-2

Could anyone tell me the level of the William Lowell Putnam contest and the International Mathematics Contest for University students with relation to National Olympiads + TST’s or even IMO? Which papers are they closely related to (mathematical maturity wise...not subject wise)?

I need it to understand the level of maturity required and any help will be immensely appreciated

Mike
  • 20,434
A.Nag
  • 29
  • 1
    Olympiad is high school; Putnam is college – J. W. Tanner May 19 '21 at 19:01
  • you get less time for the putnam questions, but I also think that if you know the right stuff then most putnam questions require less creative spark than for example an imo 6 or something. – Asinomás May 19 '21 at 19:01
  • 2
    The Putnam is geared toward undergraduate math majors. @Onir That is not true. As both an undergraduate and a graduate student I knew full Professors of Mathematics that were not only interested in but challenged by the Putnam exam problems. Those problems are challenging for most, regardless of their backgrounds. – John Douma May 19 '21 at 19:08
  • I agree with what you are saying but I still think what I said is true. I don't think they are contradictory. – Asinomás May 19 '21 at 19:11
  • Oh that’s pretty rough @JohnDouma well could any of you just recommend the kind of level of problems that I should be solving? Say TST Level or even IMO level problems for that matter? It helps me to quantify the type of problems a bit.....so what I’m basically asking is that what difficulty would you rate Putnam as in relation to Olympiad high school competitions? TST, National Olympiads or the IMO itself? – A.Nag May 19 '21 at 19:14
  • 1
    @A.Nag Why not just Google the past exams? They are online so they should give you an idea of what is being asked. – John Douma May 19 '21 at 19:15
  • Yes I did try that and I was unsuccessful in getting what I wanted. No matter, I think I’ll try it again now and see if I can get to it myself. – A.Nag May 19 '21 at 19:19
  • https://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/ – John Douma May 19 '21 at 19:22

1 Answers1

1

Probably more a comment than an answer--for whatever reason my browser won't let me access the comments so I am posting here.

[First, I changed the tag to "soft-question". That is more appropriate tag than "contest-math" where new posts are expected to bring up a contest question. Hopefully this will stop the down-votes.]

This is actually a really interesting question IMO and it brings up a point that many people get confused about I think. I'm not sure if your question about "levels" really fits what is going on. Do not confuse puzzle-solving ability with general mathematical background! Just because a question does not involve as much math background to state or even to solve does NOT mean that the questions is any easier! With that said, Math Olympiad questions tend to assume the mathematical background that an advanced student may have by the end of high school, whereas the Putnam assumes a general mathematics background of a university undergraduate student majoring in mathematics.

HOWEVER, that does not mean that Math Olympiad questions are easier than Putnam Exam questions! Or that they are not challenging for a PhD student or university professor. The harder ones especially are hard for most anyone, and really do require a clever insight. In particular, there are certainly high school students who are able to figure out Math Olympiad questions at least as well as a university professor, even though the university professor knows plenty of math that the talented high school student has not seen yet.

I hope this helps...

Mike
  • 20,434