| In this short story, a group of young people who cannot afford expensive AI implants try to figure out how they will compete in the marketplace with those who can. Their plan involves getting those richer students (and their artificially intelligent prostheses) to challenge them in an unsual sort of academic contest in which two teams of participants pose questions to each other.
The questions in the story are all mathematical in nature, and their solutions are discussed in some detail. Those questions and the discussions about their solutions comprise all of the mathematical content. Without them, I would not consider this to be mathematical fiction.
The questions in the contests from this story are really very interesting, unlike those I am familiar with from the mathematical contests I have seen. For example:
| (quoted from Understudies)
“Give a polynomial in x and y with integer coefficients whose zero set looks like two decimal digits with the same height and width, and where the two-digit number they represent is the coefficient of x in each of the polynomial’s factors.”
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and
| (quoted from Understudies)
“A merry-go-round with a radius of eight meters rotates twice every minute. Halfway out from the center sits a one-eighth scale replica of the entire merry-go-round, rotating at the same rate, which includes a replica of the replica, and so on. There are eight horses on the merry-go-round, arranged evenly around the perimeter, and the center of the first replica lines up with one of the horses. If each full-scale horse weighs fifty kilograms, what is the total momentum of all the horses at a moment when the centers of all the merry-go-rounds line up on one straight line?”
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There are other works of fiction about mathematical contests. This one is unusual not only in that the questions seem particularly creative and challenging but also because of the plot involving artificial intelligence and how it might affect employment in the future, a very timely and important topic at the moment. I was disappointed, though, that there is no synergy between the mathematical questions and that plot. Those interested in the story can basically ignore the questions if they are not interested in them. It felt to me as if the questions were just "gratuitous mathematics", thrown into the story for those who want to see a battle of mathematical ability just as many people seem to enjoy gratuitous violence in their fiction.
This story appeared in the October 2025 issue of Clarkesworld. |
