Mondays and Wednesdays 3:40-4:30 PM at 237 Lockett
Monday, August 24, and Wednesday, August 26 we will meet at 381 Lockett.
Catalog description:
Instruction and practice in solving a wide variety of mathematical
and logical problems, and participation in the Putnam competition.
This is one credit hour course (Pass/Fail).
The format is a seminar - we believe discussion of problems
from different individual perspectives helps. The seminar covers
problem solving strategies in general, but one particular
goal of the course is to prepare students to take the national
Putnam Exam in mathematics
on Saturday, December 5. Success on the Putnam Exam
means marketability after college, especially if you think of
a graduate school in mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering
or education.
This class will not focus on lengthy theorems, instead it will
focus on approaches to beautiful problems that are simple to understand
but difficult to solve.
NEW! Mondays we will work on practice problems, discuss ideas.
Wednesdays we will discuss solutions.
The only supplies needed for the class are a pencil, paper,
and especially, your bright mind.
We will be using lots of handouts.
We will start with discussing the 2008 Putnam Exam problems,
see
The official MAA website
The following books are recommended but not required:
Loren C. Larson's
Problem Solving Through Problems.
also The Math Problems Notebook by Valentin Boju
and Louis Funar, Birkhauser, Boston 2007.
Andreescu-Gelca and Boju-Funar books are available online at Springer from LSU computers on campus. Kedlaya et al., Larson, and Zeitz's books are on the reserve shelf for Math 3903
at the LSU Library.
Math
Contests and Research in Mathematics
