My Putnam problems
A list of problems I submitted for inclusion on the Putnam Exam
when I was a member of the three-person committee to write the
1984-86 exams (8 page PostScript file).
At Caltech during the academic year 1963-1964 I took the first
course (Ma 108, Advanced Calculus) ever taught by
Donald
Knuth. Here is the front page from my
final exam of the second quarter. Note the typical Knuth humor in
the lower-right corner. Here
and here is the exam.
Partial Stanley family: my wife, father, brother,
mother, me, brother's wife, nephew, cousin, and cousin's wife, taken
1999 in Englewood, Colorado
Ellis Island: my mother's father's mother
arriving in the USA at Ellis Island around 1895. The second person
from the left is the maternal grandmother of Michael Tilson Thomas. My
grandfather was not yet born. (Caption at top written by my mother.)
Seidenstein family: my
mother's mother's parents and three of their children, around 1903. My
mother's mother is the second from the right.
My son Kenneth was formerly a Research Manager
at OpenAI.
Beginning February, 2025, he will be employed
by Lila.
Some computerized
pictures of him. A
book that he wrote (with Joel Lehman) A talk he
gave on open-endedness in AI on August 14, 2020 An interview
about novelty search as a weapon against the status quo (October 12,
2020)
A talk
he gave at my 80th birthday conference.
Birth announcement arranged by my
grandparents. Note: this announcement suggests that I was born in
Larchmont, NY, but this is false. I was born in New York City. My
mother was living with her parents in Larchmont when I was born, and
my father was overseas serving in World War II.
Web page
of my mother's father's sister's daughter's son. (We were born in the
same year.)
Gian-Carlo Rota, 1932-1999
Some links related to my thesis adviser.
Introductory Lectures in Combinatorial
Analysis (first few pages), from a course taught by Gian-Carlo
Rota at M.I.T. in the fall of 1962, written by G. Feldman,
J. Levinger, and Richard Stanley. What is remarkable about these
notes? I had nothing to do with them! This imposter (but with
middle name John) obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics from M.I.T. in
1969 on "The
phonology of the Navaho verb" (in fact, when I was a
graduate student at Harvard I received a telegram offering me a
job in the UCLA Department of Linguistics!) and later a Ph.D. in
math from
U. C. Berkeley. See here
and here.
At the time Rota's course was given I was a freshman at Caltech.
The Early Years How I became
interested in mathematics (two page PDF file).
No Credit for Being First
An explanation of how I once was the only person in the world to know
the answer to a famous question of Serre and Kaplansky
(independently), yet I deservedly received absolutely no credit for
answering this question. This blurb appeared in the Harvard
College Mathematics Review, 2013.
Oimyakon
and Verkhoyansk
weather.
The coldest towns in the world during winter. Two other chilly places: Amundsen-Scott
Station (South Pole) and Vostok
(the coldest place on the earth's surface).
History question for enumerative combinatorialists: what famous
person was assassinated on {3}? Answer.
Find a positive integer n<10,000,000 such that the first
four digits (in the decimal expansion) of
n1,000,000 are all different. The problem should
be solved in your head. Answer.
Letter from Fritz Hirzebruch to
S. S. Chern, dated 11 November 2003, explaining Catalan and
related numbers. I am grateful to Bill Yongchuan Chen for giving
me a copy of this letter.
The error is that every word is
spelled correctly. 😀
On what day in the year 2025 (among all days that year) will the
least number of women in the United States have a natural
(noninduced) childbirth? Answer.
A contribution to bridge bidding theory entitled "Informative
redoubles of 7NTx" (Postscript or PDF), Bridge Today,
July/August 2001, pp. 52-53 (two pages). Also discussed in the ACBLBridge Bulletin, February
2002, page 116.
