Tech Hammer

Ning Wei sat in the interviewer's seat for the first time. To be honest, it felt... very strange. In fact, Ning Wei doesn't have much experience. Whether he is sitting across from others and being interviewed by others, or sitting in the interviewer's position and interviewing others, he has no experience in this.

Strictly speaking, Ning Wei has not even really entered the society. After graduating from college, he came to Yanbei University directly. He is still in the ivory tower, so he has not had time to experience the so-called beatings from society. Now even if Ning Wei wants to There is probably no chance of experiencing severe beatings from society.

The boss can't get sand out of his eyes. Anyone who wants to beat him will most likely arouse the anger of a group of people. For example, the one who was beaten up by Liu Wei before, it is said that the subsequent development was not very good.

Although it is all hearsay and gossip, Ningwei's information channels often come from famous bosses, so the credibility is often relatively high. But they were all forgotten by him.

He still remembered the words of Dean Kong of the Jiangda School of Science and Technology. His mission was to do his own thing well, and paying too much attention to other clowns was a crime against himself.

…

The interviews of Ningban were held in an office in the courtyard of the Mathematics Research Center. This was also Ning Wei’s opinion. After the opening of Ningban, students could come directly to ask questions if they had any questions, so it was convenient for everyone to familiarize themselves with the environment during the interview. .

Today is the first day of interviews in Ningban. There are two days of interviews in total. The best ones will be selected from a total of 207 students recommended by the admissions teacher and qualified in writing skills. At least 60 people will be selected to enter the second round of written examinations. So The task of interviewing is still heavy.

The 60 selected people still need to eliminate about 20 people during the second round of exams. However, even if these 20 people are eliminated, they can directly enter the School of Mathematics of Yanbei University to study without the need for another interview, so the first round of Assessment is actually very important for students.

The order is based on the written test scores from high to low. The first batch of 207 people basically had written test scores above 80 points, which is actually very rare. After all, the difficulty of the questions in this exam is not comparable to that of the college entrance examination. Especially the last big question, which is not only a mathematical problem, but also involves some computer algorithmic ideas, is extremely difficult.

Basically, as long as you can get a high score on the last big question, even if the total score is just a little bit different, you will still get an interview opportunity.

The interview lineup for these two days is also very luxurious. Ning Wei is the main interviewer. Tian Yanzhen, Lu Dongyi and Professor Xiao Liang of the School of Mathematics came in person to help Ning Wei. Yu Xingwei also came as an assistant, responsible for comprehensive and recording interviewers Views.

According to the rules of this interview, Ning Wei has the right to decide, which means that which child Ning Wei likes can pass the interview directly. After all, Ning's surname is Ning. If Ning Wei is unsure, other interviewers will give their own opinions for Ning Wei's reference.

This time, we are not only selecting high-quality students for Ningban, but also selecting high-quality students for the future School of Mathematics.

The interview officially started at 8 o'clock in the morning. The first student named to enter the interview office was Chen Diancheng, who graduated from Mingzhu Middle School and was the only student to get full marks in the first round of written examination. Ranking him first had nothing to do with his past results. The main reason was that his idea for the last question was very creative, so Ningwei gave him an excellent rating after reading the paper.

The interview will not ask students to answer specific questions, but will mainly examine the students' attitude and talent towards mathematics.

"Hello, examiner, Professor Ning." Chen Diancheng walked into the classroom, said hello, and then sat down.

Ning Wei was specially brought out to greet him, which earned him joking smiles from several examiners across from him. It must be admitted that Ning Wei's reputation among the younger generation of outstanding students is indeed very high.

So the three deputy examiners did not speak first, but focused on Ning Wei, who was not yet used to it.

"Ahem...you should introduce yourself first." Ning Wei said casually.

The all-purpose question, in fact, I have read the resume, but it can test the candidate's language organization ability, of course, especially because Ning Wei actually has no experience in interviews.

"My name is Chen Diancheng. I come from Mingzhu Middle School. I have been interested in mathematics since I was a child. I once won..."

A simple self-introduction, but with all the important points.

Ning Wei nodded, and then continued to ask: "Well, when or why did you become interested in mathematics?"

Chen Diancheng thought for a while and then answered: "Well, that was when I was in the first grade of junior high school. Because I really liked playing first-person gun battle games, like CrossFire. Then I discovered a problem. Whenever I raised my head, When pointing the muzzle at the sky, the controlled character will rotate 180 degrees with just a small movement of the mouse. In some games, the same situation will occur when you lower your head to operate."

"This operation allows me to perform extremely fast turning operations. Then one day after I finished playing the game, I suddenly wondered why this happened? Then I started to look up some information and found out that this operation can be done using topology. To explain it using the hair ball theorem, it means that for a sphere with a surface covered with hair, it is absolutely impossible to comb all the hair flat so as not to leave any swirls like those on hair.”

