Background
The POTW competition has existed in form or another since September 3, 1990, when the first problem was given by Dr. Bo Green, professor emeritus of the Department of Mathematics until his retirement in 2009. The competition was excitedly restarted in Fall 2017 after the revival of the math club, Mu Sigma. Each week a new, exciting, and challenging math problem will appear on the Mu Sigma blog. Mu Sigma members, students at large, and even faculty are invited to participate.
Rules
The POTW competition will last the entire academic year concluding at the math department spring dinner in April. Winners will be awarded in three categories.
- Best student score
- Best faculty score
- Overall winner
Those interested in competing can see the “week’s new problem” on Friday at 12:00 PM CST on this blog. Physical handouts will also be available in the math office beginning at the same time. Submissions for each week are due by 5:00 PM CST the following Thursday.
Submissions
Email all submissions to mathpotw@acu.edu. Your email may take the form of a plain text typed response, an attached word document, PDF, or excel document, a shared Google doc, Maple file, or scanned handwritten response. Regardless of the submission method, your personal information should be on the document submitted. Please show all work and provide justification for reasoning. The subject heading for your email should read:
LastName, FirstName – HH:MM:SS – MM/DD/YY – POTW Submission
For example, Ehrke,John – 12:23:34 – 09/01/18 – POTW Submission is an appropriate subject header. Failure to follows these directions may result in your submission being disregarded and/or improperly sorted.
Scoring
Each problem is worth a maximum of 10 points, with correctness, completeness and timeliness factoring into one’s score. The first correct solution received will be awarded 10 points, the second will receive 9 points, and so on. Answers with no work are not complete solutions. The fifth correct response will earn 6 points, and each subsequent correct response will earn 5 points.
Incorrect solutions, regardless of order of submission, will receive between 0 and 4 points based on the progress made toward a solution. Scores will be posted in a Google Doc after the first round of problems each semester. The POTW scoreboard will be made available through a link on the Mu Sigma blog.
Let the competition begin!
