hey everyone eddie wu here it gives me
great pleasure to introduce you to my
friend and mathematician poshen lo po
thank you so much for your time today
wow it's wonderful to see you again
it is a joy it seems like uh almost
another lifetime ago when you were uh
down here in sydney with me and i was
just uh such a delight to have you uh in
person but this is great as well and i
especially know your time is very
precious because uh you're in between
you know meetings with people
internationally governments and their
ministries of health so we're really
thankful for your time
but i'm getting ahead of myself a little
bit
but i introduced you as a mathematician
just now and i'm a big fan of saying
that you know mathematics is about
finding patterns understanding
relationships so in a real sense
everyone is a mathematician
but i would classify you i guess as a
capital m
mathematician you're the professor of
mathematics at carnegie mellon
university in pittsburgh pennsylvania
how long have you been doing that for
oh i've been doing that for at this
point almost 11 years wow okay you are
truly part of the furniture there that's
excellent we will get on to your kind of
life as a career academic a bit later
and also why on earth you would be
talking to international governments and
their ministries of health but i feel
like it's really important to get to
know you a bit better first so i'm
wondering if we could talk a bit about
your personal journey into mathematics
what are your early memories of doing
mathematics and your experience there
oh my so if i think about how math
started for me when i was in elementary
school primary school
my mom would teach us mathematics at
home i was the oldest kid and we we
spent quite a bit on mathematics for
only one reason it's because they were
from singapore and they weren't exactly
sure if they were going to stay in the
united states and i remember my parents
telling me let's make sure that you
learn what all of your classmates in
singapore are learning because if we go
back to singapore
that way you won't be the bottom of the
class
that was the sort of the motivation
that's delightful that you know she was
i i think it's amazing that as you know
there are lots of parents who are going
to be viewing right now and the the huge
formative influence they have on their
children um positively and negatively um
really matters but i just love that it's
kind of like i don't want you to feel
left out and you know that obviously the
singaporean education system is kind of
world famous um for how well um it
really understands mathematics and
prioritizes that so you know learning
that at home
i think a lot of people children going
up might have had a similar experience
but but didn't come out enjoying
mathematics the way that you did can you
tell us how that emerged
definitely because by the time i went to
middle school i i think at that point i
already had a very strong math
foundation that's thanks to my mom but
at the same time i didn't really know
what math was i knew how to compute
things you know like if you think about
what people were learning back when i
was growing up which was the 80s
basically what you did is a lot of
computations you did a lot of
calculations with multiplication
division and so on and when i got to
middle school that's when i discovered
or rather
math competitions discovered me
i was going to a school in the united
states and there was an entire series of
middle school math competitions where
the principle was to give math problems
that you don't exactly know how to solve
that is what got me really interested
that is so fascinating to me because i
feel like yeah a lot of people might
take the experience you just described
and actually you know that might be kind
of uh you know someone's nightmare
scenario almost in terms of i don't know
what to do
and then you know you give me a
challenge and i don't know how to go
about it but it's actually a key it
seems to me a key characteristic of all
the mathematicians i get to meet and
work with that actually um the joy and
the challenge of encountering a problem
that you've not seen before and you
think i need to come with a novel way of
entering would that be a fair
description of your experience
definitely and i also think that that's
because maybe there's some personality i
actually don't like to do what i'm told
i'm one of these awful people that if
you say do things exactly this way i'll
say but that would be boring you've
already told me what to do i want to put
my own spin on it but there's a reason i
phrased it this way i think that's
actually human nature i think this is
actually what makes humanity keep
finding new ways to do things i'm not
referring to just mathematical ways i'm
referring to anything we have a
naturally i don't want to call it
rebellious but i want to call it with a
natural nature to try to do things
differently than before and i think
that's the heart of experimentation i
just really enjoyed that in a context
where like on these math problems there
wasn't any requirement that i do well in
fact because they were so hard if you
can't do them well they were really hard
anyway right so what's there to lose do
your very best and see how far you can
get right now we will talk about all
those different competitions in a second
but before we sort of dive into there
you know uh as i mentioned before you're
in university um as a mathematician
mathematics it forms bridges to so many
other areas and i think about a lot of
my friends who i went to school with if
they were gifted in mathematics often
they would go into engineering or
finance or perhaps architecture when did
it solidify for you like how old were
you when um it sort of became clear to
you that you wanted to go all in with
mathematics i think that for me when i
was in
grade school all the way up until grade
12 i saw mathematics as something which
was a source of problems that you could
solve that could be quite hard i didn't
really know that it was something i
really wanted to think about in fact i
wouldn't have called it beautiful back
then i just call it an interesting place
to experiment but when i went to
university i had the opportunity to
learn from some really passionate
professors and other instructors and
when you saw what made them interested
in the subject and how they could see
that this fits together like some kind
of an interesting structure it's almost
like you're looking at something
beautiful under a microscope then you
understand why it's interesting and then
finally when i did a phd i was very
influenced by my phd advisor a math
professor named benjamin sudhikov benny
sudekov and he also taught me what does
it mean to discover new things in math
if you can see i'm always naming people
for me people have been at the heart of
driving me to want to do various kinds
of things i think that's so fascinating
because as i'm sure you've encountered
many times most people sort of a popular
conception around mathematics it's it's
a fairly impersonal and emotionless
discipline but actually the reality of
it as you've just described it is it's
in the context of relationship and in
fact you see someone mortal to you um
you know their joy or delight or you
know perplexity and the fact that they
will dive into the subject further
because of that now i think that's
fantastic and you were talking about
competitions before but you weren't
being very humble and you just kind of
said you know competitions things you
went into but
something that our viewers need to know
about you is that in terms of
competitions you have gone right to the
very tippy top
there's something called the
international mathematic mathematical
olympiad that our viewers might not be
