Exams

So how did your exams go /sci/?

>>40
Still better than fuckin 4-5 months for the Putnam results.

>>41
What level of maths is the putnam stuff aimed at, I never did olympiad shit, but it seems marginally higher level than that (if less plane geometry dominated from what I remember of the olympiad), but it still seems quite low level to be aimed at anything above first year undergrad.

>>42
You're eligible for the Putnam as long as you haven't gotten a bachelor's yet.  The knowledge base required is restricted to basic undergraduate stuff: Calculus, rational number theory, linear algebra, and combinatorics. Maybe graph theory, complex analysis or group theory here and there.  The purpose of the test, though, isn't to test your subject knowledge, but to test cleverness, creativity, speed, and general problem solving ability.  On the other hand, if you're not *absolutely* fluent with these subjects to the point that they are second nature, to the point that you can solve the relevant questions on those TRIPOS tests almost without thinking, you'll be seriously handicapped during the actual test.  Many people who wind up with PhD's from top universities (including one from MIT that I know personally) never score higher than 10 or 20 out of 120.

If you haven't already found it, here's the official problem archive: http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/putnamindex.shtml
Problem #1 on either half is typically a giveaway, and #6 is typically next to impossible.  The ones in between vary randomly in difficulty.

>>43
interesting, might give some a go for a whirl.

I never liked the idea behind these maths competitions though, the questions always seemed to neat.

>>44
Yeah, solving them is usually a matter of spotting "the trick", so to some degree it's more of an intelligence test than a straight mathematics test, but some people like that.  I like it somewhat, but only in small doses usually.

I got an A (not A-, A) in my multivariable integral calculus class.

\o/

For the summer, I will learn linear algebra. I already got Friedberg's Linear Algebra in e-book form! I love this text so far.