The hardest problem on the hardest test

From the creator

A difficult Putnam question with an elegant solution. This video was sponsored by Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/3b1b Help fund future projects: https://www.patreon.com/3blue1brown An equally valuable form of support is to simply share some of the videos. Special thanks to these supporters: http://3b1b.co/putnam-thanks Home page: https://www.3blue1brown.com/ Solution to the puzzle mentioned at the end: https://brilliant.org/3b1bindicator/ These videos exist thanks to Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/3blue1brown A different write-up of this solution: http://lsusmath.rickmabry.org/psisson/putnam/putnam-web.htm 1992 Putnam with this problem: http://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/1992.pdf A problem with a similar flavor came up on the 2005 Putnam A6. Give it a try! The solution for that problem, by the way, was written by Calvin Lin, a friend of mine who works at Brilliant. Small world! http://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/2005.pdf http://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/2005s.pdf Thanks to these viewers for their contributions to translations Hebrew: Omer Tuchfeld Korean: tebaioioo ------------------ Animations largely made using manim, a scrappy open source python library. https://github.com/3b1b/manim If you want to check it out, I feel compelled to warn you that it's not the most well-documented tool, and has many other quirks you might expect in a library someone wrote with only their own use in mind. Music by Vincent Rubinetti. Download the music on Bandcamp: https:

Published 2017-12-08 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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