Scioly.org

How much do you guys study for this event? It seems like you can't really study anything -- just practice

rkoopma2 wrote:How much do you guys study for this event? It seems like you can't really study anything -- just practice

I personally do not study much, but I suppose the two main ways (other than practicing problems) would be to either memorize specific commonly used numbers or to read books and/or websites that contain numerical trivia.

Other than doing practice question and gathering basic knowledge that might be helpful, does anyone else have a way to study for this? I'm afraid that I'll get bored of just doing practice problems rather quickly.

slytherin-at-heart wrote:Other than doing practice question and gathering basic knowledge that might be helpful, does anyone else have a way to study for this? I'm afraid that I'll get bored of just doing practice problems rather quickly.

I don't know about others, but I'm really good at retaining numbers. So personally I just read random fact books, webpages, etc.

I got 4th at the Athens - 42 questions, finished in 33 minutes. No unusual questions, some funky math ones (23! * 34! * 41!, I think) and a few general randomness ones. Great job to Solon, I heard you guys got 32 5's or something :O

I haven't faced any factorials in any of the tournaments I've been to. They must not be that popular in the Kansas region... But just in case, how would one ideally (quickly, fairly accurately) find a factorial during a Fermi Test? Or do you just have to memorize general ones?

Ohai wrote:I haven't faced any factorials in any of the tournaments I've been to. They must not be that popular in the Kansas region... But just in case, how would one ideally (quickly, fairly accurately) find a factorial during a Fermi Test? Or do you just have to memorize general ones?

I have been wondering about this as well. I had one question at an invitational that had three factorials multiplied by each other (something like 23!*34!*45!).

49ers wrote:I have been wondering about this as well. I had one question at an invitational that had three factorials multiplied by each other (something like 23!*34!*45!).

quizbowl wrote:I got 4th at the Athens - 42 questions, finished in 33 minutes. No unusual questions, some funky math ones (23! * 34! * 41!, I think) and a few general randomness ones. Great job to Solon, I heard you guys got 32 5's or something :O

I'd probably round the numbers in the factorial to get 23! as 1*1*1*1*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*20*20*20*20*20*20*20*20*20, and then combine that to get (10^10)*(10^9)*(2^9). Since 2^9 is 512, that would be a factor of 19+3=22. However, I don't really do Fermi, so I don't know if you can round like that.

EASTstroudsburg13

That's actually just what I was thinking of, rounding the factors to their nearest tens. If I ever face one, I'll probably skip it and go back to it on the test. But, like I said before, I've never seen one and didn't even know they were on any Fermi tests until just a while ago.

EASTstroudsburg13 wrote:

49ers wrote:I have been wondering about this as well. I had one question at an invitational that had three factorials multiplied by each other (something like 23!*34!*45!).

quizbowl wrote:I got 4th at the Athens - 42 questions, finished in 33 minutes. No unusual questions, some funky math ones (23! * 34! * 41!, I think) and a few general randomness ones. Great job to Solon, I heard you guys got 32 5's or something :O

I'd probably round the numbers in the factorial to get 23! as 1*1*1*1*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*20*20*20*20*20*20*20*20*20, and then combine that to get (10^10)*(10^9)*(2^9). Since 2^9 is 512, that would be a factor of 19+3=22. However, I don't really do Fermi, so I don't know if you can round like that.

Sorry, I messed up the quote on my last post.