Radan Kucera – författare

This book can be seen as a continuation of Equations and Inequalities: El­ ementary Problems and Theorems in Algebra and Number Theory by the same authors, and published as the first volume in this book series. How­ ever, it can be independently read or used as a textbook in its own right. This book is intended as a text for a problem-solving course at the first­ or second-year university level, as a text for enrichment classes for talented high-school students, or for mathematics competition training. It can also be used as a source of supplementary material for any course dealing with combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, or geometry, or for any of the discrete mathematics courses that are offered at most American and Canadian universities. The underlying "philosophy" of this book is the same as that of Equations and Inequalities. The following paragraphs are therefore taken from the preface of that book.

This book is intended as a text for a problem-solving course at the first­ or second-year university level, as a text for enrichment classes for talented high-school students, or for mathematics competition training. It can also be used as a source of supplementary material for any course dealing with algebraic equations or inequalities, or to supplement a standard elementary number theory course. There are already many excellent books on the market that can be used for a problem-solving course. However, some are merely collections of prob­ lems from a variety of fields and lack cohesion. Others present problems according to topic, but provide little or no theoretical background. Most problem books have a limited number of rather challenging problems. While these problems tend to be quite beautiful, they can appear forbidding and discouraging to a beginning student, even with well-motivated and carefully written solutions. As a consequence, students may decide that problem solving is only for the few high performers in their class, and abandon this important part of their mathematical, and indeed overall, education.

This book can be seen as a continuation of Equations and Inequalities: El­ ementary Problems and Theorems in Algebra and Number Theory by the same authors, and published as the first volume in this book series. How­ ever, it can be independently read or used as a textbook in its own right. This book is intended as a text for a problem-solving course at the first­ or second-year university level, as a text for enrichment classes for talented high-school students, or for mathematics competition training. It can also be used as a source of supplementary material for any course dealing with combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, or geometry, or for any of the discrete mathematics courses that are offered at most American and Canadian universities. The underlying "philosophy" of this book is the same as that of Equations and Inequalities. The following paragraphs are therefore taken from the preface of that book.

This book is intended as a text for a problem-solving course at the first­ or second-year university level, as a text for enrichment classes for talented high-school students, or for mathematics competition training. It can also be used as a source of supplementary material for any course dealing with algebraic equations or inequalities, or to supplement a standard elementary number theory course. There are already many excellent books on the market that can be used for a problem-solving course. However, some are merely collections of prob­ lems from a variety of fields and lack cohesion. Others present problems according to topic, but provide little or no theoretical background. Most problem books have a limited number of rather challenging problems. While these problems tend to be quite beautiful, they can appear forbidding and discouraging to a beginning student, even with well-motivated and carefully written solutions. As a consequence, students may decide that problem solving is only for the few high performers in their class, and abandon this important part of their mathematical, and indeed overall, education.

This book is intended as a text for a problem-solving course at the first­ or second-year university level, as a text for enrichment classes for talented high-school students, or for mathematics competition training. It can also be used as a source of supplementary material for any course dealing with algebraic equations or inequalities, or to supplement a standard elementary number theory course. There are already many excellent books on the market that can be used for a problem-solving course. However, some are merely collections of prob­ lems from a variety of fields and lack cohesion. Others present problems according to topic, but provide little or no theoretical background. Most problem books have a limited number of rather challenging problems. While these problems tend to be quite beautiful, they can appear forbidding and discouraging to a beginning student, even with well-motivated and carefully written solutions. As a consequence, students may decide that problem solving is only for the few high performers in their class, and abandon this important part of their mathematical, and indeed overall, education.