Polyphia’s lead guitarist Tim Henson, is one of my favorite progressive metal guitarists. His signature guitar is Ibanez THBB10. He’s extremely creative and talent, and his peculiarity is that he can very easily create astounding riffs. For example check out this video. His signature technique is hybrid picking, and it’s thanks to him that I […]
Blue Ocean Strategy
One of my favorite economy books so far is ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. It is essentially a guidebook on how to create uncontested market space and make competition irrelevant. It is divided into 9 chapters, which explain the complete process of creating a start-up that is free from competition […]
Shortlist 2006/A5
Let be the sides of a triangle. Prove that Always Try A Substitution We notice that the denominators are all positive, in fact by the triangular inequality. So let . Then . So we get applying in the last step. Similarly, we obtain Thus, now it is sufficient to prove that So let’s assume WLOG […]
The Order Of Time
‘The Order Of Time’, by Carlo Rovelli, is one of my favorite divulgation physics books. It talks about one of the greatest mysteries humanity has to deal with: time. Everyone has a perception of time, both for people and for physicists, who have formulated many theories throughout the years and contributed to the evolution of […]
IMO 2019/4
Find all couples of integers which satisfy The Idea We notice that work and we claim that other solutions don’t exist, so we want to get an upper and lower bound for . Proof Now let be the greatest exponent of prime in the scomposition of , we notice that and . Hence, Now we […]
The Lüneburg Variation
‘The Lüneburg Variation’, by Paolo Maurensig, is a very interesting novel about chess I really enjoyed reading. It is a story of evil and revenge which is centered on the game of chess. This game permeated the whole story with an elevated and yet also sinister, cabalistic aura. It is an absorbing story. Its background […]
All The Things You Are, Jerome Kern
‘All The Things You Are’ is a piece composed by Jerome Kern (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II), and was first released in 1939. It is a very calm jazz standard, here’s the structure: | F-7 | Bb-7 | Eb7 | Abmaj7 | Dbmaj7 | G7 | Cmaj7 | Cmaj7 | C-7 | F-7 | Bb7 […]
Combinatorial Extremization
The best combinatorics book I’ve read so far is ‘Combinatorial Extremization’, by Yuefeng Feng. The book is divided into 13 chapters. Each of them covers a particular combinatorial technique you can use to solve your problems. Some of them are easy to understand, but in general, the level of difficulty of this book is quite […]
The Girl With The Leica
One of my favorite books is ‘The Girl With The Leica’, by Helena Janeczek. It talks about the story of Gerda Pohorylle, who later changed her name to Gerda Taro, seen from the perspective of three of her closest friends. Gerda was an independent and adventurous woman, who loved photography and journalism, as the title […]
Blue Bossa, Kenny Dorham
Blue Bossa, by Kenny Dorham, is a piece that blends hard bop and bossanova. The chord structure is the following: | Cm6 | Cm6 | Fm7 | Fm7 | Dm7b5 | G7#5#9 | Cm6 | Cm6 | Ebm7 | Ab7 | Dbmaj7| Dm7b5 | G7#5#9 | Cm6 | (G7) | Its first appearance in an […]