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Title: How to Solve It by G. Polya ISBN: 0-691-02356-5 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 1971 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.72 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Very helpful to my programming work
Comment: Polya prescribes different forms to approaching a problem through some guide questions that a solver should ask ("Is there a related problem"). The exposition is quite short, majority of the book is devoted to a glossary of heuristic terms which prove very helpful. Polya uses common problems in high school geometry to demonstrate his point which make it easily understandable.
I'm glad I have discovered an excellent book on problem solving which would prove indispensable in my programming career. Other programming books mainly demonstrate features of an OS or a computer language but this book goes into the heart of the computer science which is problem solving.
Rating: 4
Summary: For math thinkers maybe
Comment: There seems to be a cultish following for Polya's book, so I decided to pick it up even though I'm not a mathematician. I'm a philosophy PhD with an interest in "business strategy" (as they call it). The book's a little bit tough to move through, since he chose to write it as a glossary for the bulk of the text. That makes it boring. The more fundamental issue of course is that he's thinking about math when he gives his ideas for solving problems, and more specifically about TEACHING kids to solve math problems. Now, this is useful. And the general tenor is applicable to all kinds of problem solving. But I think it's not the holy grail it's meant to be -- there are other books on problem solving that make more practical sense if you are working on non-formal mathematical puzzles.
Rating: 4
Summary: Getting to Eureka
Comment: How does a teacher go about teaching? It is a hard trick. Written and published in the '40s, and then again subsequently Polya's "How to Solve It" is an attempt to describe the general paths to the student's Eureka! moments. As such it is also of interest to those who go about the task of discovery, and you must constantly rethink their strategies, in the face of a stubborn unknown.
Polya's consideration of the Various Approaches to problem solving hangs on several key structural bands that take the forms of a teacher's questions: Do you know any related problem? Do you know an analogous problem? [Parallelograms are considered.] Here is a problem related to yours and solved before. Can you use it? Should you introduce some auxiliary element in order to make its use possible?
These ring true to this recently mustered parental pedantic.
Polya's actual treatise is just 30 pages; the associated 'dictionary' definitions section is quite extended, actually, making up some 200 pages. He describes going back to first principles in problem solving. January 1, 2003 is a day perhaps to remember such back tracking is sometimes in order.
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Title: Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning (Volume I) by G. Polya ISBN: 0691025096 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 03 August, 1990 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics by Zbigniew Michalewicz, David B. Fogel ISBN: 3540660615 Publisher: Springer Verlag Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $54.95 |
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Title: What Is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods by Richard Courant, Herbert Robbins, Ian Stewart ISBN: 0195105192 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
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Title: Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewart ISBN: 0486284247 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: How to Prove It : A Structured Approach by Daniel J. Velleman ISBN: 0521446635 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 25 November, 1994 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
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