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Every year, on the first Saturday in December, 2,500 of the most brilliant college students in North America take what may be the hardest math test in the world. How tough is it? Although there are only 12 questions, the test lasts six hours. And although these are the best and brainiest young minds our country has to offer, the median score on last year's test was 1 point. Out of a possible...
Welcome to the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, which was administered for the 63rd time in its grueling history on Dec. 7. The Putnam is arguably the most prestigious math contest in the world. It's also a rite of passage for math cognoscenti--think of it as a coming-out party for the next generation of beautiful minds. Do well, and you'll earn the envy of your peers and the inside track on a future Nobel. Do badly and--well, don't feel too bad. John Nash took the test twice and never scored among the top five...
...Putnam Competition was originally proposed by a Boston lawyer named William Lowell Putnam as a friendly intercollegiate math competition, and it was first held in 1938 (bragging rights that year went to the University of Toronto). Each year a three-professor committee spends four or five months devising the 12 problems, which are arranged in order of increasing difficulty. It's an all-day affair: two three-hour sessions with a two-hour break. No calculators, no notes, no mercy. "There certainly is a mystique surrounding the exam," says Ravi Vakil, co-author of a book about the exam...
...individual finishers, designated Putnam Fellows, get $2,500 each; the top teams get larger cash prizes: $25,000 for first place. As for the rest, the names and rankings of the top 500 scorers are circulated on a list that's released in March and eagerly perused by the math elite--a social register for the aristocracy of arithmetic. "Grading is quite strict," says Professor Richard Stanley, who coaches M.I.T.'s team. Partial credit is rare. Out of 2,954 students who took the test last year, only 50 got 50% or better...
Oddly enough, the Record reports that Northfield Regional’s field hockey team booted 14 seniors that year for overseeing bizarre, sexually inappropriate hazing incidents. There were 14 seniors on the team’s roster that year. Do the math. All told, it’s been quite a two-year stretch for the Minutos, with twists and turns worthy of HBO primetime...