Well this is just a coincidence. Last time I wrote about the novel "A Beautiful Mind" (I don't think underline is an option). According to that biography, John Nash was obsessed with the Putnam competition, mostly because he never managed to win and the winner gets a scholarship to Harvard (he was also obsessed with Harvard). Well the Putnam is still around, and weekly training seminars have just started here at UCR. They're Fridays 3:10-4:00 pm in surge 277 in case anyone wants to give it a shot, and yes, I am a nerd, but I love it. =)
The Putnam is basically a super hard math test with very unorthodox questions. Most of the questions require you to present an in depth and original proof. Although the proofs required are no where near as complicated as proving say, L'Hopital's theorem, they are tricky and require quite a bit of clever manipulation from the participant. Just getting the right answer would not guarantee all the points, or even any for that matter. The proof is the important part.
A participant can enter a maximum of three times, and cannot have a college degree. So no super advanced math is required, and to be honest no math at all is required. It's all finding the right pattern or whatever and being able to express it unambiguously.
The actual competition will not be held until December, so there's a nice long amount of time to train.
Why this competition appeals so much to me: Not only because it's famous and it's neat to participate in something famous, but math is wonderful! It's amazing to take a situation that does not directly have anything to do with math or numbers and depict it perfectly through numbers and formulas.
Anyway, visit http://math.scu.edu/putnam/ if you want more information.
-Osvaldo Enriquez
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