Preparation for the W.L. Putnam competition

FALL 2009

This blog is for preparation for 2009 W.L. Putnam competition. In the Fall quarter training sessions are held on Fridays 3:10-4PM in Surge 277 and on Thursdays 11AM-12PM in Surge 268. Thursday sessions are run by Jorge Perez

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: The 2009 W.L. Putnam mathematical competition will be held on DECEMBER 5 (Saturday) in Surge 268. The morning session is scheduled from 8:00AM till 11:00AM and the afternoon session is scheduled from 1:00PM till 4:00PM. I strongly encourage all registered students to come and participate in both morning and afternoon sessions. Good luck with the competition!

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Since the competition is scheduled for December 5 (Saturday) we will NOT have our training session on December 4 (Friday).

The best way to prepare for such a competition is to try to solve as many Putnam or olympiad type problems as you can. Below I listed the problems I suggest you to solve. Please, bring your solutions or ideas on how to solve these problems to training sessions and we will discuss them.

List of suggested problems

Problem 1

Problem 2

Problem 3

Problem 4

Problem 5

Problem 6

Problem 7

Problem 8

Problem 9

Problem 10

Problem 11

Problem 12

Problem 13

Problem 14

Problem 15

Problem 16

Problem 17

Problem 18

I would like to thank Apoorva Khare for suggesting to me Problem 13.

Please, also try Problem of the Week from Department of Mathematics at Purdue. As far as I understand a new problem appears every other week on Tuesday and its solution appears in two weeks on Monday. It is Jason Belajack who brought my attention to this series of problems.

For more resources please visit this page.