Course Information for 18.S34, Fall 2002
General Information
18.S34, Mathematical Problem Solving, is a freshmen advising
seminar led by Professor Hartley Rogers, but anyone with in interest
in mathematical puzzles and competition problems is welcome to join
the class. It is inteded for students who enjoy solving challenging
mathematical problems and who are interested in learning various
techniques and background information useful for problem
solving. There will be some emphasis on problems from the William Lowell
Putnam Mathematical Competition (a nationwide mathematics contest
for undergraduates), and all students in the seminar are expected to
participate in this competition in December.
STAFF
Hartley Rogers, Advisor/Instructor, Room 2-249, phone
x3-2681, e-mail #rogers at math.mit.edu#
Richard Stanley,
Instructor, Room 2-375, phone
x3-7930, e-mail #rstan at math.mit.edu#
David Pritchard, Associate Advisor, e-mail #daveagp at mit.edu#
Shien Jin Ong,
Associate Advisor, e-mail #shienjin at mit.edu#
MEETING TIME:
Tuesday and Wednesday, 3-4 pm, Room 4-153
Organization
The seminar meets on Wednesday and Thursday at
3-4 pm in room 4-145, the
first meeting being on September 4, 2002. On Thursday, one of the lecturers,
will give a talk on a frequent Putnam Exam topic. There will be weekly
problem sets consisting mostly of past
Putnam and IMO questions relevant to the lecture topic; the students
are expected to solve at least six of these problems every week. On
Wednesday, the students will present their solutions to previous
week's problem set.
Grading
Problem sets will be given out at the Thursday
lecture, and are due in lecture on Wednesday the following week. Every
solved question on the main problem set is worth 10 points. There are
supplementary questions which can be substituted for Putnam
problems; the
value of a supplementary question is 3x+1 where x is the difficulty of
the question, marked on the handout ([1]=easy, [2]=reasonable,
[3]=difficult, [4]=very difficult, [5]=unsolved).
When writing a solution, you should prove every
claim that is not a well-known result (i.e., you can use the
Pigeonhole principle without proving it, but should prove every one of
your own claims, even if it seems "intuitively obvious" :)
Grading follows the policy of the Putnam Exam, where having a correct
answer is not enough; the solution must contain
a valid and well-written proof to get full credit. (Unlike on the
Putnam, however, some partial credit will be given for incomplete
solutions :)
Mailing list
There is a mailing list for the class, named 18.s34 (at mit.edu),
which is used for
advising purposes, as well as sending out information regarding the
class. All official advisees of the seminar are automatically on the
list; if you're not an advisee and want to be added to it, please
e-mail Shien at #shienjin at mit.edu#.
Questions
If you have any questions regarding grading (i.e. you think that the
brilliance of your
perfectly valid proof was misunderstood), please talk to Dave or Shien;
they'll be in the lecture every week (hopefully!),
and you are welcome to talk to
them afterwards. If you have any other questions regarding the seminar
policy, want some help with the problem set, or want to talk about
anything else, you can e-mail Dave or Shien and they will be happy to
help you.
If there is anything you wouldn't feel comfortable talking to them
about, you can always e-mail Professor Hartley Rogers, or come to his
office hours.