Talk:William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition

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[edit] Difficulty of and skills needed on the Putnam

Problems posed are elementary, usually requiring no knowledge of mathematics beyond second-year calculus, but will completely stump anyone whose knowledge is mere rote.

But could also completely stump someone whose knowledge is more than rote. (I've never taken the Putnam, so this isn't sour grapes. But I know more than a few people who took the Putnam exam a few times and scored ZERO or very close to zero every time, yet went on to complete the Ph.d. and have perfectly successful careers as research mathematicians. And although I have no concrete data, I'm sure there are some who do well on the exam and yet fail in graduate school for whatever reason.) Of course, creativity and insight are very helpful with these kinds of contests, and it's no surprise many super-researchers have done well on them, but I think we should try to avoid giving the impression that the ability to do well on these kinds of competitions is some indicator of the ability to do research. In fact, doing research in math is a much different activity than taking a 6-hour test, and the types of skills involved in working on research over months and years on a problem is different than coming up with a clever solution on the spot in 2 hours. I don't mean to say that many of the Putnam problems aren't fascinating or enjoyable, (many are), but many of the solutions also seem to me to be based on ad-hoc "tricks" and the problems often seem to be isolated and not related to any overarching mathematical concerns.

I don't mean to sound like a grouch, this is just some comments. I realize I have a sort of bias against math "competitions" in general -- the idea that math is a "competition" with winners and losers seems antithetical to the spirit of mathematics to me. Revolver


The putnam is the primary indicator for performance as a research mathematician, unless of course you pursue undergraduate mathematical research and succeed in obtaining a useful result. Otherwise a zero on the putnam should be an indicator for a change of career. Charleton Heston

[edit] Table width

An edit over the last day added "width=100%" to both tables. Why? I think this is a bad idea:

1. There's no reason to have the two tables in this article the same width, whatever width that may be, because they're different tables. It would be something different if we had "winners 1953-1990" and "1990-2003," in which case you would want the two tables to match. But they're completely different tables.

2. Let the user's browser decide. If someone has a 2000-pixel wide screen with tiny text, you're going to change

FirstName LastName Year, Year, Year, Year

to

FirstName LastName Year, Year, Year, Year

Which is much harder to read in a long table, like we have.

Perhaps let's compromise on centering both tables, but leaving them at their natural, browser-determined width. -Rjyanco 11:04, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good. --Lowellian 01:41, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting the article

Should there perhaps be a separate article "Putnam Exam: High Scoring Teams and Indivduals," to which the tables can be removed? This page can remain the basic description. (This is in line with many other parts of the wikipedia where lists have their own separate page.) Doops 23:23, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. Perhaps the main article can list the most recent winners (team and individual) and provide an internal link to the list, as you say. I would think your best bet is to separate the two -- Putnam, Putnam/Fellows, Putnam/Top Scoring Teams. Rjyanco 19:03, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I personally feel that the page is not yet so large that it needs to be split. Also, splitting the page may create problems in that we may not all agree on how best to split the tables and what exactly to name the other pages (there are already several suggestions for page names above). --Lowellian 01:40, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tracking down the Fellows

I've been periodically running Google searches and trying to figure out which of the Putnam Fellows have had significant careers since, and wikifying the ones who seem notable. I don't think we should wikify the whole list, because plenty of those people seem to have disappeared into obscurity, but I want to have links for any that might deserve an article. No particular methodology, just seeing how many hits I get, whether they've won any awards, whether anyone's holding conferences in their honor, and other things like that. Isomorphic 08:32, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the question is what we consider significant. If memory serves, Noam Elkies was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard history. Bjorn Poonen and Ravi Vakil (who are profs and help teach the Bay Area Math Circle) worked with Kiran Kedlaya to put out the most recent book of Putnam problems.

From another perspective, I have to assume that eventually someone will put together a list of IMO teams from the US (again, it's only 5-6 kids a year, and it hasn't been going on as long). And someone will put together a list of other Olympiad teams. And for someone like Ari Turner, who also competed in the International Physics Olympiad, would having a person's name in a few articles automatically warrant their own article? Rjyanco 12:19, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

As one of the fellows who has more or less "disappeared into obscurity", I do resent being left out of the list of four-time Putnam Fellows. I haven't checked the list for other name variants, though. (It was my first Wikipedia edit. Please be gentle with me for not entering the comment as to what I did -- changing "Arthur L. Rubin" to "Arthur Rubin", as they're both me.)--68.66.213.109 12:43, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, welcome to Wikipedia! You've actually taken the first step: you saw an error and corrected it. From what I can tell, the list was more or less taken directly from [1], so since you showed up as Arthur Rubin 3 times and Arthur L. Rubin once, whoever entered the table didn't notice the repetition. Congratulations on the rare feat, and feel free to register an account and become an active member of Wikipedia. Jonpin 18:50, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. -Rjyanco 19:00, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone take it?

Did anyone take the 2004 Putnam today? What did you think of it? Jonpin 03:27, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject. Temperalxy 02:32, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Wow, way to slam the stable door nearly 35 months after the horses have left. Doops | talk 02:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] american only?

is this only for american students? --euyyn (talk) 16:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC) I recall it being American and Canadian only. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)