Always nice to see my school placing extremely well at the prestigious William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition. Forth place this year compared with sixth the previous year. Great showing fellow UW math students!

Math contests sound really boring, but I would guess they are actually fairly fun for those involved. I used to write a lot of computer programming competitions in high school, and believe it or not, they were a blast.

You basically had to solve a few problems, with a team, in a short period time. You competed directly against other teams, and scores were calculated and published in real-time throughout the event. It was actually quite a lot of fun, because it is not often that one can be challenged so directly in an intellectual sense. The joy from the competitions my team won those years ago will stay with me forever.

Of course, I could still participate in similar competitions if I had the time. Topcoder is a great way to test ones skills online.

via UW Newsrelease - UW places fourth in Putnam Math Competition