MANITOBA MATHLETICS
U of M Mathletics Teams & Training page
(Still being updated for 2011)

2011 UMOMC (with solutions)
Congratulations to Kevin Mather, our 2011 winner
(see also here)
and thanks to all who participated!

2010 UMOMC Contest (solutions here)
Congratulations to Mak Ka Tsun, our 2010 winner
 
 2009 UMOMC contest (with solutions)
Congratulations to Todd Sierens, our 2009 winner

Congratulations to Richard Liu, our 2008 UMOMC winner
Information for Mathletes at the University of Manitoba.  For broader information about contests and training in Manitoba see the Manitoba Mathletics Page.
Mathletics has been an activity of choice at the University of Manitoba for a very long time.  Our mathletes have a history of winning many of the top academic honours here, and going on to illustrious careers in many fields (not all of them math-related; the skills particularly well honed by this discipline -- abstraction, rigour, discernment, logic, creative problem solving -- are in demand in many other fields).  Mathletes come in many forms:  Some are math students, but some of our better mathletes are Engineering, Pre-Med or Science majors.  Some are pursuing careers in the Arts and Social Sciences.  Some are proud of being stereotypical "Math Geeks" but many of the best are also polymaths, with diverse interests.  In Manitoba schools, possibly because of some prevailing local ethos, there is a high confluence of athletic and/or musical talent with excellence in mathletics.

Feel free to drop in on us or contact us at any time regarding this activity!
Coaching staff:
Rob Craigen (523 Machray Hall)    Dave Gunderson (532 Machray Hall)      Kirill Kopotun (422 Machray Hall)     Andriy Prymak (423 Machray Hall)
FALL 2011 Mathletics Calendar
(WATCH THIS SPACE EACH WEEK)

Weekly Problem Solving Seminar/Training sessions:  Tuesdays 5:00-6:30 in MH 500A.  Pizza served
  • Sept. 9 5:00  Information Session in MH 500A.  UMOMC posted online.  Live problem solving
  • Sept. 13 5:00  Session 1:  Come prepared to discuss and/or present solutions to problems from the 1997 NCS/MAA competition.
  • Sept. 20 5:00  Session 2:  Come prepared to discuss UMOMC solutions
    • SOLUTIONS NOW POSTED ABOVE
  • Sept. 27 5:00  Session 3:   Come prepared to discuss and/or present solutions to problems from this set of (mostly) functional equations problems.
  • Oct. 4 5:00  Session 4:  This week's set finishes off last week's functional equations and adds a variety of problems doing various things with functions.  As usual, come prepared to discuss and/or present solutions.
    • YOU MUST TELL US BY OCT. 4 IF YOU WISH TO WRITE THE PUTNAM BECAUSE I MUST REGISTER YOU!
    • The UMOMC winner will probably not be announced until the 11th.  We're still looking at your papers.
  • Oct. 11 5:00  Session 5:  This week's set will be presented by one of our new graduate students with a strong history of performance in the Math contests, Andrii Arman.
  • Oct. 18 5:00  Session 6:  This week's set will be presented by Katya Melnykova and Miad Makareh, two more graduate students with impressive records from their days writing math contests.
    • IF ALL GOES AS PLANNED WE MAY ANNOUNCE THE WINNER OF THE UMOMC AND AWARD THE PRIZE FOR THIS YEAR.  Drum roll please...!
  • Oct. 25 5:00  Session 7:  More from Andrii's set and start the 2001 NCS contest problems
  • Nov. 1 5:00  Session 8:  Finish the 2001 set and start the 2002 set
    • LET US KNOW BY NOV. 1 IF YOU HAVE PREFERENCES CONCERNING WITH WHOM YOU WANT TO WRITE THE NCS/MAA AS TEAMMATES
  • Nov. 5 9:00 start:  All Day NCS/MAA training. Lunch and refreshements provided.  Watch here for materials (CANCELLED)
  • Nov. 8 5:00  Session 9:  Finish the 2002 set and do the 2003 set.
  • Nov. 12 9:00 start:   NCS/MAA contest.  Lunch and refreshments provided.
  • Nov. 15 5:00  Session 10:  1999 Putnam  and dissection of the 2011 NCS/MAA contest from Saturday.  Official Solutions here.
  • Nov. 22 5:00  Session 11:  1999 Putnam (continued from last week)
  • Nov. 26 9:00 start:  All Day Putnam training.  Lunch and refreshments provided.  Watch here for materials
          • (ONCE MORE THIS MAY BE CANCELLED -- LET US KNOW IF YOU REALLY WANT TO PARTICIPATE!)
  • Nov. 29 5:00  Session 12:  Watch here for materials
  • Dec. 3 9:00 start:  Putnam Contest  Lunch and refreshments provided.
  • Dec. 6 5:00  Wrap-up and Putnam bull session.

