leads.

From a young age, Liu has had a curiosity about numbers and patterns. Standing in the toy aisle at Costco as a child, he remembers being more drawn to the price tags than the toys themselves. And, at the checkout counter, he recalls his furious attempts to beat the cash register at calculating the total price on the receipt (he was successful a few times).

Now, as one of the top high school mathematicians in the U.S, the problems he works on are far more complicated than simple addition, but his strategy when solving one remains the same.

“It is taking well-known concepts and creating something new out of them,” Liu said. “Even if you have all the knowledge, it is not at all clear how to proceed. ”

However, getting to the solution involves more than just aimless wandering.

“It is about having the intuition of what you think has a good chance of working, and that intuition comes from having seen a similar type of problem before,” he said. “Math, at its core, is about looking for patterns.”

For example, take a seemingly complex chessboard problem: given a bunch of dominoes that each cover two adjacent squares on a chessboard, is it possible to completely cover a chessboard that has two opposite corner squares cut off using exactly 31 dominoes?

“Of course, the messy way is to try every possibility. That is going to take forever,” Liu said. “But, there is also a very elegant solution, using the coloring [of the chessboard].”

A standard chessboard has 64 squares with 32 of each color. Taking away two opposite corner squares leaves the board with 32 squares of one color and 30 of the other.

“However, a domino is forced to cover one black and one white, which means that 31 dominoes have to cover 31 blacks and 31 whites,” Liu said.

Therefore, it is impossible to cover a chess board that is missing two corner squares with 31 dominoes, he eagerly deduced. It is this outside-of-the-box thinking that has made Liu so successful over the years – it is how he navigates through the forest.

This past summer, he traveled to Oslo, Norway, representing the U.S. in the International Math Olympiad, where the U.S. team placed third out of over a hundred countries. Individually, he placed 12th among nearly 600 total participants, earning him a gold medal. But, despite being a talented mathematician for most of his life, his recent success has still come as a surprise.

“A year ago, I could never see myself where I am now,” Liu said.

His upwards journey has been filled with regular self-doubt.

“When I was in ninth grade, I was like, ‘oh yeah, I’m very good at math,’” he said. “And then I went to this camp called the Mathematical Olympiad Program.”

It was at this program, which accepted only the top 60-or-so math students in the nation, where Liu realized that his “view of math was quite limited.”

But more importantly, it was where he learned to accept his imperfections.

“It is not about being the best,” Liu said. “It is about learning from the best and improving.”

He credits much of his current success to his teachers, mentors and friends, even those who aren’t in the math community.

“I owe my thanks to not just math teachers, but all the teachers I’ve had,” Liu said. “All of them have been supportive of my journey.”

Eventually, Liu dreams of becoming a professor to both teach and explore the heights of higher math

“Hopefully, I leave my mark on mathematical history,” he said.

His goals are high, but so is his ambition. For the past seven months, Liu has begun working on a research question about the “tilings of polyhedra in three or more dimensions” with a mentor at MIT.

Yes, it is as complicated as it sounds, he said.

There is no doubt that Liu’s future will be one of numbers and variables, problems and solutions. He will reach dead ends and have to trace back his footsteps through the fog to start all over again.

Yet, it is this unknown that drives his mathematical interest forward. In Liu’s forest, the fog never lifts.

And that is how he likes it.

Read on Issuu.
In, , , , , ,

49 thoughts on “1 in 3000: Derek Liu”

  4. It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button! I’d without a doubt donate to this fantastic blog!

    I suppose for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed
    to my Google account. I look forward to brand new
    updates and will talk about this website with my Facebook group.
    Talk soon!

  5. You actually make it appear so easy together with your presentation but I in finding
    this matter to be actually one thing which I think I would
    by no means understand. It kind of feels too complicated and very wide for me.
    I’m having a look ahead in your subsequent publish, I’ll try to get the hold of it!

    I saw similar here: Najlepszy sklep

  6. I have learn several just right stuff here. Certainly value bookmarking
    for revisiting. I wonder how a lot attempt you put
    to make this type of wonderful informative site. I
    saw similar here: Dobry sklep

  7. Hello there! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying to get my
    blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very
    good success. If you know of any please share.
    Thanks! You can read similar art here: E-commerce

  11. Hey! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with SEO?

    I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good success.

    If you know of any please share. Kudos! You can read similar blog here: Sklep online

  12. Hey! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with SEO?
    I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good success.
    If you know of any please share. Thank you!
    You can read similar article here: Dobry sklep

  14. Hello! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with
    SEO? I’m trying to get my site to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good gains.
    If you know of any please share. Thank you! You can read similar text here:
    Hitman.agency

  17. Wow, superb blog format! How long have you been running a blog for?
    you made blogging look easy. The full glance of your site is magnificent,
    let alone the content! You can see similar here e-commerce

  20. I do love the manner in which you have framed this problem and it really does supply me personally some fodder for consideration. Nonetheless, coming from what precisely I have witnessed, I simply trust as other remarks stack on that people remain on issue and don’t start on a soap box involving the news of the day. All the same, thank you for this excellent piece and while I do not really agree with this in totality, I value the standpoint.

  21. Informative Site… Hello guys here are some links that contains information that you may find useful yourselves. It’s Worth Checking out 급전

  30. Hey I know this is off topic but I was wondering if you knew of any widgets I could add
    facebook vs eharmony to find love online my blog that automatically
    tweet my newest twitter updates. I’ve been looking for a plug-in like this for quite some time
    and was hoping maybe you would have some experience with
    something like this. Please let me know if you run into anything.
    I truly enjoy reading your blog and I look forward to your new updates.

  39. Aut prodesse volunt aut delactare poetae — Поэты желают быть или полезными, или приятными.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous post The Monarch Effect
Next post Nice to meet you

More Stories