Dealing with Hard Problems

by rrusczyk, Jan 15, 2012, 7:13 PM

A parent of one of our students wrote me an email today about his daughter's frustration with difficult problems. I started to write a reply, and it expanded into a new article about the importance of hard problems and how to deal with them in our articles section here.
articles

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8 Comments

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Nice piece with a couple eye catching stupid misprints in the "Reflect on successes" section: "Then, I thought about how to generate that method" (the word in bold should be "generalize"). Also "he solution" in the next sentence should be "the solution" :). The rule of thumb I use when proofreading my papers is "6 misprints per page". Once you have found that many, you may be sure that there are at most 3 per page left :P.

by fedja, Jan 19, 2012, 1:18 AM

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Thanks for this. It's easy to forget that the process of struggling through these problems is most of the point to doing them in the first place. It's good to be reminded periodically.

by candrika, Jan 25, 2012, 2:26 PM

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Haha; it sounds so pessimistic when you put "Give Up" on the post.
But I get what you mean.

by ezrashin, Mar 27, 2012, 8:30 PM

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for a second there I thought you were going to list out the mathcounts mini ideas.. but you have never given up on any of the minis (at least not completely :|) Thanks though for all the ideas!

by RufusBarbarossa, May 6, 2012, 11:42 PM

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Excellent article!

by cobbler, Feb 21, 2015, 11:34 PM

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Excellent and truly insightful article. :-D I think everyone should read that piece at some point in their lifetime. We can all learn from it in some way

by macnmoo, Nov 3, 2017, 11:36 AM

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2024 bump!

by CuriousFox, Aug 9, 2024, 12:41 AM

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yaas 2024
HI CURRY
PLZ GO TO SGF

by niuaccount, Nov 14, 2024, 5:08 AM

Come Search With Me

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Heroes at MATHCOUNTS
Some people out there get what we're doing here
Yay! First Draft Nearly Done. Why Am I Not Happy?
Olympiad test series musings
Interesting Math Blog
Do what you love, not what you think Harvard wants you to do
Learning through Teaching - An Example
Belated USAMO blogging
Tilings: Mixing Number Theory and Geometry
How do the 'smart' students do it?
Interesting picture
What Calculators Hath Wrought
At the NCTM Convention
Looking Forward to Nationals
AoPS may be growing!
Computer Problems and an Interesting Dinner
The Price of Mathematical Ignorance
CA State MATHCOUNTS
San Diego Math Circle Parents
Prepping for Northern CA State MATHCOUNTS
Our Book Project
Recursive Thinking
Differences in course types
Play
Burnout
MATHCOUNTS Chapter Update
MATHCOUNTS Chapter
Using symmetry
Using Expected Value to Solve Problems
Counting the Same Thing Two Different Ways
Another test
Testing
Evolution in the classroom
Women in Math & Science
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About Owner
  • Posts: 16194
  • Joined: Mar 28, 2003
Blog Stats
  • Blog created: Jan 28, 2005
  • Total entries: 940
  • Total visits: 3309426
  • Total comments: 3879
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