The Secret Box of the Past Mathematics Competition

The Secret Box of the Past  — Mathematics Competition

There are family stories that simply cannot be left sleeping in a drawer.

This one begins in Rouen, passes through Paris, crosses a few wildly ambitious scientific dreams… and ends with sandwiches and French fries.

In between, there are two boys, a mother, a rather anxious father, a great deal of mathematics — and, above all, a few lessons about children, their talents, and the illusions of their parents. ;

I share it with you with great affection, and with a certain indulgence toward the father I once was.

Mathematics Competition
1

When it came to our children's education, my wife and I could say that we had been lucky.

We did not pay particular attention to their homework because, when they came home from school, they almost always told us that they had already done everything in class.

Whenever we occasionally brought up the subject — yes, of course, this was a long time ago — they protested that this was not true, that they had worked, especially, apparently, during their final school years.

Perhaps.

But they had managed all this rather discreetly.

For us, at that time, the main subject was music.

There, on the other hand, we had invested ourselves completely. We had hitched our cart to that work and pulled it along, sometimes literally grinding our teeth.

And our teeth ground particularly hard because of the younger one, who, as you have probably already understood, was a genuine gift from God.

Fortunately, we had the moral support of our friend Valerik, a composer, who absorbed the psychological shocks and served not only as a music teacher but also as a genuine shock absorber in our musical relations with the children.

But I am telling you all this to explain one thing: their academic successes, unlike their music, were not the result of our efforts as parents.

That is why, when our elder son Alexandre won the mathematics Olympiad in 2007, taking first place in our Academy, we were pleasantly surprised — but, on the whole, it was his achievement.

When they climbed their musical Olympus, however, that was entirely our achievement, Mum's and Dad's.

Of course, they participated in the learning process too — after all, they were the ones sitting in front of the keyboards and pressing the keys — but our efforts were incomparably greater than theirs.

But let us return to mathematics.

Alexandre had won the Olympiad, taking first place in our Academy.

Naturally, we had won too, because, by a decision dated May 27, 2007, the regional commission had decided to award him €300, which helped, to some extent, to replenish our family budget.

Well, it was not exactly a fortune.

We had already thought that if he went further, the amount might become considerably more interesting.

But we were somewhat embarrassed to insist on that point, and he, with the innocence of youth, had apparently never thought of asking for more.

Never mind.

As the French say: at least that's something.

We were nevertheless invited to Rouen, where the prize-giving ceremony was to take place on June 20 at 3 p.m., in the grand ceremonial hall of the H;tel de Ville.

The ceremony was organized with great solemnity, and the hall was full, since the ten highest-ranking students were to receive awards.

And as everyone had come with parents and relatives, there were quite a lot of people.

The prize-giving began with tenth place and, amid enthusiastic applause, awards, handshakes and encouragement for the future, slowly but surely moved toward the top positions.

The only monotonous aspect of the whole affair was that, throughout our Academy, the places of honor were occupied almost exclusively by students from the Lyc;e Corneille in Rouen, two students from a lyc;e in Le Havre, and another from ;vreux.

And then came the moment of first place.

Everyone was convinced it would go to someone from Lyc;e Corneille.

But the young girl announcing the results looked carefully at her list, pronounced the name of our little town — apparently unknown to almost everyone, since it was really at the far end of the region, almost on the border with another one — and then announced the name of our lyc;e, equally unknown to the general public.

But this was still only the beginning.

No one could have imagined that, in that ceremonial hall, which had already witnessed so many things, with the equestrian statue of Napoleon presiding outside, something else was about to happen.

When the poor girl, having already astonished the audience with the name of our town and our lyc;e, began to pronounce our family name — or rather, attempted to get through that barbaric combination of letters — she did so in such a state of convulsion that even I, who had heard it often enough for fifty years, did not understand that she was actually saying my own name.

Fortunately, our son's first name was easy to pronounce:

Alexandre.

