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William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
The 67th annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition will be held on the first Saturday in December. We will begin soon to prepare a team for the competition, please contact the Putnam Team Coordinator if you are interested.
We will need to prepare a preliminary list of candidates within the first two weeks of Fall quarter. The final list of team members and alternates will be decided by the coordinator near the end of the quarter. Criteria used in the selection process will be based on merits such as, but not limited to, participation in the weekly practice sessions, history of performance on previous years' exams (if any), and other scholarly achievements. There are no minimum qualifications in terms of major or completed course work, only candidates must be current undergraduate students not yet having attained a degree (four-year or more) in any field of study.
Please note that participation is an honor and no registration fee is required due to the sponsorship of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). Previous EWU teams have done exceptionally well in recent years, and been acknowledged in the Spokesman Review, and by the EWU Board of Trustees on multiple occasions. In 1994 Eastern's team finished highest in the state of Washington, and in the region (WA/OR/ID/MT) second only to Reed College. In 1995, Eastern's team finished third in the region preceded only by Reed College and University of Washington.
To help practice for the exam, we will be organizing weekly practice sessions for the candidate team members and alternates. More information on this will be posted later.
We look forward to an enthusiastic participation this year.
Putnam Meetings:
Kingston 227
Wednesdays: 4:00 - 5:00
Thursdays: 3:00 - 4:00
Putnam Exam Questions #1
Putnam Exam Questions #2
Putnam Exam Questions #3
FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE COMPETETION
[Parts extracted from the brochure "The Fifty-Eigth Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition"]
History
The competition began in 1938 and is designed to stimulate a healthful rivalry in mathematical studies in the colleges and universities of the United States and Canada. It exists because Mr. William Lowell Putnam had a profound conviction in the value of organized team competition in regular college studies. Mr. Putnam, a member of the Harvard class of 1882, wrote an article for the December 1921 issue of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine in which he described the merits of an intellectual intercollegiate competition. To establish such a competition, his widow, Elizabeth Lowell Putnam, in 1927 created a trust fund known as the William Lowell Putnam Intercollegiate Memorial Fund. The first competition supported by this fund was in the field of English and a few years later a second experimental competition was held, this time in mathematics between two
institutions. It was not until after Mrs. Putnam's death in 1935 that the examination assumed its present form and was placed under the administration of the Mathematical Association of America.
Rules
The competition is open only to regularly enrolled undergraduates, in colleges and universities of the United States and Canada, who have not yet received a college degree. No individual may participate in the competition more that four times. An eligible entrant who is also a high school student must be informed of this four time limit.
A college or university with at least three registered entrants obtains a team rank through the positions achieved by three designated individual contestants.
No collaboration or outside assistance is permitted during the examination. Each contestant, even if designated as a team member, must work independently on the examination questions.
Description
The examination will be constructed to test originality as well as technical competence. It is expected that the contestant will be familiar with the formal theories embodied in undergraduate mathematics. It is assumed that such training, designed for mathematics and physical science majors, will include somewhat more sophisticated mathematical concepts than is the case in
minimal courses. Thus the differential equations course is presumed to include some references to qualitative existence theorems and subtleties beyond the routine solution devices. Questions will be included that cut across the bounds of various disciplines, and self-contained questions that do not fit into any of the usual categories may be included. It will be assumed that the contestant has acquired a familiarity with the body of mathematical lore commonly discussed in mathematics clubs or in courses with such titles as "survey of the foundations of mathematics." It is also expected that the self-contained questions involving elementary concepts from group theory, set theory, graph theory, lattice theory, number theory, and cardinal arithmetic will not be entirely foreign to the contestant's experience.
Grading
Each problem is graded on a basis of 0 to 10 points. All the necessary work to justify an answer and all the necessary steps of a proof must be shown clearly to obtain full credit. Some partial credit may be given, but only when a contestant has shown significant and substantial progress toward a solution.
Prizes and Scholarships
William Lowell Putnam Prizes
Prizes will be awarded to the departments of mathematics of the institutions with the five winning teams. In addition, there will be prizes awarded to each of the members of these teams. The five highest ranking individuals and to each of the next twenty highest ranking contestants.
The trustees of the Putnam Fund also will award at Harvard University or at Radcliffe College the annual William Lowell Putnam Prize Scholarship to one of the Putnam Fellows. This scholarship is available either immediately or on completion of the undergraduate course of the successful candidate and carries a value of up to $12,000 plus tuition at Harvard.
Institutions throughout the United States and Canada are encouraged to offer fellowships to high ranking contestants in the competition.
Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize
The Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize will be awarded periodically to a woman whose performance on the Competition has been deemed particularly meritorious. This prize would be in addition to any other prize she might otherwise win. Women contestants, to be eligible for this prize, must specify their gender.
EWU TEAM SCORES YEAR BY YEAR
| Academic Year | Team Score | Team Rank |
| 2003/04 | N/A | N/A |
| 2002/03 | N/A | N/A |
| 2001/02 | 11 | >150/400 |
| 2000/01 | 22 | 88/434 |
| 1999/2000 | 1 | >150/431 |
| 1998/99 | 39 | >150/419 |
| 1997/98 | 21 | 97/419 |
| 1996/97 | 15 | >150/405 |
| 1995/96 | 48 | 73/405 (*) |
| 1994/95 | 34 | 87/409 |
| 1993/94 | 28 | >150/408 |
| 1992/93 | 2 | >150/393 |
| 1991/92 | 28 | >150/383 |
EWU TOP 500 HALL OF FAME
| Name | Score | Rank | Year |
| Peter Lowe (*) | 20 | 289.5/2900 | 1999 |
| Kelly Jahns | 28 | 340.5/2468 | 1995 |
| Peter Lowe | 12 | 353.5/2818 | 2000 |
| Daniel Jump (**) | 30 | 410/2581 | 1998 |
| Emil Kraft | 20 | 415/2356 | 1993 |
| Kaleb Pederson | 12 | 447/2900 | 1999 |
| Eric Johnson | 18 | 493/2314 | 1994 |
| Jeff Oram | 18 | 493/2314 | 1994 |
(**) Highest EWU individual performance by score