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

# Strategy

We need to figure out a strategy to find the relationship between the number of bulbs and the number of possible arrangements.

Does this relationship follow any pattern? 

We know there are two possible arrangements with only one bulb and four with two bulbs. The total number of arrangements seems to equal twice the number of bulbs. That means we can have 20 different arrangements with an array of ten bulbs. That’s quite simple.  

Let’s investigate further and find out the number of arrangements with three bulbs.


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: Strategy

Strategy