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Berkeley problems in mathematics (3rd edn.), edited by Paulo Ney de Souza

and Jorge-Nuno Silva. Pp.591. £30·50. 2004. ISBN 0 387 00892 6 (Springer).

Article in The Mathematical Gazette · July 2006

DOI: 10.1017/S0025557200180143

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Berkeley Problems in Mathematics edited by Paulo Ney de Souza and Jorge-
Nuno Silva. Third edition. Pp. 591. Price: ???. 2004 . ISBN 0-387-00892-6
paperback. Springer

Since 1977 the Mathematics Department of the University of California, Berkeley,

has set a written preliminary examination to determine whether first year Ph.D.
students have mastered enough basic (essentially pure) mathematics to succeed in
the doctoral program. Berkeley Problems in Mathematics is a compilation of all
the 1250 odd questions, together with worked solutions, that have appeared from
the first exam in 1977 to the Autumn exam of 2003. This new edition extends
previous editions considerably.
The book grew out of de Souza’s own experience taking the exams and working
with problem solving groups. It is meant as a resource to help first year Berke-
ley graduates through the qualifiers but it is clearly an excellent source book of
problems for any advanced students to work through and push themselves.
In its current form, the exam is sat in January and September of each year and
consists of two three-hour papers taken over two days in which candidates choose
6 questions from 9. Students have three attempts to pass the exam in the first
13 months of study. This is a tough examination and the questions are testing (I
recently spoke to the head of a maths department who had taken the exam who
confirmed this). The pass mark is variable but tends to be just over 50% and
between Autumn 2001 and Spring 2003 it would seem that roughly 40 students
take the exam in Autumn, with 22 passing, and 25 take the exam in Spring, with
some 16 passing.
The questions cover a published syllabus that is as one might expect: Calculus
of one and more variables up to Green’s and Stoke’s theorems and ODEs; Clas-
sical Analysis including sequences and series, metric spaces, Inverse and Implicit
Function Theorems, and Fourier series; Complex Analysis including Cauchy’s and
Rouché’s Theorem, conformal mappings, and contour integration; Abstract Alge-
bra including uncountability of R, group theory to Sylow’s theorems and examples,
ring theory, the field of fractions, polynomial rings, and finite fields; Linear Algebra
including matrices and linear transformations, characteristic polynomials, diago-
nalization, inner product spaces, adjoints, and quadratic forms.
Whilst on the examination papers these topics are mixed up, the book makes
a good stab at arranging the questions into 7 sections: real analysis; multivariate
calculus; differential equations; metric spaces; complex analysis; algebra; linear
algebra. The problems are presented in Part I with the sections subdivided, so that
Real Analysis is divided into such subsections as Elementary Calculus and Limits
& Continuity, for example. Within each subsection the questions are arranged in
increasing difficulty (where ‘easier’ still presupposes that one knows the relevant
material pretty well). Each question is labeled with a code for the examination it
appeared on. Some very similar questions have appeared in different years and these
have often been amalgamated with appropriate modification. On the odd occasion
questions have had to be corrected. The solutions are in the much longer Part II
and typographically the book is easy to navigate with the questions presented in
italics.
At the end of the book there is an index, useful for finding questions on a
particular topic, and an extremely cosmopolitan list of references, including books
1
2

in Chinese, English, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish,

and (I think) Vietnamese.
Obviously in arranging such a large number of questions by subject matter,
things are not always clear cut. The authors point out, for example, the following
question in the section on elementary calculus that could just as well have been
classified as number theory:
1.1.8. Find all pairs of integers a and b satisfying 0 < a < b and ab = ba .
On the whole, however the classification is very well done.
A few of the questions are book work, proving that every finite integral domain
is a field (6.12.2) is an example, but mostly they are fairly searching applications
and extensions. The questions test not only a students knowledge, but intuition
and understanding1:
1.2.5. Suppose that f : R → R is a continuous periodic function with period 1.
Show:
(a) f is bounded above and below and achieves its maximum and mini-
mum.
(b) f is uniformly continuous.
(c) There exists a real numberx0 such that f (x0 + π) = f (x0 ).
And how do you do approach the following sensibly without knowing Rayleigh’s
Theorem?
7.5.33. Let k ∈ R, n ≥ 2 and let A = (aij ) be the n × n matrix such that aii = k,
aii± = 1 and all other entries are 0. Let λ be the smallest and µ the largest
eigenvalue of A. Show that λ ≤ k − 1 and k + 1 ≤ µ.
A few question are rather easy:
1.1.15. Suppose that f is a real polynomial and that (a) 6= 0. Show that there
is a real polynomial g such that, if p(x) = f (x)g(x), then p(a) = 1 and
p0 (a) = p00 (a) = 0.
Some are elementary (which, of course, does not mean easy). I would, for example,
have enjoyed partitioning N into two sets, neither of which contains an infinite
arithmetic progression (6.13.19) or working out the (integer) thirteenth root of
21982145917308330487013369 (6.13.17) when I was at school. And I would have
had a stab at working out which of 0, 1, · · · , 9 occur as the last digit of nn for
infinitely many n (6.13.23), though I’m not sure how far I would have got.
Some of the questions are reasonably standard, take for example the subsection
on contour integrals, others are the sort of folklore result one picks up along the
way (the countable number of discontinuities of a monotone function – 1.2.9) and
some are just great:
4.3.1. An accurate map of California is spread out flat on a table in Evans Hall in
Berkeley. Prove that there is exactly one point on the map lying directly
over the point it represents.
All of the solutions I looked at are complete and reasonably detailed, though it
is worth bearing in mind that they are written for a mature and confident mathe-
matical audience who know their subject and are willing to work through some of
the finer details. Alternative solutions, sometimes as many as 4 (3.54.2), are given
where appropriate, for example an analytic and a number theoretic solution to
1I have paraphrased a number of question for brevity
 3

question 1.1.8. mentioned above. The length of solutions can vary greatly, which
might be a criticism of the examination, but not the book. For example 7.9.16
has one solution over a page long is and one 3 line solution, but in general most
solutions take about a third of a printed page.
Some of the solutions are very elegant (6.11.34 was much nicer than my hack).
Very occasionally (2.2.18, say) I felt I had a better proof (though of course I was
scribbling notes on rough paper and not producing a polished answer) and occa-
sionally the approach wasn’t the one I would have taken (not a bad thing). The
authors invite comments and alternative solutions.
Anyone who has written out full solutions to problem sheets will know the
amount of effort involved and the authors have done far more than simply edit
the questions. This is an impressive piece of work and a welcome addition to any
mathematician’s bookshelf. Certainly, systematically working through the sections
will improve the knowledge and problem solving skills of any student and if you
want to remind yourself of some of those forgotten facts that allow you to solve
questions quickly and elegantly, then this is a fascinating collections of is problems,
well worth dipping into.
When I was asked to review this book, I was, frankly, excited at the prospect
of a book full of possible exam questions. Unfortunately, these questions are on
the challenging side for most of our undergraduates. If Nefeli’s really is the best
coffee west of Rome, as the authors claim, it might be easier to cope with them in
Berkeley.

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