On February 26, 9 intrepid Gusties trekked up to Carleton College in Northfield for the 13th annual Konhauser Problemfest. This is a three-hour math contest featuring teams from Gustavus, St. Olaf, Carleton, Macalester, St. Thomas, and Augsburg. None of our 9 guys had been to Konhauser before, but only two were seniors so we should have some experienced teams in the future. Our team of Ryan Rud, TrevorPotter, and Dan Treiman – collectively “Jordan” – finished 8th with 32 points. Ben Hardy, Matt Engel, and Morgan LaMoore, who were Team Steiner, followed in 10th place with 28 points. Our last team, consisting of Guy Davis, Mitch Engel, and Eric Barnitt distinguished themselves by being the only team named after a drink (Viete). Which was curious, since the organizers named all of the other teams after mathematicians…
The problems can be found on Macalester’s website at http://www.macalester.edu/~mathcs/potw.html
Carleton, with a very impressive 86 points, extended its winning streak to five; St. Olaf teams were second and third. Here’s one problem to try: Prove that for each n>2, there are disjoint sets of positive integers, having the same sum and the same product. For example, for n=3, two such sets are {1,8,12} and {2,3,16}.