This is the first year that arithmetic has been included as a subject in the national examination.

Some people nervously felt that they were doomed, so they simply went home to study and study arithmetic, and then take the exam two years later. Therefore, it was originally expected that about 1,600 candidates would take part in the exam, but this year only 1,000 came.

Not all of the remaining 1,000 people have studied arithmetic, and many are just taking chances, thinking that the arithmetic part should be just a reference and will not have much impact on the exam results.

Of course, the imperial examination is still based on the Four Books and Five Classics. As long as you do well in the first three tests, even if you do average in the last arithmetic test, it won't be a big problem. At this time, the candidates were queuing up at the gate of Gongyuan, waiting to enter.

There are many vendors selling abacus.

But the abacus also needs to be learned. If you have not specifically learned the abacus, it is better to use a pen to calculate faster.

However, many candidates still bought abacus.

Inside the Gongyuan, Li Zhao had already arrived early.

The chief coordinator of the imperial examination was Mr. Wu Ge, the Minister of Civil Affairs. Even he was shocked when he saw the big box of test papers.

This was the first time I had ever seen a math test paper. I was secretly shocked. I didn’t know how much effort it would take to get a high score with so many arithmetic questions.

When Li Zhao took out the test papers, each person had a small volume.

The supervisor was the censor. He looked at the arithmetic problems in the book and began to sweat on his forehead.

Then the candidates enter the room. Before they actually enter the examination room, they must be searched by the gate officer to ensure that they are not involved in the examination before they can be allowed into the examination room.

This time Enke's two supervisors were Ning Yuan, commander of the Jinyi Guards, and Song Chenxu, secretary of the Firearms Battalion.

The emperor put these two people together and stared at each other, not intentionally to play a prank, but just to treat the Ning and Song families fairly.

Being able to participate in the Enke exam itself represents an honor.

After the examinees entered the examination room and took their exam numbers, the invigilator led several low-level officials from the Yushitai to distribute the examination papers to the candidates.

As for the officials who were provided with the exams, Wailang Zhang Guangjian, a member of the Ministry of Rites, led several low-level officials in the Ministry of Rites to distribute hard ink pens and charcoal pens to the candidates.

The ink pen is used to write the answer sheet, and the charcoal pen is convenient for doing calculations on the scratch paper.

The pens issued by Gongyuan are not really made of steel, but made of wood. The structure of the pen head is similar to that of a fountain pen.

Of course, if you are not used to using this kind of hard ink pen, you can use a small brush.

The candidates who got the test paper first turned pale when they saw the test paper, which looked like a book.

I have never seen such a large number of questions.

Those lucky students have an intuition: this arithmetic test is probably more than just a reference.

The emperor is serious about paying equal attention to both facts and facts!

All the officials present also felt this way. The emperor was serious about raising the importance of arithmetic!

It is even necessary to elevate the importance of arithmetic to the same level as the Four Books and Five Classics.

Do they also have to study after they return home?

When all the candidates were seated and the time was almost up, Li Zhao told the chief adjuster Wu Shangshu that the exam could start.

With the sound of "bang", the exam officially began.

The entire Gongyuan was filled with the sound of flipping pages.

Fortunately, some candidates who thought they were going to be doomed opened the first page of the test paper and were surprised to find that it was all three-digit and four-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication and division!

Except the numbers are bigger, but at least they can do it!

Isn’t it just represented by new digital symbols?

No problem, this new numerical symbol began to spread among the people as early as when Song Jianming rebuilt the account books of the Ministry of Household.

Moreover, the new number symbols used to express numbers in the book written by His Royal Highness the Grand Prince also use this new number symbol.

Most moves require a little homework in advance.

These are just addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions, no problem.

A heart of fear of the unknown quietly let go.

After their emotions stabilized, many people picked up the fine brushes they had prepared and began to calculate on the scratch paper.

To do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of whole numbers is to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers with decimal points.

