- The problem solving seminar is officially continuing this spring, making it a year-round math-venture! 🙂 We’ll use the same zoom link and mailing list as fall 2020 (see below to sign up).
Over 100 Yalies took the 2020 Putnam, and they decided my hair should be dyed green in celebration!
In the fall, I ran a weekly problem solving seminar (together with course assistant Fernando Trejos). One purpose of this is to enable students to prepare for math competitions such as the Putnam exam, but a much larger goal is just to provide a space for folks to chill out, see cool math, meet people, and spend time with friends. 🙂
Everybody is very warmly welcomed regardless of any level of math background. Interested folks can sign up here for emails about weekly meetings or contact me (or Fernando) to find out more. Our virtual meetings will be Tuesdays 7-8:30pm [ET]. Sign up for the mailing list for links.
(On a related note, I’m also excited to be partnering with our student math groups to run Pat’s Cats Power Hour!, which is a just-for-funzies mathy-social gathering meeting weekly on Fridays. Cats, friends, and fun will all be there. See YUMS emails for session links [you can sign up for YUMS emails here].)
Putnam pdfs
- First meeting (September 15, 2020)
- Induction (September 22, 2020)
- Pigeonhole Principle (September 29, 2020)
- Invariants (October 6, 2020)
- Integers (October 13, 2020) [and here’s an introduction to modular arithmetic]
- Number theory (October 20 and 27, 2020)
- Functional equations (November 10, 2020)
- Polynomials (November 17, 2020)
- Recurrences (December 1, 2020) [Check out generating functions including Herb Wilf’s cool book generatingfunctionology]