Undergraduate students across North America sat down on Saturday to write a gruelling six-hour math exam, many of them unlikely to solve a single problem.
The notoriously brutal William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is more of a mathematical sporting event than an academic test. The annual exam attracts thousands of students, most of whom are unlikely to score more than three points out of possible 120.
Still, fourth-year undergraduate student Gavin Hull was cheerful as he arrived at the empty mathematics building at Memorial University in St. John’s on Saturday morning, ready to tackle 12 mind-bending problems.
“It’s me and the problems and three hours,” Hull said before the first half of the exam. “Just sit there and grind it out and see what you can do.”…