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Some of the more well-known topics in recreational mathematics are Rubik's Cubes, magic squares, fractals, logic puzzles and mathematical chess problems, but this area of mathematics includes the aesthetics and culture of mathematics, peculiar or amusing stories and coincidences about mathematics, and the personal lives of mathematicians.
Conway's Game of Life and fractals, as two examples, may also be considered mathematical puzzles even though the solver interacts with them only at the beginning by providing a set of initial conditions. After these conditions are set, the rules of the puzzle determine all subsequent changes and moves.
Problem Solving Through Recreational Mathematics is based on mathematics courses taught by the authors, who were both mathematics professors at Temple University. [1] [2] It follows a principle in mathematics education popularized by George Pólya, of focusing on techniques for mathematical problem solving, motivated by the idea that by doing mathematics rather than being told about its ...
The basic solving strategy for a Battleship puzzle is to add segments to incomplete ships where appropriate, draw water in squares that are known not to contain a ship segment, and to complete ships in a row or column whose number is the same as the number of unsolved squares in that row or column, respectively.
The "nine dots" puzzle. The puzzle asks to link all nine dots using four straight lines or fewer, without lifting the pen. The nine dots puzzle is a mathematical puzzle whose task is to connect nine squarely arranged points with a pen by four (or fewer) straight lines without lifting the pen.
The Ages of Three Children puzzle (sometimes referred to as the Census-Taker Problem [1]) is a logical puzzle in number theory which on first inspection seems to have insufficient information to solve. However, with closer examination and persistence by the solver, the question reveals its hidden mathematical clues, especially when the solver ...
Print/export Download as PDF; Printable version; In other projects Wikimedia Commons; Wikidata item; ... Pages in category "Problem solving skills"
As soon as the puzzle was launched, an online community emerged devoted to solving it, centred on a mailing list [4] on which many ideas and techniques were discussed. It was soon realised that it was trivial to fill the board almost completely, to an "end-game position" where an irregularly-shaped void had to be filled with only a few pieces, at which point the pieces left would be the "wrong ...