Re:Problem Solving Techniques
by stevesimmons on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:16AM
(#25032903)
I'll add that this book is well above normal high school math. It was our summer reading for Math Olympiad training.
I narrowly missed a place on the Australian IMO team, and at the time was annoyed at myself for being beaten by a 10 year old. He, of course, was Terry Tao, youngest ever winner of a IMO medal, and a Fields Medalist a few years later.
The sections headings of Chapter 1 on Heuristics give a flavor of its approach: Search for a pattern; Draw a figure; Formulate an equivalent problem; Modify the problem; Choose effective notation; Exploit symmetry; Divide into cases; Work backward; Argue by contradiction; Pursue parity; Consider extreme cases; Generalize.
Links:
* Official Springer book web site: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387961712
* Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Solving-Through-Problems-Prob...
* Poor quality scanned PDF: https://math.la.asu.edu/~ifulman/spring13/mat194/problem-sol...