Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cuzz]

i got a 23 on the putnam the one time i took it

woo

Mad props for that. I was gonna take it one year and then decided I'd rather sleep that day.

[shraeye]

i got a 23 on the putnam the one time i took it

woo

Solid cayvie! I took that all college long, and finally (my senior year) when I knew stuff I scored a 33.  every other year was a solid 0.

[cayvie]

i got a 23 on the putnam the one time i took it

woo

Solid cayvie! I took that all college long, and finally (my senior year) when I knew stuff I scored a 33.  every other year was a solid 0.

nice

i dropped my math major and never looked back

[RichardNixon]

aced my math GRE at least but that's not very hard.

I suspect the math GRE might actually be easier than the math SAT.  The verbal part's a lot harder, though.

This was my experience. But I did spend my entire undergrad as an engineer sharpening my math skills and completely neglecting my language ones.

That was my experience as a goddamn English major.

You have to compare the percentiles rather than the raw scores. A perfect math GRE is only 94th percentile because it's not that rare. I think my verbal was ~680 which is actually higher than 94th percentile. Verbal of ~740+ is 99th percentile.

[SirPeebles]

My best Putnam score was a 41.  Now I'm teaching at a tier 1 school, but Terry Tao still makes me feel inadequate.

[dnkywin]

lol @ this discussion degenerating into meaningless test scores...

Just wondering, who's this CC that the OP speaks of?

[pingpongsam]

lol, Celestial_Chameleon

[Eevee]

lol, Celestial_Chameleon

Should have guessed it was you.

[pingpongsam]

Not sure what you meant there but I am no CC. CC is a phenomenon I can't even begin to approach. I was simply replying to the post above me and failed to quote it.

[werothegreat]

aced my math GRE at least but that's not very hard.

I suspect the math GRE might actually be easier than the math SAT.  The verbal part's a lot harder, though.

On the GRE math section, I got a question that gave me a list of numbers, and asked something like "Which of these is not divisible by prime numbers" - something that's not too hard to figure out, but takes a lot of time, because you literally have to do it number by number, unless you get lucky with the first one, but then you really should check the others anyway.  That is not the sort of question that should be asked on a timed exam, and definitely not something that's important for gauging my math skills.

[eHalcyon]

aced my math GRE at least but that's not very hard.

I suspect the math GRE might actually be easier than the math SAT.  The verbal part's a lot harder, though.

On the GRE math section, I got a question that gave me a list of numbers, and asked something like "Which of these is not divisible by prime numbers" - something that's not too hard to figure out, but takes a lot of time, because you literally have to do it number by number, unless you get lucky with the first one, but then you really should check the others anyway.  That is not the sort of question that should be asked on a timed exam, and definitely not something that's important for gauging my math skills.

Were they big numbers?  Was it a long list?

Every number is divisible by at least one prime number.  A prime number is only divisible by 1 or itself (which is a prime number).  Every non-prime number has multiple divisors, which themselves have divisors, until you get down to all primes.

[cayvie]

Were they big numbers?  Was it a long list?

Every number is divisible by at least one prime number.  A prime number is only divisible by 1 or itself (which is a prime number).  Every non-prime number has multiple divisors, which themselves have divisors, until you get down to all primes.

Maybe there were some non-integers on the list.

[O]

aced my math GRE at least but that's not very hard.

I suspect the math GRE might actually be easier than the math SAT.  The verbal part's a lot harder, though.

On the GRE math section, I got a question that gave me a list of numbers, and asked something like "Which of these is not divisible by prime numbers" - something that's not too hard to figure out, but takes a lot of time, because you literally have to do it number by number, unless you get lucky with the first one, but then you really should check the others anyway.  That is not the sort of question that should be asked on a timed exam, and definitely not something that's important for gauging my math skills.

Were they big numbers?  Was it a long list?

Every number is divisible by at least one prime number.  A prime number is only divisible by 1 or itself (which is a prime number).  Every non-prime number has multiple divisors, which themselves have divisors, until you get down to all primes.

1.

[eHalcyon]

aced my math GRE at least but that's not very hard.

I suspect the math GRE might actually be easier than the math SAT.  The verbal part's a lot harder, though.

On the GRE math section, I got a question that gave me a list of numbers, and asked something like "Which of these is not divisible by prime numbers" - something that's not too hard to figure out, but takes a lot of time, because you literally have to do it number by number, unless you get lucky with the first one, but then you really should check the others anyway.  That is not the sort of question that should be asked on a timed exam, and definitely not something that's important for gauging my math skills.

Were they big numbers?  Was it a long list?

Every number is divisible by at least one prime number.  A prime number is only divisible by 1 or itself (which is a prime number).  Every non-prime number has multiple divisors, which themselves have divisors, until you get down to all primes.

1.

1 is typically not considered a prime number.

[O]

aced my math GRE at least but that's not very hard.

I suspect the math GRE might actually be easier than the math SAT.  The verbal part's a lot harder, though.

On the GRE math section, I got a question that gave me a list of numbers, and asked something like "Which of these is not divisible by prime numbers" - something that's not too hard to figure out, but takes a lot of time, because you literally have to do it number by number, unless you get lucky with the first one, but then you really should check the others anyway.  That is not the sort of question that should be asked on a timed exam, and definitely not something that's important for gauging my math skills.

Were they big numbers?  Was it a long list?

Every number is divisible by at least one prime number.  A prime number is only divisible by 1 or itself (which is a prime number).  Every non-prime number has multiple divisors, which themselves have divisors, until you get down to all primes.

1.

1 is typically not considered a prime number.

No, but is typically considered a positive integer solution to the question posed, "Which of these is not divisible by prime numbers" if it were an option. 

[theory]

aced my math GRE at least but that's not very hard.

I suspect the math GRE might actually be easier than the math SAT.  The verbal part's a lot harder, though.

This was my experience. But I did spend my entire undergrad as an engineer sharpening my math skills and completely neglecting my language ones.

That was my experience as a goddamn English major.

You have to compare the percentiles rather than the raw scores. A perfect math GRE is only 94th percentile because it's not that rare. I think my verbal was ~680 which is actually higher than 94th percentile. Verbal of ~740+ is 99th percentile.

Self-selection blahblahblah.  Everyone takes the Math SAT and many of those do not take Math GRE.

FWIW I think the Math SAT, relative to its content, is much more challenging than the Math GRE, because the Math SAT (esp. SAT II) really tests your knowledge of the material.  It is a test where rote memorization will fail you miserably and you won't even realize it.  It doesn't test obvious cases, no answers are arrived at via brute force, and the various multiple choice options are intentionally designed to capture wrong approaches to the problem.

[Morgrim7]

lol, Celestial_Chameleon

+1. WW, Marin, and Stef make me feel pretty inferior.

[Dsell]

This guy.

[Axxle]

My tomorrow's self.

[mith]

I have mixed emotions when I read about someone like Terry Tao. On one hand, that's the path I was headed on (albeit more slowly), and while I've finally finished my PhD, I'm not really in mathematics at all now, so it's sad to think back to the kid I was and not doing anything with that potential. On the other hand, I had a pretty normal life all things considered, and being pushed harder at an earlier age probably would have made that impossible.

Also: Kim Ung-yong.