And the poor girl, with a compassionate smile that seemed intended as much for herself as for the old walls of the hall, watched Alexandre walk forward.

He looked perfectly normal.

But judging by his name, he had probably been adopted by an African tribe that had enjoyed an extraordinary stroke of luck in making such a discovery.

His mother and I smiled modestly, remaining slightly apart so as not to draw attention to the fact that we ourselves were the bearers of this obviously barbaric family name.

After the ceremony, there was a buffet.

And we certainly did not intend to deprive ourselves of it simply because we had failed to send Alexandre to Lyc;e Corneille in Rouen — not to mention the fact that his mother, when she had chosen his father, might perhaps have taken a little more interest in his family name, thus saving us from having to blush in front of an almost Parisian audience one day.

2 — Mathematics

You already know, of course, that two stars shine in our family sky.

With the second one, the younger one, everything suggested that if he ever exploded into a supernova, we were not going to get out of this easily.

I will not tell you here all the joys and surprises of raising him. I think you will discover some of them in other stories.

I will stop here at a few school stories — and, in particular, mathematics.

From the very beginning of school, a friend who worked there had warned us about Adriantchik's somewhat unusual behavior.

Later, the headmistress decided to conduct an experiment: to select the eight highest-performing pupils and let them skip a year, allowing them to continue their schooling one year ahead.

At first, my wife received the idea with suspicion.

Adriantchik was already having difficulty adapting to the others.

His only real model was his elder brother, which, unfortunately, did not spare us from constant interventions.

Adriantchik wanted to be with Alexandre all the time.

For Alexandre, who was four years older, this was obviously not very interesting at the time.

And it was perfectly understandable: when the little one was four, Alexandre was already eight.

Having to look after him constantly, especially when he had his own friends, regularly resulted in cries and tears that required our immediate intervention.

But fortunately, in that group of eight children, everything went very well.

Even for the parents.

We invited one another to our homes, the children played together, while we, delighted with this idyllic arrangement, enjoyed the pleasures of existence as well — in the literal and figurative sense.

But, to our great misfortune, at the end of the year, I do not quite know how, Adriantchik passed the test that allowed him to move up to the next class.

Nobody asked our opinion.

And even though I was against it, my wife had one iron rule:

never interfere in the decisions of the school administration.

So Adriantchik skipped a school year, which caused quite a number of difficulties for him and for us.

But it had nothing to do with his studies.

The separation from the group of eight children, to which both he and we had already become accustomed, completely unsettled him.

It took time, as well as the arrival of the Beno;t-Alain family — Brigitte and Luc, who became his friends — for the situation gradually to return to normal.

And, of course, Alexandre.

He was often our lifeboat.

3 — Mathematics

In telling the story of the boys, I certainly do not want you to imagine that one was an angel and the other a demon.

No.

They were perfectly normal children.

We had no problems with the studies of either of them.

Both studied music, right through the conservatory, and Alexandre even went as far as taking the examination for the third cycle.

But it is also true that, from the very beginning, everything seemed to go right for Alexandre.

And that was the case from the moment he was born.

For Adriantchik, it was rather the opposite.

I would even be tempted to say that it was difficult to imagine anything worse — but I do not want to provoke God's anger.

Thank God, he is alive and healthy.

But he had already been through quite a lot.

His birth, which I will tell about in another story, was something the poor boy had to go through himself — I still do not know how he survived it.

And then there was the accident involving Bia, when he was barely one year old.

No.

He had already been through quite a lot.

So, it has to be admitted, he could be a little more complicated.

But, thank God, all that is behind us.

As I have already said, his elder brother was his model.

And since Alexandre was getting good results, Adriantchik obviously could not do any worse.

When I began writing this story, I went through a folder of old papers and found the result of a competition whose existence I had completely forgotten — or perhaps simply never paid attention to.

In 2006, when he was in fifth grade, he took part in the Kangaroo mathematics competition.

He came third in the department and 222nd out of 52,984 participants in France.