"Explained in mathematical language, it is impossible to have a continuous unit vector field on the surface of a sphere. According to this theorem, it can also be deduced that the wind speed and wind direction on the earth's surface are continuous. Therefore, it can be concluded from the hairy ball theorem that there are always There will be a place where the wind speed is 0, which means that the cyclone and eye are inevitable and must exist."

"Similarly, if this theorem is applied to games, then the game's 3D engine needs to solve the same mathematical problem. When the data input by the player with the mouse is only a line of sight axis, the game screen can theoretically rotate around this axis. Then Where should the actual picture be up and down? This requires giving each mouse data a corresponding direction - that is, a vector field."

"But because the hairy ball theorem has proven that this vector field must have at least one discontinuous point, so near this point, extremely small movements of the mouse will cause the screen to flip significantly. This is what happens when the mouse shakes every time you raise or lower your head in different games. The reason why I can turn around quickly. When I discovered that mathematical theorems are closely related to the games I love to play, I have been keenly interested in mathematics since then."

…

After hearing this answer, several interviewers looked at each other.

What is talent? That’s it!

Ning Weidu found that there is really nothing to say about talent. This kind of gun battle game is the favorite of his classmate Luo Xiang for four years. As a student in the School of Mathematics, he has played similar games a lot in the past four years, such as what Survival in the wilderness, fighting chicken, etc., everyone is playing games, some people have become professional players, some have learned mathematical principles from it, and some have delayed their studies...

Talent is something that is really incomparable between people.

"Then do you know why some games using AR technology don't have similar problems?" Ning Wei asked smoothly.

"Well... I think this is because the equipment used is different, because when using AR equipment to play similar games, the variable that determines the AR screen is not just the mouse data axis, but the combination of data from many devices, so it won't This phenomenon occurs.”

Ning Wei nodded, this was indeed the correct answer.

"How do you usually relieve your stress?" Tian Yanzhen asked another question.

"I mainly play games. During the holidays, I occasionally go hiking in the park with my close classmates and discuss some issues that we are concerned about. I also have the opportunity to travel to various places with my father every summer. My colorful and rich life can effectively resolve Some academic pressure.”

"Then have you ever thought that you would continue to study mathematical theory in the future?"

"Yes, this is my hobby. I think it will be a very beautiful thing to combine my hobby with the future. I am very interested in the mathematical theory of artificial intelligence, so I originally thought about studying in an intelligent class or going to I wanted to study abroad at Berkeley, but Ningban showed me the hope of studying this field in depth in the future, so I finally decided to take Ningban.”

"Okay, that's it for today's interview. We look forward to meeting again in the School of Mathematics, Peking University in September." Ning Wei nodded and said.

The entire interview took a total of five minutes. Ning Wei put a √ directly under the name.

Before the next student walked into the interview office, Tian Yanzhen said with emotion: "It's true that times have changed. Children in this era can show their interest in mathematics by playing games."

Ning Wei nodded and said: "The key is that you can have this kind of thinking ability in the first grade of junior high school, and you can also learn algebraic topology by yourself, which is beyond my expectation."

"Don't have too many expectations for the next interview just because the first student performed well enough." Professor Xiao said to Ning Wei with a smile.

"Haha, Professor Xiao, this is not necessarily true. You have to believe in the appeal of our Professor Ning."

…

"I like mathematics because I used mathematical thinking to solve a physical problem, and then I discovered that mathematics is really wonderful..."

"When I came into contact with Riemannian geometry and discovered that parallel lines can also intersect, and that the interior angles of a triangle are not necessarily equal to 90 degrees, it seemed like a mathematical window opened for me."

“I started to get into programming when I was in junior high school. Later I discovered that if I wanted to become a good engineer, I needed to learn mathematics in depth, and I became interested in mathematics from then on…”

…

After getting an unexpected answer from Chen Diancheng, Ning Wei asked almost every interview student the same question and got a variety of different answers. Most of the answers were excellent. of.

In this way, a total of 100 interviews were arranged on the first day, and the interviews lasted from 8 a.m. to 6:17 p.m., before all interviews were completed.

Yu Xingwei immediately made statistics. Ning Wei had already directly checked 22 people on his list, and 17 people were pending.

The results given by the other three deputy interviewers were actually similar. The more controversial ones were concentrated on two students. But no matter what, at least these students performed very well. Tian Yanzhen even gave this round of tests. There will be twenty more places. Anyway, the Ning class will be tested next time, but you can still go to the Mathematical Institute to study.

By the time they are sophomores, maybe this group of students from the School of Mathematics can replace the students eliminated from the Ning class.

This suggestion actually makes sense. After all, he has stayed in the School of Mathematics at Yanbei University for a long time, and he must have more experience in all aspects than Ning Wei. Many children performed very well in basic elementary mathematics in high school, and even won national awards; but after being exposed to advanced mathematics, their performance began to plummet; similarly, there were also students who did not perform so well before, but after starting to learn advanced mathematics, they were like Suddenly I felt enlightened and my grades started to improve rapidly...

