Putnam preparations, 2016

First read more about the Putnam competition on this page's parent page

This year's UT Putnam competition will take place at 9am on Dec 3, 2016 in RLM 6.104 .

UT Students who want to prepare for the Putnam competition -- and even those who just want to learn some mathematics or have fun trying hard problems! -- are invited to join us for weekly practices during the Fall term. We meet WEDNESDAY evenings at 5:00 in RLM 10.176, working on problems for an hour or so until we stop for free pizza; then we stick around for another hour or so discussing our solutions and talking about related bits of mathematics and strategies for attacking these kinds of problems.

Students are encouraged to write up their solutions, too. You can bring your solutions to me so we can discuss how to improve your presentation, or you can send them to me to be posted here for the benefit of other students -- and to encourage others to give you feedback!

Here are the problem sets we've worked on so far.

  1. At our first meeting we tried a hodge-podge of interesting problems. I wrote up an answer for the last question and some comments about a few of the others, and have now gotten some solutions from Ethan and Dylan and Keonho Lee
  2. Some calculus-based problems and some notes on the solutions (including two solutions to number 3). Here are Dylan's solutions for problems 3,4, and 6 and Jack's solution and Keonho's solution to number 10.
  3. Combinatorics problems. Some solutions from Naren Manoj. Solution to number 6 from David Greene. Solution to number 9 from Jack Carlisle. Here are my notes.
  4. I found some Linear Algebra problems, but evidently a lot of students have had little or no exposure to L.A. so far. These kinds of problems are not uncommon on the Putnam, so I encourage you to think about them, but as I've said before, there are plenty of problems for you to shine on if you don't know one or another particular topic! Solution to number 5 from Jack Carlisle. Here are my comments about some of these problems.
  5. Nov 2 we had a lively look at Number Theory!. Here are some comments and solutions
  6. Last week we faced a variety of Geometry questions. Dylan got me his solutions faster than I could type up my own but here they are anyway.
  7. Nov 16 we went for a hodge-podge of problems. Here are some solutions I've written up. Dylan has good answers for problems 5 and 6
  8. No meeting Nov 23 but when we come back from Thanksgiving we will have one last Wednesday meeting on Nov 30. We will spend the time with one, actual, Putnam exam! Then the test itself is the following Saturday, Dec 3
I see there are various problems I didn't get a chance to think about and/or write up, nor did I get a solution from any student. Would you like to try them and I'll put them up here? I'd like: Week #3, Prob #3: Week #4, Probs #1,3,4; Week #5, Prob #8; Week #6, Prob #5; Week #7 seems to be complete but I welcome additional solutions or comments on any problems!

For more information about the competition please contact Dave Rusin in RLM 9.140. (rusin@math.utexas.edu)