His score was 93.75, with a caution index of 7.

But we had not really paid much attention to any of this.

We may even have joked about it.

Our mother was not particularly interested in their mathematical successes.

Literature, on the other hand, was another matter.

But in 2007, when Alexandre took first place in our Academy, we were all proud.

And then, in 2008, another Kangaroo competition arrived.

And Adriantchik came eighth in France.

The document stated:

Year 9

National ranking: 8th out of 19,123 pupils.

As his mathematics teacher explained to me later, the number of participants — around 19,000 throughout France — had already been determined by a preliminary selection made by the mathematics teachers themselves.

Yes.

This time, we did congratulate him.

Documents began arriving at the house, including information from Animath, as well as invitations and various announcements.

But our celestial light had absolutely no desire to look at any of them.

There were also a few meetings organized.

But above all, I still do not know why, another competition was organized among the ten highest-ranking pupils to determine the best of them all.

I tried in vain to persuade Adriantchik to look at some of the previous competitions and a few problems.

He touched nothing.

And then came Day X.

The three of us left for Paris.

The competition took place in the complex of the Biblioth;que nationale, whose four corner towers give the impression of an open book.

But, in my state of panic at the time, I counted only three.

Apparently, mathematics problems were not the only problems our family had.

Thank God, we arrived on time.

Arrows everywhere showed us the way.

When we entered the room where the competition was to take place, we were speechless.

Well, I was.

The children taking part in the competition were immediately recognizable.

Around them sat future academics, wearing thick glasses, surrounded by piles of books, calculators, and parents who were still revising problems with them right up to the last minute.

I learned later that many of these parents were themselves connected to the world of mathematics.

And we had arrived empty-handed.

We had not even brought a pen.

We had to borrow one urgently from one of the organizers, who probably looked at us as though we had come from another planet.

Yes.

The competition looked like a race involving carefully selected greyhounds.

Our pony clearly had no chance.

We left our treasure to its fate and went for a walk around the city.

Our mother had her own plans for those few hours.

And since, apparently, we had three hours, you will understand that in a city like Paris — and especially in its shops — three hours amount to one minute.

Or less.

So we hurried.

When we left the building where the competition was being held, I was suddenly seized by an irresistible need to find a toilet.

I am certain it was because of my anxiety about Adriantchik.

But where could one find a suitable place?

There was not a single tree around those enormous buildings.

The flowerbeds barely reached knee height — which was obviously insufficient.

When I finally found a solution to my problem, my wife's look was so full of reproach that I immediately read her thoughts:

"How can you do this while our child is taking his competition and his poor mother wants to use these sacred minutes to go shopping?"

Yes.

She was right.

Time passed like a minute.

When we returned, the competition was already over.

Everyone had come outside and was waiting for the results.

We were all nervous.

I certainly was.

Our mother — I am not sure.

Adriantchik, meanwhile, held firm.

The result was devastating.

Adriantchik came ninth out of ten.

And even then, I have the impression that it was only because the boy who came tenth was from Morocco and did not speak French very well.

Despite this spectacular and definitive collapse of our Laplacian ambitions, we obviously could not allow our ninth mathematician in France to starve to death in the capital.

So, during a family council — held directly on the esplanade of the Biblioth;que nationale — we made a decision:

ninth place was nevertheless occupied by a human being, and we had to feed him.

Admittedly, we had mentally revised the menu.

The winner had been promised a solemn dinner.

For the holder of the prestigious second-to-last place, Parisian sandwiches accompanied by French fries would do perfectly well.

Adriantchik devoured his meal with such appetite and such calm that one might have thought he had personally proved Fermat's Last Theorem and had generously left the first eight places to less fortunate colleagues.

And that is how our great scientific ambitions came to an end.

And, strangely enough, I still have the impression that I was the only one who was disappointed by the result.

But then again, it is understandable.

I had started with hope, because we were eighth.

And I came back without the slightest illusion, now that we were ninth.

T. Djerak