Putnam Club Archive

Organizers: Dima Arinkin, Simon Marshall

The Putnam Exam, offered by the Mathematical Association of America, is the premier American math competition for undergraduate students. It is given each year on the first Saturday in December. The exam consists of 12 problems, 6 in the 3 hour morning session and 6 in the 3 hour afternoon session. Each problem is worth 10 points, so the maximum score is 120. National winners usually get around 100 points. The median score is generally around 0-2 points. This is a difficult exam with many interesting and fun problems.

Old exams and more information on the Putnam competition.

The UW is also participating in the Virginia Tech Regional Mathematics Contest (which was held this year on October 25th). This is an individual competition with seven problems in 2.5 hours. Many schools use it as a kind of rehearsal for the Putnam. You can find more information over here.

Fall 2014

The Putnam Club will help you prepare for the exam by practicing on problems from previous years and other olympiad-style problems. This year, the Putnam Club will meet on Wednesdays from 5:00-6:30 PM, beginning on September 17, in room B115 Van Vleck Hall. The meetings will be lead by Profs. Dima Arinkin and Simon Marshall.

• September 17: Introductory meeting
• September 22: Coloring and pigeonhole principle
• October 1st: Went through HW problems from last time
• October 8th: Number theory
• October 15th: Games
• October 22nd: Problems from last year's Virginia Tech contest
• October 25th: Virginia Tech Regional Mathematics Contest
• October 29th: Review of this year's Virginia Tech contest
• November 5th: Inequalities and functional equations
• November 12th: Polynomials
• November 19th: Combinatorics
• December 3rd: Recursions
• December 6th: Putnam competition: Morning session: 9am-12pm, Afternoon session: 2pm-5pm in Van Vleck B119
• December 10th: Review of this year's Putnam

Fall 2013

• September 11: Introductory Meeting
• September 18: Assorted Problems (by Yihe Dong)
• September 25: Combinatorics
• October 2: Matrices and Linear Algebra
• October 9: Number Theory
• October 16: Functions and Calculus
• October 23: Polynomials
• October 26: Virginia Tech Regional Mathematics Contest
• October 30: Problems from this year's Virginia Tech contest
• November 6: Games
• November 13: Pigeonhole Principle
• November 20: Extreme Principle
• November 27: No meeting (Thanksgiving)
• December 4: TBA
• December 7: Putnam competition Morning session: 9am-12pm, afternoon session: 2-5pm in VV B239.

Fall 2012

• September 11: Introduction Problems
• September 18: Some Basic Techniques Problems
• September 25: Polynomials and Algebra Problems
• October 2: Number Theory Problems
• October 9: Calculus Problems
• October 16: Games and Algorithms Problems
• October 23: Combinatorics Problems
• October 30: Probability Problems
• November 6: Linear Algebra Problems
• November 13: Grab Bag Problems
• November 27: Grab Bag 2 Problems

Fall 2011

• September 21: Pigeonhole Principle (Brian Rice) Problems
• September 28: Introduction to Counting (Brian Rice) Problems
• October 5: Elementary Number Theory (Brian Rice) Problems, Problems (Hardcore)
• October 12: Polynomials (Brian Rice) Problems, Problems (Hardcore)
• October 19: A Grab Bag of Discrete Math (Brian Rice) Problems
• October 26: Calculus, Week 1 (Brian Rice) Problems
• November 2: Calculus, Week 2 (Brian Rice) Problems
• November 9: Linear and Abstract Algebra (Brian Rice) Problems
• November 16: Mock Putnam Problems, Solutions