Talk:William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition

Difficulty of and skills needed on the Putnam
Problems posed are elementary, usually requiring no knowledge of mathematics beyond second-year calculus, but will completely stump anyone whose knowledge is mere rote.

But could also completely stump someone whose knowledge is more than rote. (I've never taken the Putnam, so this isn't sour grapes. But I know more than a few people who took the Putnam exam a few times and scored ZERO or very close to zero every time, yet went on to complete the Ph.d. and have perfectly successful careers as research mathematicians. And although I have no concrete data, I'm sure there are some who do well on the exam and yet fail in graduate school for whatever reason.) Of course, creativity and insight are very helpful with these kinds of contests, and it's no surprise many super-researchers have done well on them, but I think we should try to avoid giving the impression that the ability to do well on these kinds of competitions is some indicator of the ability to do research. In fact, doing research in math is a much different activity than taking a 6-hour test, and the types of skills involved in working on research over months and years on a problem is different than coming up with a clever solution on the spot in 2 hours. I don't mean to say that many of the Putnam problems aren't fascinating or enjoyable, (many are), but many of the solutions also seem to me to be based on ad-hoc "tricks" and the problems often seem to be isolated and not related to any overarching mathematical concerns.

I don't mean to sound like a grouch, this is just some comments. I realize I have a sort of bias against math "competitions" in general -- the idea that math is a "competition" with winners and losers seems antithetical to the spirit of mathematics to me. Revolver


 * This isn't the place for "some comments". If you have anything to contribute to the article, please do so. -- 71.102.133.72 (talk) 06:45, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

The putnam is the primary indicator for performance as a research mathematician, unless of course you pursue undergraduate mathematical research and succeed in obtaining a useful result. Otherwise a zero on the putnam should be an indicator for a change of career. Charleton Heston
 * I highly doubt that anyone believes this. --24.6.6.121 (talk) 14:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Table width
An edit over the last day added "width=100%" to both tables. Why? I think this is a bad idea:

1. There's no reason to have the two tables in this article the same width, whatever width that may be, because they're different tables. It would be something different if we had "winners 1953-1990" and "1990-2003," in which case you would want the two tables to match. But they're completely different tables.

2. Let the user's browser decide. If someone has a 2000-pixel wide screen with tiny text, you're going to change

to

Which is much harder to read in a long table, like we have.

Perhaps let's compromise on centering both tables, but leaving them at their natural, browser-determined width. -Rjyanco 11:04, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good. --Lowellian 01:41, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

Splitting the article
Should there perhaps be a separate article "Putnam Exam: High Scoring Teams and Indivduals," to which the tables can be removed? This page can remain the basic description. (This is in line with many other parts of the wikipedia where lists have their own separate page.) Doops 23:23, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. Perhaps the main article can list the most recent winners (team and individual) and provide an internal link to the list, as you say. I would think your best bet is to separate the two -- Putnam, Putnam/Fellows, Putnam/Top Scoring Teams. Rjyanco 19:03, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I personally feel that the page is not yet so large that it needs to be split. Also, splitting the page may create problems in that we may not all agree on how best to split the tables and what exactly to name the other pages (there are already several suggestions for page names above). --Lowellian 01:40, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

Tracking down the Fellows
I've been periodically running Google searches and trying to figure out which of the Putnam Fellows have had significant careers since, and wikifying the ones who seem notable. I don't think we should wikify the whole list, because plenty of those people seem to have disappeared into obscurity, but I want to have links for any that might deserve an article. No particular methodology, just seeing how many hits I get, whether they've won any awards, whether anyone's holding conferences in their honor, and other things like that. Isomorphic 08:32, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the question is what we consider significant. If memory serves, Noam Elkies was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard history. Bjorn Poonen and Ravi Vakil (who are profs and help teach the Bay Area Math Circle) worked with Kiran Kedlaya to put out the most recent book of Putnam problems.

