The ‘Filkina medal’ award — is an anti-but-not-quite-so scientific conference, which is designed to show that mathematics can be understandable, magical and accessible not only to PhDs and doctors of science, but also to people with different interests and levels of knowledge. Creative staff of the Mathematical Center in Akademgorodok came up with the idea of crossing the parody Ig Nobel Prize and the serious Fields Medal, the most prestigious mathematical award. The result was the ‘Filkina medal’ award. It was agreed that the winner of this event would be the author of a report on the most unscientific application of their own or someone else's scientific research. In 2021, when the first Filkina medal was awarded, the winner was the author of a report on optimizing the spread of rumors.
— It is believed that modern mathematical problems are so complex that they are impossible to understand for ordinary people. But this is certainly not true. And to be convinced of this, one should come to our ‘Filkina medal’ award, where students, postgraduates and active scientists talk in a humorous and at the same time accessible form about deep mathematical concepts and related problems, their embodiment in real life situations. And this is not only incredibly funny and positive, but also very educational. Such events show that mathematics is not knowledge for the elite, but it is a living interesting science that has applications in a variety of areas of real and virtual life, — commented on the holding of the award the director of the Mathematical Center in Akademgorodok, dean of the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of the NSU Igor V. Marchuk.
The conference featured 8 speakers - students, postgraduates and teachers of the NSU, developers and active scientists. They told the guests about ways to increase the farm yield in Minecraft, how to braid hair using mathematics, what happens when a paleontologist and a mathematician come up with a joint article, how to use artificial intelligence to understand the feelings of a northern excavator, and much more. The favorite and, accordingly, the winner of the award was a second-year student of the Master's degree program of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mathematics of the NSU Viktor Panshin with a story about how he and his friends compiled a rating of energy drinks using a graphic processors cluster and large language models.
— My report was about the use of machine learning methods, as well as large language models to solve a real-life problem of identifying the best energy drink. The main features of the report were the sincerity of the original problem and the unreasonable complexity of the methods used to solve it. It was fun to share my research and get positive feedback from the audience, — said Viktor.
