Putnam Competition

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition is a prestigious math contest for undergraduate college students in the US and Canada. It is held each year on the first Saturday in December, and consists of two, 3 hours sessions of 6 problems each.

Any undergraduate student with interest in mathematics and challenging problems is encouraged to take part in the Putnam competition. The registration deadline is in mid October, so any FIU student interested in the contest should contact me by then. There is no upper limit on the number of students that can register from a given school, although a team is formed by only 3 contestants designated in advance.

If you want to read more about the contest, here is its official web site.

You will find plenty of information, including archives of subjects and solutions from past years, on other sites on the web. Here are a few:
http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/putnamindex.shtml
http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/problems-math/
http://www.math.ksu.edu/main/events/ksucomp/putnam/putnam
 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Notable results by FIU teams and students:

2008 -  FIU team ranked 114-th out of 405 teams from US and Canada
            (team members: Rafael Badui, Ishtiaq Syed, David Shor)

             Individual results:
             Ish Syed                       - 20 pts - ranked in the top 619 out of  3627 participants
             Rafael Badui               -   9 pts - ranked in the top 1412
             Lenny Foret                 -  9 pts - ranked in the top 1412

2007 - FIU team ranked 96-th out of 413 teams from US and Canada
            (team members: James Fullwood, Rafael Badui, Walter Cravero)

            Individual results:
            Walter Cravero         - 13 pts - ranked in the top 708 out of 3753 participants
            Rafael Badui             - 12 pts - ranked in the top 819
            Istiaq Syed                 - 11 pts - ranked in the top 972
            David Shor                 - 10 pts - ranked in the top 1180

2006  - Individual results
         - Jorge Cantillo      - 10 pts - ranked in the top 747 out of 3640 participants
         - Sui Joo                 -  8 pts  - ranked in the top 938

2005 - Individual results
         - Fabio Beltramini -10 pts - ranked in the top 1055 out of 3545 participants
         - Jorge Cantillo      - 9 pts - ranked in the top 1265
         - Alejandro Presto  - 8 pts - ranked in the top 1348

2004 - FIU team ranked 89-th out of  411 teams from schools in  US and Canada
              (team members: Anca Vacarescu, Jorge Cantillo, Vasyl Kopych)

           Individual results:
           Anca Vacarescu   - 21 pts - ranked in the top 509 out of  3733 participants
           Jorge Cantillo       -10 pts - ranked in the top 1124

2003 - FIU team ranked 28-th out of  401 teams from schools in  US and Canada
              (team members: Anca Vacarescu, Alejandro Presto, Dennis Ledis)

           Individual results:
           Anca Vacarescu   - 26 pts - ranked in the top 265 out of 3615 participants
           Alejandro Presto  - 18 pts - ranked in the top 499
           Dennis Ledis        - 18 pts - ranked in the top 499.

2002  - Individual results
            Anca Vacarescu   - 11 pts - ranked in the top 1114 out of  3349 participants

2001 - FIU team ranked 44-th out of 336 teams from schools in  US and Canada
             (team members: Anca Vacarescu, Dane McGuckian, Pablo Maurin)

           Individual results:
           Anca Vacarescu       - 31 pts - ranked in the top 252 out of 2954 participants
           Dane McGuckian    - 21 pts - ranked in the top 415
           Pablo Maurin           - 10 pts - ranked in the top 970


If you want your name on this list, the first step is to take part in the competition.
The problems are difficult, but, hopefully, you will find it enjoyable to challenge yourself.
Each problem is worth 10 pts, so the maximum possible score is 120 pts. Don't worry about getting 120. (It never happened, in the recent years, at least.)
But you should know that if you manage to score just 1 point out of the 120, you'll already be in the top half of the participants!