Youngstown State University

Mathematics Department

Competition Problems Seminar

Autumn 2003



In this and other course web sites we will be entering material in .PDF format, since this permits me to enter technical material in a format that can be read and printed without the use of the technical programs that have created the files. A .PDF file can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is downloadable form Adobe.  Click the button to link to the site that will provide you with  a free copy of Adobe reader 5.0.


The Competition Problems Seminar is being coordinated by Dr. Fabrykowski and is designed to serve as an introduction to some types of mathematical problems that are commonly seen in advanced high school exams, the university-level Putnam competition, as well as problem posed in mathematical journals.

This is a all-free seminar, meaning that there is no cost or credit awarded for students attending, no materials to purchase,
and the faculty involved in the seminar are doing this with no university credit. If you come and participate, you are doing it simply because you like mathematics. Or, perhaps, you simply want to see how relatively clever you are.

The faculty coordinator has spent about 10 hours constructing the material for each week's problem set. We are asking the students that are participating to spend only a small fraction, about 20%, of this amount of time working on one or more of the problems, and then to spend about 5 minutes explaining their solution in the next week's session.

We will be meeting the Seminar in Cushwa 1107, the Undergraduate Student Study Room, each Tuesday at 2:00 during the Autumn term. Problem sets will be distributed at this meeting, but they will also be available at this site.

We hope that you will come and have a bit of mathematical fun.


Problems: Set 1, Set 2, Set 3, Set 4, Set 5, Set 6