Appealing to everyone from college-level majors to independent learners, The Art and Craft of Problem Solving, 3rd Edition introduces a problem-solving approach to mathematics, as opposed to the traditional exercises approach. The goal of The Art and Craft of Problem Solving is to develop strong problem solving skills, which it achieves by encouraging students to do math rather than just study it. Paul Zeitz draws upon his experience as a coach for the international mathematics Olympiad to give students an enhanced sense of mathematics and the ability to investigate and solve problems.
Paul Zeitz studied history at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He currently is an associate professor at the University of San Francisco. He won the USA Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) and was a member of the first American team to participate in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 1974. Since 1985, he has composed and edited problems for several national math contests, including the USAMO and helped train several American IMO teams, most notably the 1994 "Dream Team" which, for the first time in history, achieved a perfect score. In 2003, he received the Deborah Tepper Haimo award, a national teaching award for college and university math, given by the Math Association of America.
New to Edition
The new material for this edition was inspired by Paul’s experience over the past decade working with teachers and students in math circles. In these math circles, they investigated many different topics ranging from simple magic tricks based on parity to understanding random variables to deep algebraic discoveries relying on the interplay between number theory and complex numbers. With the third edition, Paul has attempted to share hours and hours of fun, frustration, and discovery with these new problems.
Substantial additions have been made to the problems, with several new themes that allow the reader to explore a wide variety of topics
New section in Chapter 4, investigating many different topics: Mathematical Games
