MSRI Mathematical Circles Library – serie

Many mathematicians have been drawn to mathematics through their experience with math circles: extracurricular programs exposing teenage students to advanced mathematical topics and a myriad of problem-solving techniques and inspiring in them a lifelong love for mathematics. Founded in 1998, the Berkeley Math Circle (BMC) is a pioneering model of a U.S. math circle, aspiring to prepare our best young minds for their future roles as mathematics leaders. Over the last decade, 50 instructors - from university professors to high school teachers to business tycoons - have shared their passion for mathematics by delivering more than 320 BMC sessions full of mathematical challenges and wonders.Based on a dozen of these sessions, this book encompasses a wide variety of enticing mathematical topics: from inversion in the plane to circle geometry; from combinatorics to Rubik's cube and abstract algebra; from number theory to mass point theory; from complex numbers to game theory via invariants and monovariants. The treatments of these subjects encompass every significant method of proof and emphasize ways of thinking and reasoning via 100 problem-solving techniques.Also featured are 300 problems, ranging from beginner to intermediate level, with occasional peaks of advanced problems and even some open questions. The book presents possible paths to studying mathematics and inevitably falling in love with it, via teaching two important skills: thinking creatively while still ""obeying the rules,"" and making connections between problems, ideas, and theories. The book encourages you to apply the newly acquired knowledge to problems and guides you along the way, but rarely gives you ready answers. ""Learning from our own mistakes"" often occurs through discussions of non-proofs and common problem-solving pitfalls.The reader has to commit to mastering the new theories and techniques by ""getting your hands dirty"" with the problems, going back and reviewing necessary problem-solving techniques and theory, and persistently moving forward in the book. The mathematical world is huge: you'll never know everything, but you'll learn where to find things, how to connect and use them. The rewards will be substantial.

Math circles provide a setting in which mathematicians work with secondary school students who are interested in mathematics. This form of outreach, which has existed for decades in Russia, Bulgaria, and other countries, is now rapidly spreading across the United States as well. The first part of this book offers helpful advice on all aspects of math circle operations, culled from conversations with over a dozen directors of successful math circles. Topics include creative means for getting the word out to students, sound principles for selecting effective speakers, guidelines for securing financial support, and tips for designing an exciting math circle session. The purpose of this discussion is to enable math circle coordinators to establish a thriving group in which students can experience the delight of mathematical investigation. The second part of the book outlines ten independent math circle sessions, covering a variety of topics and difficulty levels. Each chapter contains detailed presentation notes along with a useful collection of problems and solutions. This book will be an indispensable resource for any individual involved with a math circle or anyone who would like to see one begin in his or her community. Sam Vandervelde teaches at St. Lawrence University. He launched the Stanford Math Circle and also writes and coordinates the Mandelbrot Competition, a math contest for high schools.

Many mathematicians have been drawn to mathematics through their experience with math circles. The Berkeley Math Circle (BMC) started in 1998 as one of the very first math circles in the U.S. Over the last decade and a half, 100 instructors - university professors, business tycoons, high school teachers, and more - have shared their passion for mathematics by delivering over 800 BMC sessions on the UC Berkeley campus every week during the school year.This second volume of the book series is based on a dozen of these sessions, encompassing a variety of enticing and stimulating mathematical topics, some new and some continuing from Volume I:from dismantling Rubik's Cube and randomly putting it back together to solving it with the power of group theoryfrom raising knot-eating machines and letting Alexander the Great cut the Gordian Knot to breaking through knot theory via the Jones polynomialfrom entering a seemingly hopeless infinite raffle to becoming friendly with multiplicative functions in the land of Dirichlet, Mobius, and Eulerfrom leading an army of jumping fleas in an old problem from the International Mathematical Olympiads to improving our own essay-writing strategiesfrom searching for optimal paths on a hot summer day to questioning whether Archimedes was on his way to discovering trigonometry 2000 years agoDo some of these scenarios sound bizarre, having never before been associated with mathematics? Mathematicians love having fun while doing serious mathematics and that love is what this book intends to share with the reader. Whether at a beginner, an intermediate, or an advanced level, anyone can find a place here to be provoked to think deeply and to be inspired to create.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This geometry book is written foremost for future and current middle school teachers, but is also designed for elementary and high school teachers. The book consists of ten seminars covering in a rigourous way the fundamental topics in school geometry, including all of the significant topics in high school geometry. The seminars are crafted to clarify and enhance understanding of the subject. Concepts in plane and solid geometry are carefully explained, and activities that teachers can use in their classrooms are emphasised. The book draws on the pictorial nature of geometry since that is what attracts students at every level to the subject. The book should give teachers a firm foundation on which to base their instruction in the elementary and middle grades. In addition, it should help teachers give their students a solid basis for the geometry that they will study in high school. The book is also intended to be a source for problems in geometry for enrichment programmes such as Math Circles and Young Scholars.

