203: Chapter 203 Training Team

Today, they weren't sitting on the podium but in the back rows like students. The school's top management had made it clear that Zhao Yang was in full charge of this training session.

They were sitting here more with an attitude of learning and auditing, wanting to see what special teaching methods this young man, who had solved a world-class mathematical problem, actually had.

2:40 PM.

The door to the computer lab was pushed open.

Zhao Yang walked in.

As he entered, the extremely faint whispers in the computer lab vanished instantly, and the room became very quiet.

Everyone's eyes were fixed on him in unison. These looks contained curiosity, awe, and a hint of nervousness in the face of the unknown.

Zhao Yang ignored these gazes.

He walked with steady steps to the teacher's main console podium at the very front of the lab.

He pressed the power button on the host computer and turned on the projector connected to the giant screen.

After doing all this, Zhao Yang turned around, rested his hands on the edge of the podium, and calmly scanned the forty-eight elite students sitting below.

No polite opening remarks, no self-introduction.

"From today until the National Contest officially begins in September, all the time you spend in this computer lab must be entirely under my command."

Zhao Yang's voice spread clearly throughout the lab via the microphone on the podium; his tone was very resolute.

"Mathematical Modeling is, in essence, abstracting the chaotic variables of the real world into digital logic that a computer can process."

Zhao Yang cut straight to the point without any nonsense.

"In the upcoming training, I won't teach you basic Higher Mathematics or how to write C++ loop statements. If you can't even use these most basic tools proficiently, you wouldn't be sitting here today."

He picked up a piece of chalk from the podium, turned around, and wrote several large characters on the whiteboard: Optimization, Prediction, Evaluation.

"I will only teach you one thing: how to establish the most accurate Objective Function within twenty minutes when faced with an industrial or social proposition that has no standard answer, and how to select the most efficient solving algorithm that can produce results within 72 hours."

Zhao Yang dropped the chalk, clapped the dust off his hands, and crossed his arms over his chest.

"In my class, don't ask low-level operational questions that can be solved by checking software help documents. If you encounter a bug, troubleshoot it yourself; if you hit a syntax error, check the community yourself. And most importantly, do not doubt the algorithmic model direction I provide."

"Now, open the folder named 'Training_01' on your computer desktops."

Zhao Yang said calmly to all the students.

A dense sound of mouse clicks erupted as all the students quickly opened the file on their desktops.

"Inside is a raw dataset regarding the tidal phenomenon of traffic congestion within the Third Ring Road of Yanjing City. It includes a continuous week of traffic flow, traffic light timing, and weather data for thirty major intersections."

Zhao Yang looked at the audience and issued the first task of the day.

"For traffic congestion problems, the usual entry point is Queuing Theory. But today, don't apply traditional Queuing Theory models. Use a Simulated Annealing Algorithm to build a dynamic guidance model for me, and find the Global Optimal Solution for traffic light timing with the lowest congestion index."

"You have two hours. Begin."

As Zhao Yang's voice fell, the sound of mouse clicks and keyboard typing quickly filled the lab.

The students immediately got into the zone, and the three people in each group began to divide the work.

Everyone showed off their skills, using their accustomed methods and techniques to process data and perform modeling!

The teachers sitting in the back row were somewhat surprised.

Several associate professors looked at each other.

Originally, they thought that a genius of Zhao Yang's caliber would give some high-level lectures on macro-mathematical thinking or impart special learning methods during the first class.

Unexpectedly, there wasn't a single redundant analysis right from the start; he directly threw out an extremely complex real-world dataset and required the use of a specific algorithm for modeling.

"Is it the 'sea of problems' tactic?"

An old professor from the Department of Mathematics, School of Science, lowered his voice and said to the computer science teacher beside him, "This doesn't seem to have any essential difference from our previous teaching methods. It's all about letting students practice with past exam questions or similar problem types."

The computer science teacher stared at the dataset Zhao Yang shared on the large screen for a while, and his brow gradually furrowed.

"Old Zhang, look at that data."

The computer science teacher pointed out in a low voice.

"This isn't a past exam question. Using a Simulated Annealing Algorithm to solve traffic flow for this kind of real-world problem... this approach is extremely unconventional and has very high requirements for the construction of the Objective Function. One slight mistake and it's easy to get stuck in a Local Optimal Solution and not be able to get out."

"Two hours... can these students handle it?"

Associate Professor Wang from the Computer Science Department nearby frowned.

"This is too difficult!"

Old Zhang adjusted his reading glasses, looked closely, and said thoughtfully, "He probably wants to force the students to break their fixed thinking patterns under extreme conditions. After all, when they face the National Contest questions, it will be the same mode."

On the podium, Zhao Yang did not sit down.

With his hands in his pockets, he began to walk slowly back and forth among the students along the aisles of the computer lab.

His gaze swept across the computer screens one by one.

With the support of his 179 IQ and Level 5 Informatics skill, every line of code the students typed and every constraint they built was completely transparent to Zhao Yang.

He didn't even need to look at the derivations on their scratch paper; just a glance at the structure of the code was enough to know what was going on in their brains and quickly deduce what kind of logical infinite loop that idea would evolve into a few minutes later.

"Your initial temperature setting is too low, and the annealing rate is too fast. By the time it reaches the five hundredth iteration, your model will be stuck in a Local Minimum and won't be able to get out. Rewrite it."

When Zhao Yang passed a group in the third row, he didn't stop but directly pointed out the modeling problem of the boy in charge of the code.

The boy was stunned for a moment, quickly stopped his hands from typing, and carefully checked the parameters he had set. Soon, he was surprised to find that it was exactly as Zhao Yang had said!

According to his current cooling schedule, the algorithm simply couldn't jump out of the Local Optimum.

"In the data cleaning step, don't use a simple mean to fill in missing values. Traffic flow has temporal continuity; use Cubic Spline Interpolation. The static means you're filling in now will completely destroy the data characteristics of the evening peak."

Zhao Yang walked to the fifth row and spoke to a girl who was sweating profusely while processing an Excel spreadsheet.

The girl quickly deleted the entire column of formulas she had just entered and began searching for an interpolation function again according to Zhao Yang's suggestion.

The atmosphere in the entire computer lab became very oppressive.