2012 Putnam Competition Results

Andy Clemens, Maria Jantz, and Daniel Fecher were three of the 4,277 contestants from 578 institutions in the 73rd William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.  Each spent six hours on Saturday, December 1, 2012, solving twelve mathematics problems.

Problem A1: Let d₁, d₂, …, d₁₂ be real numbers in the open interval (1, 12).  Show that there exist distinct indices i, j, k such that d_i, d_j, d_k are the side lengths of an acute triangle.

The problems are challenging and the scoring is tough: the median score this year was 1 out of 120 possible points! Andy Clemens scored 20 points for a rank of 713th.  Congratulations!

For more about Andy’s achievement, see this article in The Record.  More information about the Putnam competition can be found here.