Mudders Impress at Putnam Competition
April 12, 2017Share story
无忧视频 is once again the top-scoring undergraduate institution in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical聽Competition, considered one of the world鈥檚 most prestigious university-level mathematics competitions.
Thirty-three HMC students spent the better part of Saturday, Dec. 3, taking聽this notoriously difficult six-hour exam, which requires unique blend of cleverness聽and problem-solving skills. The median score for the competition, in which 4,164 students from the U.S. and Canada participated, was 1 out of a possible 120. The median score for Harvey Mudd students was 15.
In team competition, Adam Busis 鈥19, Jordan Haack 鈥19 and Abram Sanderson 鈥17 placed an impressive 8th out of 568 institutions, and Harvey Mudd was the top scoring undergraduate institution.
In the individual category, Busis ranked 65th in the nation, and ZiYang Zhang 鈥19 ranked 79th; both received honorable mentions. Four other Harvey Mudd students, Shyan Akmal 鈥19, Haack, Sanderson and Natchanon Suaysom 鈥18, scored in the top 200.
Lists of the top 10 teams and the top 100 individual contestants will be published in the聽American Mathematical Monthly聽along with the problems and their solutions.
鈥淲e are proud of聽all聽33 students who sacrificed their time, talent,聽and energies to represent us in this year’s聽Putnam聽competition,鈥 says Mohamed Omar, professor of mathematics and Putnam Seminar co-coach (along with Professor of Mathematics Francis Su). 鈥淭hese students who enjoy problem-solving represent a cross-section of聽majors at the College.鈥
Elizabeth Lowell Putnam founded the event in 1927 in memory of her husband, William Lowell Putnam, a Harvard graduate and advocate of intercollegiate intellectual competition. Administered by the Mathematical Association of America, the six-hour exam, composed of 12 problems worth 10 points each, has been offered annually since 1938 to regularly enrolled undergraduates in the United States and Canada who have not yet received a college degree. Harvey Mudd students first participated in the Putnam competition on Dec. 2, 1961. In 1991, the Harvey Mudd team earned third place.