This year’s Putnam will be held in-person on December 4, 2021 from 9:40 AM to 6 PM in Physics 4206. (Lunch will be provided.)

If you are an interested student registered at the University of Maryland and there is a reasonable chance that you might be participating in Putnam please register by following the link below:

https://artofproblemsolving.com/contests/putnam/student

Note that by registering you are not making a commitment to participate, and if for whatever reason you decide not to participate, you can.

More information about the contest can be found on MAA website.

This year’s Putnam will be virtual and will be held in unofficial mode with no proctors and no  prizes. The competition will be held on February 20, 2021.

If you are a student registered at the University of Maryland interested in registering for Putnam please follow the steps below:

In 2019 a total of 4,299 students from 488 institutions from all over the US and Canada participated in the 80th Putnam competition.

The University of Maryland Putnam team was ranked 14th out of 488 participating schools. The team consisted of Erik Metz, Steppan Konoplev and Pratik Rathore.

Every year in the past four years, the University of Maryland Putnam team has ranked in the top 15.

Erik Metz, who ranked 51st, received an Honorable Mention award. Steppan Konoplev ranked in the top 200; Pratik Rathore and Justin Hontz ranked in the top 250.

Congratulations to our team and the participants.

Complete results can be found here.

2019 Putnam Competition will be held on Saturday, December 7, 2019 from 9:45 am to 6 pm in Physics 4206. Please be on time and bring writing utensils including a pencil.

This year there will be two important changes to the rules of the Putnam competition.

• Previously I had to select the University of Maryland Team before the day of the competition. This has changed now. Our team will now consist of the top three scorers from our school.
• Previously the ranking for our school was determined by the total ranking of the three members of  our team. This will change in 2019. The ranking of our team will be determined by adding the scores of the top scorers from our school.

I am not sure how these changes will affect our school’s performance in Putnam. Since the Putnam Committee is very opaque about the scores and rankings of schools I am not able to tell whether this change will help or hurt our standing in the future based on the past data.

I personally do not like the first change. In comparable competitions (such as the IMO and IMC) teams are always selected in advance. Selecting the team in advance creates a competitive atmosphere in the school for students to try and get into the school team.

As for the second change, I think the new scoring system might be more “fair”, but I am more agnostic about this change.

These changes will make it difficult to compare the performance of each school with its historical performance.

During the fall semester we will have Putnam training sessions. Putnam training sessions start today. All interested students are welcome to show up to these training sessions. The information is listed below:

Time: Wednedays 4-5:30 pm

Location: Math 0102

Interested students are welcome to formally register in Math 299B–Putnam Express. You can find more information about our weekly problem solving sessions here.

2019 Virginia Tech Regional Mathematics Competition will be held on October 26, 2019 from 8:45 to 11:30 am in Physics 4206.

2019 Putnam Competition will be held on Saturday, December 7, 2019 from 9:45 am to 6 pm in Physics 4206.

Interested students should contact me, Dr. Ebrahimian to register.