The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition

General

• potential preparation sessions;
• talk to me;
• people in the department (faculty and other students) who will be happy to talk with you;
• the more recent Putnam exams (and solutions), easily available as books or on the web (see below);

Books

• The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition 1985-2000: Problems Solutions, and Commentary, by Kiran S. Kedlaya, Bjorn Poonen, and Ravi Vakil (ISBN 0-88385-087-X); the best!
• The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition problems and solutions : 1965-1984, by Gerald L. Alexanderson, Leonard F. Klosinski, Loren C. Larson (ISBN 0883854414);
• Problem Solving through Problems, by Loren Larson and Paul Halmos (ISBN 0387961712);
• The Art and Craft of Problem Solving, by Paul Zeitz (ISBN-10: 0471789011);
• Putnam and Beyond, by R. Gelca and Titu Andreescu (ISBN13: 978-0-387-25765-5); another great book!
• Which Way Did the Bicycle Go?, by Joseph D. E. Konhauser, Dan Velleman, and Stan Wagon (ISBN 0-88385-325-6);
• The Green Book of Mathematical Problems, by K. Hardy and K. Williams, (ISBN 0-486-69573-5);
• The Red Book of Mathematical Problems, by K. Hardy and K. Williams, (ISBN 0-486-69415-1).

Online resources

• Links to sites about the Putnam
  • The official Putnam website.
  • Some more links are available through this good UCSD site, by Patrick Fitzsimmons.
• Putnam preparation sites
  • (the best!) For 6 years, the Putnam preparation at Stanford was run by Ravi Vakil. Here are links to his problem solving seminar pages from 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 2006, and 2007.
  • The Math contests site of UIUC, with a link to "mock putnam" exams.
  • The Problem Solving Seminar of Duke University, a course designed to prepare students for mathematical competitions such as the Putnam and the Virginia Tech Contest. It contains problem lists from the Duke Math Meet.
  • The Putnam preparation site of Duquesne University.
  • The Putnam preparation site of MIT. Also, an older page there which, for some reason, does not let me see the problems, but at least I can see the topics.
  • The Putnam preparation site of Harvard. It is worth visiting because every day they publish a new practice problem (problem of the day).
    
• Links to sites with old Putnam problems and solutions
  • An "unofficial" compilation of old Putnam problems and solutions, collected and maintained by Kiran Kedlaya;
  • An MIT site with solutions to the 1987 Putnam problems. Has some book references.
  • This site is maintained by Dave Rusin. It has some problems and solutions, and, most importantly, links to training programs in other universities.
  • To find solutions to older Putnams, you can read the official solutions in the American Mathematical Monthly, which you can see electronically (from any Elizabethtown College computer) at JSTOR. At that page, 'Search this journal' for "William Lowell Putnam" in the title. Or, if you don't feel like searching, the following table will help you.
• Links to other Math Competitions and Problem Collections
  • The Math Problem Directory, maintained by Kiran S. Kedlaya
  • The Official International Math Olympiad Page.
  • The Unofficial International Math Olympiad Page.
  • The Math Olympiad Archive of AMC.
  • The Math Problem Archive of U. Waterloo.
  • The APICS contest problems at Dalhousie.
  • Problem of the week site at Purdue.
  • William Wu's Riddle Collection. William Wu says: "This is a collection of riddles I've accumulated since the early Spring of 2002. Many of them are from job interviews for hi-tech positions (a la Microsoft). I like these problems because they demand you to think in creative ways you normally wouldn't. Riddles are organized by difficulty as judged by myself: easy, medium, and hard. Then there is the microsoft section, consisting of questions that either don't have definite answers, or are just so weird that I decided they belonged in a section of their own. The CS and Putnam sections contain problems which may require special background in computer science and mathematics, respectively."

Questions? Suggestions? Contact me.

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Putnam preparation sessions - schedule and topics

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