OSU
Putnam Competition

This site contains information of interest to OSU students intending to participate in the

William Lowell Putnam Competition
which is an international mathematics problem-solving competition open to any students enrolled at a four-year undergraduate college or university who have not entered the competition four times in the past.

If you are enrolled at OSU and would like to participate this year, please send me an email at:

David Wright
We are holding only a few practice sessions before the exam, which are all completely voluntary. Here is the schedule:

Day Time Room Guide
Nov. 64:00 PMMS 405Dave Wright
Nov. 134:00 PMMS 405Dave Wright
Nov. 204:00 PMMS 405Dave Wright
Nov. 274:00 PMMS 405Dave Wright

The competition is on Saturday, December 1 at 8:50 AM in MS 317. Please bring only pencils or pens.

Here are some guides and the practice problems we have been studying:

Go ahead and try some of these. It is important to practice writing complete solutions down, even when you think you know how to do the problem. The details of writing often reveal aspects of the problem you didn't think about before.

Here is a sorting of old Putnam problems by category of mathematics. It also contains some common hints and facts for the various categories, although this needs to be considerably expanded. It's a 75 page PDF, so consider yourself warned!

The contest consists of two sessions 9 AM-12 noon and 2-5 PM, Saturday, December 1, 2007. Please show up by 8:50 AM in MS 317. Contestants are given six problems to solve in each three-hour session.

The problems are very difficult, and even solving one is considered a good result. The grading is very rigorous, and the solutions must be complete and fully justified and explained. Each problem is worth 10 points, and so the maximum score is 120 points. The problems are so difficult a large portion of the competitors score 0 every year.

Still, a little bit of familiarity with the exam can go a long way to ensuring that you solve at least one or two of the problems. OSU students have had many very good performances over the past ten years, with the best being in 1997, when the team performance was 20th out of 300 schools and better than all the Big 12 schools and in fact many of the elite colleges in the nation.

Here are some useful links about problem-solving:
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
The contest's home page.
Dave Rusin's Putnam File
Dave Rusin is a professor at Northern Illinois Univ., who is also a noted Putnam-ophile. He has stockpiled old exams and other useful information here.
American Mathematics Competitions
An organization that promotes mathematical competitions. They have a problems directory.
William Lowell Putnam Competition Archive
Hosted at the AMC
Index to Journal and Contest Problems
A searchable archive of problems proposed in contests and in journals.
University of Florida Putnam Competition Page
Compiled by Professor Kevin Keating. Has some nice lists of problems in PDF format (you need Adobe Acrobat to read them).
CRUX Mathematicorum
The Canadian Math Society's problem-solving journal.
David Wright Email
Last modified: Wed Nov 7 16:04:02 CET 2007