anfin’s Blog

I did anyway. Yes that’s right. I started the Putnam this morning and with only one 2 hour break for lunch finished after dark. For those of you who are wondering what in the world the Putnam is, I’ll tell you. The Putnam is a math test given nation wide on the first Saturday of December. It is designed for undergrads and consists of 12 outstandingly difficult questions. How difficult you ask? Well if it’s any indication, the mode score is generally a 0 (in a good year it might be 1). In other words, over half the people that take it get a 0, and what’s worse, the test is out of 120 points instead of 100. Anyway, my goal for the day was to get a 1. It’s possible that I might have assuming the graders are feeling generous, but honestly, I highly doubt it. That’s right I spent my entire day trying to score 1 point on a math test and it probably didn’t happen. In conclusion, don’t you just hate those people who, in the face of the other test-takers saying, “I think I might have started to have the right idea on 1 or 2 of the problems,” walk out of the Putnam telling the professor, “Yeah, well, I really didn’t have time to refine my proof…”

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Math. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.