From another perspective, I have to assume that eventually someone will put together a list of IMO teams from the US (again, it's only 5-6 kids a year, and it hasn't been going on as long). And someone will put together a list of other Olympiad teams. And for someone like Ari Turner, who also competed in the International Physics Olympiad, would having a person's name in a few articles automatically warrant their own article? Rjyanco 12:19, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

As one of the fellows who has more or less "disappeared into obscurity", I do resent being left out of the list of four-time Putnam Fellows. I haven't checked the list for other name variants, though. (It was my first Wikipedia edit. Please be gentle with me for not entering the comment as to what I did -- changing "Arthur L. Rubin" to "Arthur Rubin", as they're both me.)--68.66.213.109 12:43, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, welcome to Wikipedia! You've actually taken the first step: you saw an error and corrected it. From what I can tell, the list was more or less taken directly from, so since you showed up as Arthur Rubin 3 times and Arthur L. Rubin once, whoever entered the table didn't notice the repetition. Congratulations on the rare feat, and feel free to register an account and become an active member of Wikipedia. Jonpin 18:50, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. -Rjyanco 19:00, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I placed top-5 in the 1966 test, and since then I've been writing computer software and I've tried in major ways to make the world better for everyone. For example, around 1977 I was part of the effort to build PCNET, and currently I'm trying to build a new kind of sorta-barter economic system on the Internet. Is there anyone who would study my various efforts and accomplishments and either create an individual Wikipedia page for me or explain why I am not deserving of such an honor?


 * More generally, I would like to see (ASAP) a generic Wikipedia page that tells what each of the individual winners have been doing since they left school, one tiny section for each where information is known, as a sort of "audition" towards qualifying for their own indiviaul Wikipedia pages. People can then browse this generic page looking for winners who don't yet have their own Wikipedia pages but who most deserve them, and thus have comparative information to allow them to intelligently decide which new individual pages to create next.


 * The main page has a link to a search engine where you can enter the name of a winner and it'll pull up everything known about that person. But when I searched for my own name, it had no information whatsoever except the year&school when I placed top-5. I haven't tried manually searching for other names to get a better feel whether it has any new information for other winners or is an empty for other winners as it is for me. But in any case it doesn't offer a way to browse a large number of winners very quickly to compare them during one attention span, so I feel that the proposed new page would be useful in addition to the search engine.

198.144.192.45 (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2011 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)

Anyone take it?
Did anyone take the 2004 Putnam today? What did you think of it? Jonpin 03:27, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)


 * This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject. Temperal xy 02:32, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow, way to slam the stable door nearly 35 months after the horses have left. Doops | talk 02:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * It's a reasonable comment that can educate others who might be inclined to do something similar. -- 71.102.133.72 (talk) 06:50, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

american only?
is this only for american students? --euyyn (talk) 16:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I recall it being American and Canadian only. &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 17:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Introduction.
The intro has the line, "William Lowell Putnam, who, while alive, was an advocate of intercollegiate intellectual competition. Surely the 'while alive' is unnecessary? [How could he have been an advocate while dead?]  Seems to me that the the past tense (...was...) is enough.

Thanks, --g. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.142.181.62 (talk) 02:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It works ok for me since it's in the context that Elizabeth established the award after William was dead. 67.122.210.149 (talk) 19:13, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Tel-Aviv ?
I was unable to verify the inclusion of Tel-Aviv University as an exception to the American/Canadian eligibility rule, so I have temporarily removed this statement. Does anyone know about this matter and/or can provide a citation? Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 19:12, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

On the lack of references
I stumbled across this article from the reader-side of things, and was surprised to find only one reference. I'm glad to see that it's not a primary source, but there should really be more. I would hate for this article to be subject to deletion because it's essentially very good.

So... A simple Google search like this one returns a decent number of usable hits, as would most search engines. I'm sure this competition has been mentioned in offline literature as well. I implore anyone who comes across this article to please try to add to the references, where applicable, and update content as necessary. I'd love to just take care of it myself, but unfortunately just don't have the opportunity right now. However, feel free to contact me with any questions, 2ReinreB2 (talk) 21:22, 2 December 2015 (UTC).


 * Ping 2ReinreB2, I revised the article to include adequate references.--FeralOink (talk) 15:24, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
 * - It is better, thank you. I still think more references could be found, but it's at least safe from any deletion-hungry editors. Thanks again for your work! -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 14:07, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * - wow, thanks for noticing so quickly! Although I have to fight the urge to be a deletionist editor, I know how important this article subject matter is, and that the quality of the article is good as well, and agree that it would be unfortunate for it to be deleted for lack of references. There are SO many out there for the Putnam Prize. If I find more, I'll drop them in, over time :o) --FeralOink (talk) 15:35, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Choosing a sliding cutoff for rankings on recent results
Recent results of the past X years (20?) might be a better sustainable metric compared to an (assumedly) arbitrary year 2000 Bert303 (talk) 05:25, 1 June 2024 (UTC)