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

# Problem

Two steel plates meet at a right ($90 \degree$) angle, forming an "L" shape. The lengths and widths of both plates are given. 

In order to create support, we need to connect both ends of one plate to the opposite ends of the other plate with wires. How long will the wires need to be?

## Exploring the problem

Let's apply Pólya's problem-solving steps. First, to understand this problem, we need to gather all the information in the problem statement.


Get an overview of the problem in this chapter and try to understand it.

Polyas method

Bottom-Up Approach

Top-Down Approach

Wire Length Calculator

Stepwise refinement

Guessing Games

Minesweeper Game

Triangular Wall

Pattern Identification

Conclusion

Understanding the Problem

Problem

Exploring the problem