Learn Polya’s problem-solving process and strategies, such as divide and conquer and pattern identification, to enhance your analytical skills, tackle puzzles, and solve real-world problems.

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Problem-solving skills are vital for personal growth, academic success, and professional achievement. They enable resilience, innovation, and effective decision-making. This course equips you with a lifelong skill set by teaching Polya’s problem-solving process and its applications in tackling real-world problems, games, and puzzles.

You will explore strategies, including top-down and bottom-up approaches, divide and conquer, stepwise refinement, pattern identification, and logical reasoning through puzzle-solving and computing logic.

By the end of the course, you’ll master analytical skills and critical thinking to apply Polya’s method and other strategies to complex challenges. This comprehensive approach establishes a strong foundation for systematically solving intricate problems.

Problem Solving

We have broken down the problem into the following subproblems:

- Identify the location of the bear.

- Apply the knowledge gained in the first step to guess the color of the bear.

Let’s solve these problems to reach our main goal.

# Subproblem 1: Identifying the location

Let’s analyze the path to identify the location.

## The path

We have a clear description of the path of the bear’s movement.

- It moves from north to south, P to Q.
- It moves from south to east, Q to R.
- And then, from east to north, R to P'.


Polyas method

Bottom-Up Approach

Top-Down Approach

Wire Length Calculator

Stepwise refinement

Guessing Games

Minesweeper Game

Triangular Wall

Pattern Identification

Conclusion

Devising a Plan: Solution

Subproblem 1: Identifying the location

The path