Hilbert Space is of "the excessively competitive games of Set and how sometimes the stereotypes of math majors actually do apply. It was a site to see, a bunch of brainiacs getting so ecstatic yelling SET!!!"
  If you're interested in attending the math department commencement ceremony, it will be held Saturday, June 12 at 10 a.m. in Robinson Theater.  Good luck to all the seniors and thanks for all of your help and advice.  Hilbert Space won't be the same next year without you.

    The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is the premier competition for undergraduate mathematics students.  It is sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America and held the first Saturday in December. Putnam problems test originality as well as technical competence; they are challenging, though of varying difficulty.  A total of 3615 students from 479 colleges and universities in Canada and the United States participated in the competition this year including seven UO students. David Evans scored 12 points. This earned him a rank of 641.5 and a 82.3 percentile. Travis Willse scored a 4 for a rank of 1222 and a spot in the 66^th percentile. Jeff Williams scored a 1 with a rank of 2166.5. Doug Galagate and Tim Doolan each scored 0 (but hey they took it) for a rank of 3113. Nathan Collins and David Jordan took the Putnam at Penn State. Nathan scored a 19, which put him in the 87^th percentile while David scored a 10 for the 75^th percentile. Nathan score a 0 last year, giving meaning to the phrase "what a difference a year makes." The median score was about 1.
      Arkady Vaintrob held a seminar on Putnam problems in the fall and continued it throughout the year. Next fall the Putnam seminar will be at 5:00 on Tuesdays and will be taught by Arkady Vaintrob again. If you are interested, stop in tonthe seminar next fall and see what the problems look like.

      Founded in 1776, the Phi Beta Kappa Society is the oldest and most prestigious honorary society in the nation. Alpha of Oregon became the first chapter in this state in 1923. Although three private schools in Oregon now have chapters, the University of Oregon still has the only Phi Beta Kappa chapter in the public Oregon University System. The society honors students whose undergraduate academic records fulfill the objectives of a liberal arts education. Members are generally elected from the top 10 percent of a university's graduating class.
    The new math major members for this year are Phillip Wiescher, Shawn Foster, Aaron Phipps, Whitney Montgomery, Michael Pluth, and Ivan Thomann.

                        William Lowell Putnam

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