Chapter 93 - 69: Determining the Research Direction
Chen Lin leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, but his gaze was locked firmly on the screen.
His mind was racing.
Following the plan he’d made on his way back to campus that afternoon, his most urgent task was to select a main area of focus for his graduation thesis—one that would also steer his future mathematical research.
Chen Lin also planned to use the opportunity of writing his thesis to test the limits of his "Little Mathematician" title.
Last time, to help Shen Yan nail down a plan for the modeling competition, he had used the "Little Mathematician" title for three and a half hours straight.
The experience was still fresh in Chen Lin’s mind.
When he came out of that mystical state of "Little Mathematician," a wave of exhaustion, as if his very soul had been drained, instantly washed over him. He had barely managed to run back to his dorm ten minutes before lights-out on his last ounce of willpower, and he was dead to the world within minutes of hitting the bed.
He slept for nearly twenty hours straight.
When he woke up, he was groggy and disoriented, and it took him a while to come to his senses.
That kind of pattern was fine for an occasional emergency, but it would be ridiculous to make it a regular habit.
’I can’t just get stuck in an endless cycle of "three hours of intense work, twenty hours of deep sleep" every time I do research, can I?’
’I wouldn’t be able to get anything else done, and no one would ever be able to reach me.’
Chen Lin was well aware that his physical fitness, boosted by the enhanced "Little Champion" title, was already three times that of a normal person. He was practically a human Gundam.
But he also remembered that when the system had issued the "Little Red Flower" reward, ["Little Mathematician" energy consumption halved] had appeared as a separate enhancement item.
This meant that what the system defined as "energy" and what he understood as "stamina" were not the same thing at all.
At the very least, there was no way to reduce this energy consumption by improving his physical fitness.
The best proof was that even with his physical fitness tripled, he still required seven to eight hours of sleep per day. He hadn’t turned into one of those chosen workhorses who only needed two or three hours of sleep.
Therefore, he had to find a balance: a sustainable duration for using "Little Mathematician" that would ensure research efficiency without disrupting his normal daily routine.
Chen Lin’s plan was to start with an upper limit of 200 minutes for a single session while writing his graduation thesis. Then, with each subsequent use, he would decrease the duration by five minutes.
Through this stress test of diminishing durations, he believed he could find that perfect equilibrium.
His thoughts returned to the present.
Chen Lin sat up straight and placed his hands back on the keyboard.
He took a deep breath and began to type the first keyword into the search bar.
On the way back, a vague direction had already formed in his mind.
Time ticked by, second by second. The only sounds in the dorm room were the crisp tapping of the keyboard and the clicking of the mouse.
Chen Lin was completely immersed in a sea of information, sifting through, comparing, and analyzing various branches of mathematics...
About an hour later.
Chen Lin stretched and let out a satisfied groan.
He looked at the Word document on his screen, which was now filled with notes, and a satisfied smile spread across his face.
He had chosen his direction.
—Differential Geometry.
Chen Lin had chosen this direction after careful consideration, mainly for two reasons.
The first and most important reason was to lay the technical groundwork for his future foray into the field of large-scale AI models.
From what he’d learned recently, Chen Lin knew that tech giants all over the world were frantically burning money on large models, but the field’s development was facing a huge bottleneck: hallucinations.
Simply put, it’s when an AI model spouts authoritative-sounding nonsense while generating content, fabricating information that seems plausible but is actually completely false.
If this problem couldn’t be solved, large models would never be more than sophisticated toys. It would be difficult to achieve true unmanned, automated applications in serious fields that demand absolute precision, such as scientific research, financial analysis, and autonomous driving.
And Differential Geometry, as a branch of mathematics that studies spaces, shapes, and structures, could provide a brand-new mathematical toolkit and theoretical framework for solving this "hallucination" problem.
This would be a core technological advantage he was stockpiling for his future company.
As for the second reason, it was more practical and even more critical.
Namely, that in the entire world today, the most preeminent and authoritative figure in the field of Differential Geometry was none other than the renowned Professor Qiu Chengtong.
Professor Qiu Chengtong was one of the most accomplished living Chinese mathematicians, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, and a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences. He also held a series of prestigious positions at Huaqing University: Chair Professor, Director of the Qiu Chengtong Mathematical Sciences Center, and Dean of the Seeking Truth Academy.
Chen Lin had also just taken some time to learn the basic conventions of academic research.
Mathematical research wasn’t something you could do in isolation. You couldn’t just lock yourself away, produce a result, and call it a day.
This was especially true for purely theoretical results. Unlike experiments in Physics or chemistry, you couldn’t just run some data through an instrument or a computer to verify them.
Often, for a new mathematical theory to be considered correct and valuable, it needed to be reviewed and recognized by the top experts in the field. It needed their endorsement to truly gain acceptance from the entire mathematical community.