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Experts Puzzled by Absence of Women in Math Contest

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REUTER

When mathematicians sifted through the latest results of the prestigious William Lowell Putnam college math contest, they saw glaring evidence of a phenomenon that has long puzzled and disappointed educators.

Only one woman showed up among the 104 top finishers in the contest, open to college undergraduates. Nearly 2,100 students from 360 colleges and universities in North America competed in the 49th annual competition.

The $5,000 top prize went to the Harvard University team, with lesser prizes to runners-up from Princeton and Rice, the American Mathematical Monthly reported.

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All those on the top teams were males, as were all those winning honorable mention.

“It’s something that we worry about,” said G.L. Alexanderson, a mathematics professor at Santa Clara University in California who helps run the Putnam contest for the Mathematical Association of America.

“But we don’t know what we can do about it.”

Women have traditionally fared worse than men on math exams--and often better than men in tests of verbal skills--and few women even enter the Putnam competition.

Jill Mesirov, president of the MAA’s Association for Women in Mathematics, nonetheless found the results not only “very disappointing” but symptomatic “of a larger disease (of mathematics weakness) more serious than the Putnam itself.”

Mathematics professor Andrew Gleason of Harvard said the exam is composed of half-hour problems and that most of the problems in the real world take longer.

He said members of Harvard’s team had an edge in part because most were coached for similar exams in high school.

Only about one-quarter of the math majors at Harvard are women, he said, but on average they do about as well at their studies as the men.

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Professor Loren Larson of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., who helps design questions for the Putnam, said the exam itself is not necessarily a guide to how well one will do as a mathematician.

“We’ve had students who have gotten zero on the Putnam and gone to get PhDs at places like MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology),” he said.

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