Many people don't have enough brain power at this time.

But this is still considered a question for free points.

Later, when there were scores, some of them started to become unclear.

I couldn't understand the question, let alone do it, so I just turned to the back.

Equation operation problems.

From the system of linear equations in two variables to the system of quadratic equations in three variables, the difficulty gradually increases.

People who have studied "Equations, Functions and Linear Programming" have already begun to immerse themselves in calculations.

People who have never studied His Highness's book at all will not even understand the title, so they still have to leave it blank and flip through it.

At this time, the text finally appeared on the paper!

It's an application question.

The first line: "Now there are fifteen copper coins mixed with old and new ones. The newly minted copper coins weigh five cents, and the old coins weigh four cents. Question: Among these fifteen copper coins, how many are new and how many are old."

"

In fact, it is a simple chicken and rabbit in the same cage problem. People who understand it immediately start to answer it, while those who don't know the method naturally scratch their heads and turn back.

It is a pity that the next questions are more difficult than the last. From finance and taxation, to engineering materials, number of people, calculation of working hours, and even pricing of fabrics and porcelain for foreign trade, there are nearly twenty application questions, and the topics are extremely wide-ranging.

In this era, there was no exercise set at all. The few candidates who usually liked to ponder such things were like a fish that had been in drought for a long time when it encountered water, and they began to calculate on the scratch paper.

Liang Huaijun has been doing it smoothly all the way. So far, he has basically not encountered any problems that he finds particularly difficult. Moreover, these word problems are very interesting, and he even feels like he is getting more and more excited as he does them.

Other candidates who had no idea but dared to try began to scribble some solutions they could think of on the scratch paper, but most of them chose to skip it directly.

Only when you turn to the second half does an easy task reappear: calculate the areas of various geometric figures, including rectangles, trapezoids, triangles, and sectors.

Except for the fan shape, which is more difficult to calculate, the first few can be calculated by anyone who has studied arithmetic in Chapter 1.9 or has put a little effort into the "Six Arts of the Gentleman".

After calculating the areas of these geometric figures, the next step is a geometry application question: There is a triangular piece of land in front of Lao Li's house. There are two sons in the family. How to divide this piece of land between the two sons so that the two sons can take it?

Are the land areas the same?

This is also a question that can be answered in seconds as long as you have learned a little bit.

The papers written by Song Qingyue and Li Zhao were quite user-friendly, and there were a lot of scoring questions in the whole set of papers to appease the emotions of the candidates.

After completing the geometry questions, there are two questions about arithmetic sequences, one is summation and the other is term finding. This is also the content covered in "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic".

After the number sequence, there is a square root problem, and then there is a classic "things cannot be numbered" problem in "Sun Zi Suan Jing".

There are many ways to solve this problem. You can use the "Dayan Qiyi Technique" invented by the Southern Song Dynasty mathematician Qin Jiuzhao to solve it, or you can easily solve it by listing a system of multivariate linear equations.

If you really don't know how to do any of these, you definitely can't write the last two explanatory questions explaining the art of cutting circles and the art of Tianyuan.

During the three-day exam, some candidates completed the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division before handing in the paper on the first day.

On the second day, most candidates also handed in their papers. For example, Wang Chenglin turned in his papers on the second day.

Although the questions were all confused, he could at least write a lot.

There were only a few people left who survived until the last day, and Liang Huaijun was one of them.

In fact, he finished most of the topics on the first day.

He didn't understand the art of cutting circles at all, so he left it blank. However, there was a very strange question at the front, which asked him to calculate the area between two functions, which stumped him.

It was the calculus question that Song Qingyue put on the paper as a prank. Li Zhao scratched his head and thought about it all night without thinking about it. Liang Huaijun did the same. He stayed up all night to solve this question on the first night and took a nap at noon on the second day.

Hours later, I got up and started counting again.

By the third day, everyone was stunned.
Chapter completed!