Inaccuracies over the Putnam Competition
By Ki Chul Kim
Published on Wednesday, November 1, 2006
To the Editor:
I am writing to comment on the article concerning the Math Putnam Competition training at Dartmouth ("Math students prepare for Putnam competition," Oct. 26). The Putnam Competition is an annual nationwide mathematics competition for all undergraduate students who are interested in challenging their minds and spending time struggling with intuitive and "fun" problems.
The article gives an impression that the competition is comparable to a sport where students are trained throughout the year to compete successfully. Certainly this may be the case with high school competitions like Math Olympiads. But the Putnam competition at Dartmouth is more or less a social event where students would participate for the fun of it and enjoy their time solving somewhat unusually challenging problems. To view this from a purely competitive perspective completely ignores the philosophy and beauty of the event.
Yangyang Liu '09, who was quoted in the article, seems to have provided highly incorrect information. Math courses under 100 are for undergraduate students, and the fact that some of the people present at the scene have taken graduate courses does not imply that only those people can compete successfully in the competition. She should also note that the absence of upperclassmen at her talk on Oct. 25 may be due to her own inability to attract a more advanced audience for the topic she chose, not because of students' dissatisfaction with the training professor.
The comment by Vedant Mehra '07 that "there is no one who can compete among the [juniors] and [seniors]" is highly offensive to the upperclassmen who had sacrificed their time (the competition takes place around the final exam period) to compete successfully for the school and for the department. His comment, coming from a person who had shied away from participating because of his own incompetence, does not deserve any credit.
The article as a whole does a disservice to the math department, which has tried hard to invigorate itself and approach the undergraduate community on campus in various ways. In the future, I recommend that reporters show a sense of responsibility and ownership when they submit articles.
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