At the end of each week, members of the Carnegie Mellon undergrad math team—jokingly nicknamed the Sunday Demogorgons—meet to prepare for the Putnam Competition, which is considered one of the most prestigious undergraduate mathematics tournaments. Before the numbers practice ends, they typically head to a local Asian restaurant and continue to talk postulates, over some spicy entrées, with CMU professor and team leader Po-Shen Loh.
After months of hard work and plenty of dinners together, the day of the 74th Annual William Lowell Putnam Competition arrives. The three-member CMU team—Michael Druggan (S’16), Linus Hamilton (S’16), and Thomas Swayze (S’17)—competes against 429 collegiate teams. The teams sit for six hours to solve 12 complex problems, competing for substantial cash prizes and international recognition.
As it turns out, the restaurant time spent discussing equations paid off: “During one of the dinners, someone brought up a question about a particular problem he had encountered,” says Swayze. “When we eventually sat down to compete, a variant of that exact problem came up on the test. Because of that conversation, it was basically a free problem!”
The final standings:
- MIT
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Stanford
- Harvard
- Cal Tech
For second place, CMU’s Department of Mathematical Sciences receives $20,000. This is the third year in a row the Tartan team has earned a place in the top five.
In addition to the team competition, 4,113 students compete individually, including 163 from CMU—35 Tartans place among the top 10%, the second most of the 557 colleges and universities.
—Janet Jay (DC’07)