familiar with could you tell us what is
the imo
sure i would say that the international
mathematical olympiad is basically the
olympics of mathematics in the sense
that it's a it's a whole pyramid of
competitions that in the event in the
end you go and find who can
come up with interesting ways to solve
mathematical problems in new ways
from all around the world this is the
international part i say new ways
because this is one of these
competitions where at the very end you
have two days of competition each day
has four and a half hours of exam and
for those four and a half hours each day
you have three questions so all together
you have three plus three which is six
questions i can do that kind of math so
you got six questions to do and if you
can actually solve any one of them
you're a genius that's how this is uh
yeah so that's what i guess i got to
play around with those questions uh when
i when i was a kid also but i should
also say you know back when i did this
stuff it was a lot easier if there are
any people watching now who are actually
students doing these competitions
now you have the internet now you can
watch eddie wu you can learn how to do
math you know when i was doing this
stuff you didn't have all these
resources so maybe
back in our day if you got some
qualifications there that doesn't mean
you're necessarily that good sounds like
there's been a bit of an arms race
between the competitors and the people
setting the questions and now it sounds
like the competitors have access to so
many more different uh pieces of
knowledge it's very true to each sword
isn't it now um it's really interesting
to me i've actually um as a teacher um
seen some of the students who i've
taught um over the years and i've kind
of supervised them in kind of the local
versions of the imo and you know
sometimes i will sneak a quick look at
one of the questions and like you said
there are there's not many um it's quite
different to normals people's experience
of mathematics here's an exercise do a
hundred questions um there's a real
emphasis on taking that time depth of
thought and creativity i thought like
you were saying before but i'd really
love to know because um you are one of
those rare people who has who's entered
in and also performed at quite high
levels you're a silver medalist in the
imo could you tell us about the
atmosphere and the people is it hyper
competitive or how would you
characterize it
actually it's quite interesting my
experience has been that the higher you
go in the competitions and the more
amazing the student is the more humble
they are
i've actually noticed that
i think somebody else said this once
it's like the more you know the more you
know that you don't
so so it's just that somehow yeah the
people who perform at the absolute best
at these are somehow some of the nicest
people in the world who have seen that
you know there's nothing there's no
point in acting like you're better than
anyone else and in fact i see a lot of
camaraderie in that i actually feel like
one reason why at least in the us the
students are pushing so hard to try to
do these competitions is because they
make great friends there and yes okay
you'll have a fun like a friendly
challenge somebody will win but in the
end of the day whoever won and whoever's
number two and whoever is whatever
they're actually all friends
and i suppose that would make sense
because i guess over the years you would
start to you know see these people at
the different competitions over time and
also because this is shared love i think
that's very perceptive and that humility
that you mentioned is actually really
interesting because i don't think we
would normally
pick that out as a characteristic that
would say oh mathematicians this is kind
of what their personality is like but it
does remind me one of my favorite
metaphors is that mathematics is a bit
like mountaineering you sort of climb
these mountains and i imagine you know
going up to whatever people are doing
you know in in here in australia might
be
mathematics extension two it might be
specialist mathematics we might be
talking about ap calculus but actually
when you get to the top of one such
mountain i imagine from that vantage
point you just see further mountains in
the distance would that be the way you
describe it absolutely and it's also
like even if you're just running up the
pure mathematics mountains at some point
you run up to the top and you say wow
there's all those other people over
there they're not doing math they're
doing things that are like directly
practically useful this is also very
interesting you know maybe what we're
doing is proving some theorem maybe it
could be useful someday and there's some
older people over there who are making
something that's practical and you
there's this level of respect that you
have like if you've gone all the way up
a particular mountain you say well it's
that hard to get up this one there's
someone all the way up on that other
mountain over there that looks really
interesting
i'm up here but how do you get over to
that one i guess you got to go all the
way back down and go climb another one
from scratch
and it is funny like we do say
mathematics um as if it's sort of this
this monolithic object but actually like
you point out there are all of these
different areas and there is diverse as
you know different genres of music or
different styles of literature or art
right and i'm going to come back to that
idea in a second before we do that
though i'm you know talking about the
imo you've participated in it as a
competitor but now you're actually
actually the national coach for the
united states team
what's the difference between i mean
obviously there is a difference but i
picture you know a coach for say a game
of football or tennis or things like
that um swimming i'm picturing someone
you know barking orders you know from
the side of the field and say you know
try this drill out and you know work
harder and there's a physicality to it
what does coaching for the international
mathematical olympiad what does that
look like
for me because i used to be a competitor
the way that looks like for me is i know
how it feels to be sitting there
how can i help you in the best way so
that you make the most of yourself
without feeling a lot of stress and i'll
say because i remember being an
international math olympiad competitor
there's enough stress that comes from
yourself
it doesn't need to come from the coach
what comes from yourself is the moment
you know you're representing the entire
country and whatever you do is going to
be mentioned like i don't know 20 years
later by somebody else interviewing
that's right someone could go and google
potion loan imo results and they are
still there for all of time and
posterity to enjoy it
yeah enjoy or not but what i mean is
like you already have enough stress that
you know that whatever you're doing is
actually at some national level so my
goal as a coach is just to
to hopefully help these people get as
far as they can and i guess i always see
in every one of the students
some example of what i used to be
thinking i used to be feeling so i guess
i see it in a very empathetic way and
i've also noticed nowadays it's quite
interesting there's now an entire
generation of coaches who themselves
were contestants and you can see that
somehow a lot of us are inspired to
coach not to win anything but to try to
help these people get as far as they can
because we all see like people that we
used to be
is that um it's kind of paying it
forward isn't it you know you've had
this debt of people coaching you and
seeing the way the places that's taking
you and it's fantastic to pass that gift
on i think it's delightful