WIU-QC student finds the beauty in math

Many people struggle with math but some people, like Noah Says of Orion, do math for fun.

The third-year student at Western Illinois University-QC campus recently won the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition for the second time in a row.

“The Putnam has to do with what’s called competitive math. Now competitive math isn’t as well-known as, say football.” He says competitive math usually starts at the high school level, but there wasn’t a math club when he was in high school.

“When it comes to math competitions it’s not always a matter of going against certain teams. It’s not like ‘Jeopardy;’ sometimes it can be but not always,” said Seys. “Competitors work on math problems at testing centers, similar to taking the SATs. “You have exams that you do take by yourself, which sounds strange, sounds pretty boring. But the problems are very different from what you would see in high school, and this is where preparation is needed. These exams require you to think outside the box.”

Seys said there’s a misconception about math. “The problem with the math you learn in school is that it’s very procedural and so people get the false impression that math is a very procedural thing, very algorithmic. That’s not always the case; in many aspects it’s much like an art. When it comes to preparation, the best response I can give is just lots of practice and lots of experience.” He said a book called “The Art & Craft of Problem Solving” was a great help.

The math Seys does in competition isn’t the math most of us are familiar with from school. “You do have some of that stuff in there, some high school math, but you’re also going to have calculus in there, you’re going to have some number theory, some abstract algebra, which is a little different from your regular algebra class,” he said. “For the Putnam, you have more college level math in there.”

Here is a sample math problem faced by competitors. The answer is at the bottom of this article.

Seys said he entered the competition for the first time in 2022 as a lark. “I would say that for the most part, it was for fun. I will never forget the time when I was 17 years old and I first learned about what the Putnam was. I was a junior in high school at the time and when you first hear about it, it’s a very intimidating exam. I was always a math geek in high school, so I was like ‘this is something I want to do’ because I was never in a competitive math team because we didn’t have one in our high school. This is something I really want to do; I want to be able to check this off my bucket list.”

The exam can only be taken by undergraduates, so there’s a maximum of four exams a person can take. “It’s like the SAT; many schools will take that on the same day, but the students have to take it at their schools,” said Seys. “When students register, they have to take it at the university that they are enrolled in.”

The scoring system in this exam doesn’t work like you might think. “Think back to the last time you were in a math class,” he said. “You’re doing a problem and you just can’t quite figure it out. Your teacher would give you partial credit because it seems like you’re taking steps in the right direction. Each problem on the Putnam is worth 10 points and there are 12 problems overall so that’s why the total is 120. The people grading your exam will rank your solution out of 10 points; 10 points means that not only did you get the correct answer but your work is correct as well. A score of eight or nine points means that your answer could have been correct but there might have been a technicality you didn’t account for or something was unclear. You could get two or three points if you know you had the beginnings of a solution but you were taking a step in the right direction.”

“This year I got an 11 out of 120, which is actually only one point better than I did last year.

Just like in math homework, showing your work is vital. “One thing to note is that when it comes to this to scoring, they expect what are called proofs. You do need to submit proofs, which are like showing your work, like you would in a regular math class, except it’s much more structured.”

For Seys, his love of math goes back to playing with an advanced calculator. “I remember when I was six, I had this scientific calculator. It could do regular arithmetic operations and it also has this weird cosine button and log and tangent. What do these do? I would just press that button and see what random number would spit out. Sometimes I would memorize what the results were.”

Playing with the calculator led to a lifelong fascination. “I just like knowing where the numbers come from,” he said. “Nowadays it’s not so much that, it’s more to do with the art behind solving a problem; how you go about that and on top of that math is just a very pretty subject.”

Seys’ future plans include finishing his degree at Western and finding a job in engineering. He’s thinking about working on a master’s or doctorate after working for a few years.

To learn more about the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, click here.

(The answer to the equation is 18.)