Word: vakil
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...history, part history, part journalism, part polemical essay. His favored method is to use an often mundane morsel of information and then launch into an erudite analysis of the surprisingly complex ingredients of which it is composed. For example, the unorthodox orthography of the name of his friend, AbdoolKarim Vakil, and the particularly rigorous tradition of arranged marriage prevalent among the Mirpuri Pakistanis (one of the largest constituents of Bradford's Asian population) set Sardar off on investigations that always return him to the subcontinent and mostly to two episodes that have defined the region: colonial rule and partition. Time...
...with full credit for a problem netting ten points. While the number of problems may seem low to Harvard students used to taking SATs and Math 21a examinations, the majority of the test-takers don’t even receive full credit for a single problem. According to Ravi Vakil, co-author of a book on the competition from 1985-2000 and the Putnam coordinator at Stanford, the median score is usually zero or one. “Keeping in mind that the people taking the Putnam are self-selected from the smartest mathematical minds in the continent, this undoubtedly...
...high performance is still a demonstration of the “disproportionate amount of talent” which Harvard has gathered. However, those who glory in Harvard’s record beware: more students from MIT placed in the top 500 (55 total) than from any other school. Vakil finds this phenomena telling, saying ominously, “It’s possible that Harvard’s reign might come...
...tail end of a dynasty of Michael Jordanian proportions, with 13 first-place finishes since 1985. At one point, Harvard teams went 8-0. "Once Harvard began its roll, the most talented high school students in the U.S. started to overwhelmingly choose to go to Harvard," says Vakil. "As a result, the undergraduate math program at Harvard has become the hardest in the country, and perhaps the world...
...kinds of intelligence." In other words, there's hope for us all. Even a genius can flunk a math test--and sometimes that's a good thing. "If you're someone who only likes getting 100% on everything you do, you're going to find the Putnam quite distressing," Vakil says philosophically. "But then again, in both life and in research mathematics, you'll have to deal with problems that you can't solve...