Word: mathes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Saturday, most college students aren’t even awake yet. Yet on this morning, 71 students are sitting in Science Center C, alert and ready to begin thinking about determinants and combinatorics. By 6 p.m., they will have pored over math problems in two three-hour sessions...
While some leave, ready to replenish their mental energies by going to bed, others think it’s all in a day’s work. Some head upstairs to the math department lounge for celebratory cookies and fruit. From then on, a certain solidarity unites them: as they walk out of the Science Center’s rotating doors, over brunch the next day, or during a chance meeting in the Yard, they will discuss the 12 problems on this year’s Putnam Mathematical Competition that they spent a whole day in December trying to solve...
Taking the Putnam is the only experience of its kind in the college world. A higher-level equivalent to high school math Olympiads, it’s funded by the estate of William Lowell Putnam, class of 1882. The 65-year-old annual competition is open to all undergraduate students enrolled at universities and colleges in the U.S. and Canada; some high school students, generally seniors also participate...
...serves as the team’s score, which is then compared to the scores of other college teams. Both the top five individuals, who are designated Putnam Fellows, and the five highest-scoring teams receive cash prizes. First prize is a hefty $25,000 that goes to the math department of the winning university and $1000 for each team member—an award that went to Harvard this year...
...past eighteen years, Harvard has placed first 14 times, a record unparalleled by any other university, even MIT and Caltech. In the other four years, Harvard consistently placed in the top five. Professor of Mathematics Noam Elkies, instructor for the intense first-year Math 55 and a three-time Putnam Fellow, ascribes this performance to the quality of the math students that matriculate at Harvard, laughing that “the people who can take the most credit for that is the admissions office...