Putnam Exam Preparation Seminar, Fall 2009
W 16:00-17:30 at LGRT 1322

The Putnam Exam is the most prestigious mathematical competition for undergraduate students of the United States and Canada. It was held annually since 1938, always on the first Saturday in December. The test consists of two three-hour sessions separated by a lunch break. There are twelve problems, which are formulated using only the most basic college mathematics, but solving them requires creativity that borders on ingenuity. You can find out more about the history of the Putnam Competition here. Problems, solutions, and winners of recent competitions are available here.

In 2008, a total of 3627 students from 545 colleges took the Putnam Exam. Following the tradition, the test was exceptionally hard and brutally graded. Half of the participated students scored 0 out of 120, that is they didn't receive even a single point of partial credit. But here's the good news: the University of Massachusetts had 7 participants and 5 of them (Nate Harman, Ilya Scheidwasser, Albert Tsou, Alex McAvoy, and Keaton Burns) scored in double digits!!! Our team was ranked 38th nationally (up from 43d last year and 143d the year before). The best individual result was achieved by Nate Harman (rank 133 nationally).

Unfortunately, one of our dream team participants has graduated and another has transfered to Berkeley. So we are looking forward to YOUR participation in Putnam 2009. To reserve a seat, you have to register in September by simply sending me an e-mail that you want to take the Putnam Exam. The exam for Umass participants will take place here at Umass. Later in the evening, there will be a party and discussion of problems for all Five College participants. So please free up that Saturday completely.

We also invite you to attend a weekly Putnam Exam preparation seminar Math 291A that meets on Wednesdays at 4pm in LGRT 1322. The goal of this workshop is to improve your problem-solving skills. You can either enroll in this class on SPIRE (for 1 credit) or participate without registering. To get credit, an affection to problem-solving (judged by your active class participation) and taking the exam in December are required. Just to be clear, participation in this seminar is not required for taking the Putnam Exam but then you will miss all the fun (and sometimes pizza)!

The first class will meet on September 9.

I will post worksheets for the class here:

Induction and Pigeonhole (Sep 9)
Games and Invariants (Sep 16)
Combinatorics (Sep 23)
Real Analysis (Sep 30)
Number Theory (Oct 7)
Geometry, Vectors, Complex Numbers (Oct 21)
Generating Functions (Oct 28)
Groups and Algebra (Nov 4)
Cool Putnam Problems (Nov 18)
There will be no class on Nov 25, see you on Dec 2 for the last class before the Putnam Exam on Dec 5!


Some of the problems in the worksheets are taken from the Putnam exams (see the link above for the full archive of problems) but most of them are easier. If you want more practice problems of this sort, check out the website of Ravi Vakil.