Saturday November 13th was a busy day for geeky Gusties. While the programmers travelled to St. Paul, 12 students were competing on campus in the MAA North Central Section Team Contest. I was pleased with the turnout, up from 4 last year. Overall, 66 teams from 26 colleges and universities throughout the region took part. The contest was ten problems, teams of three for three hours, and each problem was scored out of ten points. The winning team was from Macalester with a score of 92. Our top team “Borg”, consisting of Ryan Rud, Justin Delegard, and John Purdham, got 10s on each of the first six problems for 60 points, ranking 10th overall, the highest placement of any team from a Lutheran liberal arts college. Just behind them were Nate Kirton, Jonathan Dexter, and Matt Engel, team “Q”, with 54 points, tying another Mac team for 15th. We also had a team of first-years – Benn Sundsrud, Mark Myers, and Brian Castle, collectively “Worf” – who scored 38 points, and redshirts “Eddie” – Peter Overholser, Math Pennington, and Mike Purdham – scored 31 points. Full results, problems, and solutions should eventually be available on the Section website .
Next up is the national Putnam exam on December 4th.