putnam practice problems for 202? at uottawa

Tuesday problem-solving sessions are 19:00–21:00 on Thursdays, in room STEM-664, run by mike newman. You don't need to attend these sessions to write the Putnam, and you don't need to write the Putnam to attend these sessions. But if you are interested in attending the practice sessions and/or writing the Putnam, please email me.

We'll have a problem set each week. There will usually be a "theme" topic; I might give a (short!) talk on some useful results and techniques. Problems are not limited to the theme of the week. Each meeting I encourage students to present their solutions. This is a non-judgemental inclusive event, so everyone is welcome. There is no shame in not solving everything by yourself.

One obstacle that students sometimes face is that they solve a problem but end up not writing down a nice solution. The Putnam is graded rather severely: 1/10 on a question means some nontrivial progress. So I will make a suggestion: write out complete solutions for all the problems you solve! Think about them, rewrite them, go through a few drafts. Can you improve the presentation? Can you improve the arguement? Sneakily enough, this will help you in all your mathematical pursuits…

I will post problems several days (even a week?) before each meeting, and hints one week after the meeting later, and maybe solutions at some point. The files are set up so that you can easily look at one hint or solution without accidentally seeing hints for everything. But it's more fun to solve problems yourself! Here is a rough outline.

dateproblemsdiscussion topic
27 sept questions hints
4 oct questions hints inequalities
11 oct questions hints number theory
18 oct questions hints linear algebra
25 oct reading week
1 nov questions hints groups and permutation groups
8 nov questions hints an $\epsilon$ of analysis and convergence
15 nov questions hints some discreet combinatorics
22 nov questions
29 nov questions
putnam saturday 3 december 10:00–13:00 and 15:00–18:00
❄ ☃ ❄ ☃ ❄
28 feb questions hints we're baaaack…
7 march questions hints
$\pi$ questions hints
march 21 questions hints
march 28 questions hints
april 4 no problems (sad face)
april 11 working on previous problems
july 27 questions hints solutions
august 3 questions hints
august 10 questions hints solutions
august 17 no problems
august 24 questions hints
september 12 questions hints solutions
september 21 No new set this week; go over previous couple of sets. trying out thursdays… in the future, monday or thursday?
september 28 questions hints
october 5 questions hints Some general discussion of inequalities first?
october 12 questions hints
october 19 questions hints
november 2 questions hints
november 9 questions hints
november 30 questions
2024 january 18 questions hints
2024 january 25 questions hints
2024 february 1 questions hints
2024 february 8 questions hints
2024 february 15 questions hints
2024 february 29 questions hints
2024 march 14 questions hints
2024 march 28 questions
2024 april 4 questions
2024 april 25 questions
2024 may 31 questions
2024 june 6 questions
2024 september 16 questions welcome back!
2024 september 23 questions
2024 september 30 questions
2024 october 7 questions
2024 october 21 questions
2024 october 28 questions
2024 november 4 questions
2024 november 11 questions
2024 november 18 questions
2024 november 25 questions
2024 december 2 questions

other resources

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