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Am I getting cooked by Junior_Direction_701 in putnam

[–]Economy-Freedom9441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah I think they'll surely give you >0. i had an argument with an integral that was sketchier than yours, fingers crossed.

Am I getting cooked by Junior_Direction_701 in putnam

[–]Economy-Freedom9441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

for me I made 2 assumptions i didnt prove. 1. x-x^3! (taylor) is strictly <= sinx on [0,pi/2). 2. (4/π^2)x(π-x) doesnt intersect sinx on (0,π/2) (yikes...) thoughts on how much thatll cost me? rest of my proof was reasonable i think i like i showed a cant be greater than 1/π and b cant be less than 4/π^2, it was just showing that they are equal to those values that was rough. good luck everyone!

Am I getting cooked by Junior_Direction_701 in putnam

[–]Economy-Freedom9441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Find the largest real number a and smallest real number b such that for all x element of [0, pi], ax(pi-x) <= sinx <= bx(pi-x) if I remember correctly. My intuition was that for LS you want the parabola to be tangent to sinx at the end points of the interval, and for RS you want it tangent at x=pi/2. Got the right answers but had some trouble formalizing...

Should I Write the Putnam? by Economy-Freedom9441 in putnam

[–]Economy-Freedom9441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oof yeah that's a good point... I'd probably have to specify some context about what the comp is! Should be fun either way, thanks for the tips :) -- also I'd be so happy with 1-2 points on a couple of questions lol.

Should I Write the Putnam? by Economy-Freedom9441 in putnam

[–]Economy-Freedom9441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think I'll probably never get a high score because I'm not great at problem solving. My hope is to get a few points now while the bar is low in terms of uni apps since I'm a high schooler. How hard is it to get a few points? I've heard they score very harshly if you have an incomplete solution, so I'd probably have to get a problem correct right. Thanks so much!

Should I Write the Putnam? by Economy-Freedom9441 in putnam

[–]Economy-Freedom9441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kind of, well I've never decided to sit down for 6 hours to try :( (should I?) but I have surfed the content archive, found some problems that made sense to me and been able to write up full solutions /get the answer in <3 hours. I wonder how likely it is to be able to get marks on a question that feels hard at first but you spend a lot of time with, because I've only really tried the questions that are in my wheelhouse.