The Forty-Ninth Annual William Lowell Putnam Competition Saturday, December 3, 1988

A1 Let be the region consisting of the points of the cartesian plane satisfying both    and  ! . Sketch the region and nd its area. A2 A not uncommon calculus mistake is to believe that the product rule for derivatives says that #"%$&('0)1"2'3$&' . If "456)87@9BA , determine, with proof, whether there exists an open interval DC5FEG and a nonzero function $ dened on HC5FEG such that this wrong product rule is true for in HC5FEG . A3 Determine, with proof, the set of real numbers which I
P QSRUT V  WYXa`FX W  9 bac

B2 Prove or disprove: If and are real numbers with y y v and H 0H  , then w@0% . B3 For every W in the set )d!qFaBae of positive integers, let f Q be the minimum value of  guh&i 5 for all nonnegative integers g and h with g y hj) W . Find, with proof, the smallest positive real number $ with f Q 8$ for all Wlk .
I I B4 Prove that if m QqRUT C Q is a convergent series of positive QonGpqQ e T(r . real numbers, then so is m QSRUT HC Q

for

converges. A4 (a) If every point of the plane is painted one of three colors, do there necessarily exist two points of the same color exactly one inch apart? (b) What if three is replaced by nine?

B5 For positive integers W , let s Q be the Wy  by Wy  skew-symmetric matrix for which each entry in the rst W subdiagonals below the main diagonal is 1 and each of the remaining entries below the main diagonal is -1. Find, with proof, the rank of s Q . (According to one denition, the rank of a matrix is the largest t such that there is a tvuwt submatrix with nonzero determinant.) One may note that
}~ v s T )yxz  {| v { v  ~ }a

" from the set A5 Prove that there exists a unique dg function dfe e of positive real numbers to such that "4#"45h)piqrs"45

and
"45utwv x s W )  z 

{| v   {|

{{ v  {{ v 

for all Ytbv . A6 If a linear transformation x on an -dimensional vector space has Wy  eigenvectors such that any W of them are linearly independent, does it follow that x is a scalar multiple of the identity? Prove your answer. B1 A composite (positive integer) is a product C&E with C and E not necessarily distinct integers in @&FaBaF . Show that every composite is expressible as % y 5 y y   , with U(2 positive integers.

{{ v  { v

{{|

B6 Prove that there exist an innite number of ordered pairs HC5FEa of integers such that for every positive integer , the number Co y E is a triangular number if and only if is a triangular number. (The triangular numbers are the W Wy W Q ) FS with in @vaoFaaBF .)