BYU mathematics students utilized good preparation and excellent math skills to come out on top in a November competition against the University of Utah.
The Intermountain Math Competition, which is entering its fifth year of existence, occurs once per semester and includes students from Utah’s major colleges and universities. The competition is in the form of a timed exam and is used by the Math Department to scout out potential members for its national Putnam exam team.
Every year, math students across the country have the opportunity to take the notoriously difficult Putnam exam. However, each university must identify and select a team of three students to officially represent the school on the test. Their scores helps determine the university’s national ranking in mathematics.
Darrin Doud, an associate professor of mathematics and one of the Intermountain Math Competition’s founders states in an interview with The Daily Universe that this regional competition “…allows us to identify students who do really well and recruit them for the Putnam team. BYU is a great place to study math, and we’ve been recruiting people who do well at those math contests to come into the math department and take them.”
The competition exam is difficult, with most students only finishing a few of the seven questions.
Patrick Turley, a BYU economics student who participated in the competition, only completed three of the test’s seven problems in the three-hour time allotment, which is a fairly typical result. Most of the competitions’ winners only complete four questions themselves.
“Unless you’re really good, you probably won’t answer all the questions, and in fact unless you’re really good, you probably won’t answer very many,” Turley said.
Tiancheng Ouyang, a professor in the Department of Mathematics, coached the students for the competition. He said not all the participants were math majors, but many decided to pursue math as a double-major after becoming involved in the competition.
“I think these [competitions] will encourage more students to come this direction,” he said.