FALL 2009 Mathletics Calendar
Weekly Practise/Problem Solving Seminar:   Tuesdays 5:00-6:30 pm in MH 418.  Pizza to be served*
CLICK to see handout materials (when available these will be linked).
*meals provided courtesy of department of mathematics
2009 PROBLEMS AND TRAINING MATERIALS
2009 UM Open Mathematics Challenge
2007 UM Open Mathematics Challenge
2005 UMOMC with official solutions  (Illustrates what is looked for in solutions)
See also the 2005 NCS practise problems solutions, below.

Watch this space for archived versions of our weekly training materials.  Sorry, they are late being assembled for the web page, but will be here soon.


2006 PRACTISE PROBLEMS (Archived)

Practise Problem Set #1 Yes, this was the 2005 CMO (a high-level Canadian High School contest)
Practise Problem Set #2
Practise Problem Set #3
Practise Problem Set #4
Practise Problem Set #5

2005 NCS All-Day practise problems (with solutions)

TO GET INVOLVED, email any of the coaches:
Rob Craigen (523 Machray Hall)    Dave Gunderson (532 Machray Hall)      Kirill Kopotun (422 Machray Hall)     Andriy Prymak (423 Machray Hall)

HALL OF FAME
(Will be updated soon!)

Current news:
Congratulations to Todd Sierens, 2009 UMOMC Champion!
Congratulations to R. Liu, 2008 UMOMC Champion!
Congratulations to UmanA, consisting of Liji Huang, Yuchen Mu and Duy Nguyen,
who placed 9th (out of 90 teams) in the 2009 NCS/MAA team competition. 
Our teams, including UmanC, which competed one man short, all placed in the top half,
and ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd among the 8 Canadian teams that took part this year.

What little I know about the prehistory of mathletics at U of M:

-  Barry Wolk was a Putnam Fellow while  enrolled here in 1961 (unofficially we know his score was highest, although this information is not publicly released with the rankings -- Putnam Fellows are listed in no particular order).  That year U of M ranked fourth -- our highest ranking to date.  Barry still drops in on our sessions and shares his expertise with the latest crop of aspiring Putnam Fellows.
-  In some other year, unknown to me, but prior to 1963, U of M achieved a team Honourable Mention. 
-  Sometime in the 1970's Dr. Tom Kucera (an undergraduate student at the University of Manitoba at the time), received an individual Honourable Mention.
-   Dr. Nathan Mendelsohn, a longtime member of our department who recently passed away, was part of the (U. Toronto) team which won the very first Putnam competition many years ago and for  decades was on the problems selection committee for the Putnam exam. 

When I arrived in 1999 U of M students had not participated in Mathletics competitions for a few years (nobody has ever clarified how many). 

Since then, here's how we've done:

1999:
Putnam team rank: 80th
Top ranking UM student: Mark Wiebe (203rd)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UM1:  Matthew Greenberg, Mark Wiebe, Kurt Thompson (2nd)
 
2000:
Putnam team rank: 121st
Top ranking UM student: Craig Kasper (245th)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UM 2Geeks&aNerd:  Mark Wiebe, Kurt Thompson, Dan Nielson (4th)
    UM Crablegs:  Tim Nikkel, Delene Matula, Evan Janzen Roth (10th)

2001:
Putnam team rank:  69th
Top ranking UM student:  Matthew Hasselfield (494th)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UM TBA:  Xi Wang, Matthew Hasselfield, Tim Nikkel (tie for 2nd/3rd)
    UM MetricallySpaced:  Roger Woodford, Nick Harland, Dan Potter (4th)

2002:
Putnam team rank: 23rd
Top ranking UM student:  Matthew Hasselfield (111th)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UM DuckDuckGauss:  Tim Nikkel, Matthew Hasselfield, Xi Wang (tie for 2nd/3rd)
    UM Metrically Spaced:  Nick Harland, Roger Woodford, Stephanie Richards (tie for 2nd/3rd)

2003:
Putnam team rank:  N/A
Top ranking UM student: Karen Johannson (641st)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UM InsertNameHere:  Mike deDenus, Gabriel Faucher, Anh Le (5th)
    UM BarsbyBunch:  Mike Lipnowski, Will Guest, David Liu (tie for 6th/7th)
    UM CompactTorus:  Karen Johannson, Tim Nikkel, Mercedes Scott (10th)

