Preparation for the W.L. Putnam competition

FALL 2011

This blog is for preparation for the W.L. Putnam competition. In the Fall semester TRAINING SESSIONS are held on Thursdays 3:30-4:30PM in Wachman Hall 609. The first training session will be held on Sept 8.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: The 2011 W.L. Putnam mathematical competition will be held on DECEMBER 3 (Saturday) in Wachman Hall, Rm. 617. The morning session is scheduled from 10:00am till 1:00pm and the afternoon session is scheduled from 3:00pm till 6:00pm. All registered students can participate in the competition.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: We will NOT have our training session on Nov 10 (Thursday). See you next week on Nov 17.

The best way to prepare for Putnam 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

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.

For more resources please visit this page.