The main reason is abstract thinking. Many children can feel the beauty of mathematics when they are exposed to elementary mathematics and become very interested in it. However, the problem is that the mathematics they are exposed to in junior high school and high school does not actually require too much abstract ability, especially in the direction of mathematical research. Let’s put it this way, competitions generally test the depth of thinking and proficiency of skills. However, to do mathematical research, you must first learn a huge system. What’s even more frightening is that if you want to get started, there is only a difference between 0 and 1, that is, whether you understand it or not. Understand the difference.

At this time, what matters is not the proficiency in solving the questions, but the breadth of thinking. After all, many mathematical research directions have never thought of solving any practical problems, especially the research of mathematical theory. This is why many people advocate the futility of mathematics, but having this kind of thinking ability is the most important talent for doing number theory research. .

Why is Ning Wei so favored by the big guys? Because this guy not only has this kind of talent, but also has a goal, and the research he does is particularly targeted.

Returning to Ningban's enrollment, since the quality of students this year is better than expected, it is natural to apply more enrollment indicators. Not to mention that this was proposed by Tian Yanzhen, so naturally everyone had no objections.

After the interview was completed, Tian Yanzhen wanted to organize everyone to have a meal together, but Professor Xiao and Lu Dongyi happened to be busy, so he gave up. I just asked Ning Wei to go back to the R\u0026D center to eat lunch.

"By the way, I have something to tell you. Mr. Pichai from Google is going to visit China in two days. His first stop will be our Mathematics Research Center. You'd better make time to meet with him then. If you have any questions, please explain."

"Sandel Pichai?" Ning Wei asked.

"Um."

"Okay, when exactly will you come?"

"He should arrive in the afternoon of July 11th and come in the morning of July 12th. Then you can accompany him around the center and then go to your office for a casual chat. I won't join in the fun."

"oh!"

Ning Wei responded casually.

This news is a bit sudden, but Ning Wei is already used to it. Anyway, these high-tech company bosses can show that they are very free from time to time and come to China.

To be honest, I feel nothing.

After all, Ning Wei has met a lot of big shots. In his office, Ning Wei has already met the chairman of Ericsson, the president of Cisco, the CEOs of Apple and Intel, and now there is nothing more than the president of Google.

What's more important is that communicating with these big guys is actually not interesting. The main reason is that the thinking mode is different. Others have a business thinking mode, while he has a purely academic thinking mode. If you don't recognize yourself, it is easy to say nothing.

However, the arrival of the Google CEO this time did not surprise him. It is estimated that the main reason is that Android is not very popular in the market now, which makes the Google boss a little unable to sit still. He must have already been in contact with Huawei, and the focus of this visit to China must still be at the Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen. Looking for him probably means saying goodbye to the dock.

After all, for Google, losing Android means that many years of layout are gone in one go, which is somewhat intolerable. Especially investors can't stand it. What’s even more embarrassing is that I heard that Google’s self-developed Fuchsia OS operating system had signed some agreements with Samsung before, but now it is most likely that it has been abandoned, and a large amount of research and development expenses have been wasted. This is for an aspiring company. For a high-tech company that is a troublemaker, this is undoubtedly a huge blow.

But Ning Wei still doesn’t like this company, for no other reason. Some time ago, Google was the most resistant to the March Smart Platform and made the most false remarks, not to mention that Google also did a very dirty thing. , they agreed to spend one million US dollars to implement Ning Wei’s compilation of big data theory textbooks, but in the end they went back on their word...

So Ning Wei wrote down this Google in his notebook early.

Tian Yanzhen continued: "It's better to be polite to others. Google is willing to donate a sum of money to us to improve the research environment."

"A few hundred million?" Ning Wei asked.

"One hundred million? Ten million... dollars." Tian Yanzhen glared at Ning Wei.

"Isn't this a bit stingy? This is not how the protection fee is paid. I don't feel sincerity. The scholarship I personally prepared for Ning Ban is almost this amount." Ning Wei curled his lips.

"Haha..." Tian Yanzhen smiled and did not answer, but there was some encouragement in the laughter.

How should I put it? No matter how small a mosquito is, it is still meat. Moreover, if it is purely to improve the scientific research environment, a donation of 10 million US dollars is actually not a small amount. After all, it only cost more than 300 million yuan to build this research center. Of course, it would be good if there was more money. For example, Ningban's scholarships could be more abundant in the future.

…

The interview continued the next day. The order of the interviews was based on the written test scores. The effect was still very obvious. The students interviewed on the second day gave Ning Wei a feeling that there was still some difference from yesterday. Of course, this difference was not particularly obvious. But there were six students among them who made a deep impression on Ning Wei. So there are six more √ signs that pass directly.

There are already 28 people on Ningwei's list who have been approved directly, and 39 people who are pending. The next step was for everyone to discuss it. Originally, there were 60 places in the first screening, but Tian Yanzhen directly applied for 80 places with a stroke of his pen. The school soon passed it, so he would rather pass the list than The ones to be determined have basically been stabilized, and there are still 13 places left for everyone to discuss, so Ning Wei does not need to participate.

He has many things to do, such as being involved in hosting the current CEO of Google, so he is very busy!