2004:
Putnam team rank:  66th
Top ranking UM student:  Trevor Wares (778th)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UM Shire:  Trevor Wares, Will Guest, Anh Le (3rd)

2005:
Putnam team rank: N/A
Top ranking UM student:   Will Guest (483rd)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UM Pi Ladies:  Trevor Wares, Anh Le, Ed Knapp (4th)
    UM BecauseWeSaidSo:  Will Guest, Jonathan Lee, Michael Himbeault (6th)

2006:
Putnam team rank: 51st
Top ranking UM student:   Will Guest & Trevor Wares (tie, 747th)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:  none ("Team X" ranked 12th)

2007: 
Putnam team rank:  150th
Top ranking UM student:   Ruiqiong Liu (503rd)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings: 
    UM CJ:  Ruiqiong Liu, Garrett Klus (8th)

2008:
COMC Winner:  Ruiqiong Liu
Putnam team rank:  71st
Top ranking UM student:   Garrett Klus (619th)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:  none  ("UManitobaTeamA" ranked 17th)

2009:
COMC Winner:  Todd Sierens
Putnam team rank: (to be added in March 2010)
Top ranking UM student:   (Your name to go here!)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:
    UManA: Liji Huang, Yuchen Mu and Duy Nguyen (9th)

2010:
COMC Winner:  (Your name to go here!)
Putnam team rank:  (to be added in March 2011)
Top ranking UM student:  (Your name to go here!)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:  (Put a team here for us!)

2011:
COMC Winner:  (Your name to go here!)
Putnam team rank:  (to be added in March 2011)
Top ranking UM student:  (Your name to go here!)
UM teams with top 10 NCS/MAA rankings:  (Put a team here for us!)

CONTEXT OF RANKINGS: 
-    Generally there are about 500 institutions competing in the Putnam, so a top 100 ranking is top 20%. 
-    "N/A" generally indicates that one or more of the 3 students preselected for our Putnam team obtained a score of 0. 
       Other team members and students we hadn't selected for the team may still have done quite well.
-    There are about 4000 individual participants in the Putnam exam, so a rank in the 1000 means top 25% (out of a rather select group!). 
-    About 70 teams participate each year in the NCS/MAA contest.

SOME THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

First, never memorize a mathematical tool without:
Second, a "natural" problem solver will do moderately well without much preparation, but nobody will distinguish themselves without preparing and working on problems for months in advance to become familiar with problem types and tools, and to keep one's brain "in the groove".  At our practise sessions we provide tools and experiences that have proven to be most effective in preparation.  A musician may be good but cannot play the sonata without many hours of scales and arpeggios; an athlete may be a backyard jock but won't shine in varsity athletics without running drills all season with their teammates.  In the same way a mathlete may be naturally "good" but will not distinguish themselves without deliberately laying a foundation of basics and honing their skills.

Third, your brain is not separate from your body.  Eat well; get plenty of sleep -- especially before competitions -- and exercise; manage the stress in your life; maintain a positive attitude, approach each question with confidence, and enjoy your mathletics activities.

Some outside links to fundamental tools (come to the weekly practise for help with these and much more!)

Jensen's Inequality  (NOTE:  Possibly the most powerful and versatile inequality. Learn to master all the ideas in it:  convexity, means, etc.)
Pick's Theorem   (A crazy fact about polygons with vertices on the integer lattice.  It is subtlely behind many contest problems -- learn to recognize it even when it is masked)
Cauchy-Schwartz Inequality  (Absolutely fundamental)
AM-GM inequality (You can't get along in contests without at least this.)
Fermat's Little Theorem (and Gauss' Generalization)
Modular arithmetic and various standard tricks with it
Viete's relations (between the roots of a polynomial and its coefficients) -- and how they are exploited
The pigeonhole principle  (Simple yet versatile.  More profound than it sounds at first)
Power of an inside/outside point  (Makes light work of many geometry problems!)
Heron's formula for the area of a triangle  (An old formula for the area of a triangle; a good thing to know for triangle problems)
Properties of matrix determinants  (Knowing some of these solves nasty-looking problems with a light touch).

...email me some additions/links for this list...

This page is maintained by Dr. R. Craigen of the  University of Manitoba Mathematics Department
 and is continually under Construction.  Comments, requests and suggestions welcome.