The Moscow Mathematical Olympiad has been challenging high-school students with stimulating, original problems of different degrees of difficulty for over 75 years. The problems are nonstandard; solving them takes wit, thinking outside the box, and, sometimes, hours of contemplation. Some are within the reach of most mathematically competent high-school students, while others are difficult even for a mathematics professor. Many mathematically inclined students have found that tackling these problems, or even just reading their solutions, is a great way to develop mathematical insight. In 2006 the Moscow Center for Continuous Mathematical Education began publishing a collection of problems from the Moscow Mathematical Olympiads, providing for each an answer (and sometimes a hint) as well as one or more detailed solutions. This volume represents the years 1993-1999. The problems and the accompanying material are well suited for math circles. They are also appropriate for problem-solving classes and practice for regional and national mathematics competitions.

This book is a captivating account of a professional mathematician's experiences conducting a math circle for preschoolers in his apartment in Moscow in the 1980s. As anyone who has taught or raised young children knows, mathematical education for little kids is a real mystery. What are they capable of? What should they learn first? How hard should they work? Should they even “work” at all? Should we push them, or just let them be? There are no correct answers to these questions, and the author deals with them in classic math-circle style: he doesn't ask and then answer a question, but shows us a problem--be it mathematical or pedagogical--and describes to us what happened. His book is a narrative about what he did, what he tried, what worked, what failed, but most important, what the kids experienced.This book does not purport to show you how to create precocious high achievers. It is just one person's story about things he tried with a half-dozen young children. Mathematicians, psychologists, educators, parents, and everybody interested in the intellectual development in young children will find this book to be an invaluable, inspiring resource.A co-publication with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI).

Moscow has a rich tradition of successful math circles, to the extent that many other circles are modeled on them. This book presents materials used during the course of one year in a math circle organized by mathematics faculty at Moscow State University, and also used at the mathematics magnet school known as Moscow School Number 57. Each problem set has a similar structure: it combines review material with a new topic, offering problems in a range of difficulty levels. This time-tested pattern has proved its effectiveness in engaging all students and helping them master new material while building on earlier knowledge. The introduction describes in detail how the math circles at Moscow State University are run. Dorichenko describes how the early sessions differ from later sessions, how to choose problems, and what sorts of difficulties may arise when running a circle. The book also includes a selection of problems used in the competition known as the Mathematical Maze, a mathematical story based on actual lessons with students, and an addendum on the San Jose Mathematical Circle, which is run in the Russian style. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

Held annually in Moscow since 1990, the Mathematical Festival is a brilliant and fascinating math competition attended by hundreds of middle school students. Participants of the Festival solve interesting mathematical problems and partake in other engaging activities, while cultivating key skills such as intuitive reasoning and quick thinking. This book contains problems presented at the Festival during the years 1990-2011, along with hints and solutions for many of them. Most of the problems are accessible to students with no additional training in mathematics and may be used as supplementary material at school or at home. Other problems, however, are more advanced and will be enjoyed by students with a deeper interest in mathematics.Most of the problems in this book are specially created for Mathematical Festival competitions by leading Russian experts in school and extracurricular math education and have never been published before.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.Titles in this series are co-published with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI).

Early middle school is a great time for children to start their mathematical circle education. This time is a period of curiosity and openness to learning. The thinking habits and study skills acquired by children at this age stay with them for a lifetime. Mathematical circles, with their question-driven approach and emphasis on creative problem-solving, have been rapidly gaining popularity in the United States. The circles expose children to the type of mathematics that stimulates development of logical thinking, creativity, analytical abilities and mathematical reasoning. These skills, while scarcely touched upon at school, are in high demand in the modern world. This book contains everything that is needed to run a successful mathematical circle for a full year. The materials, distributed among 29 weekly lessons, include detailed lectures and discussions, sets of problems with solutions, and contests and games. In addition, the book shares some of the know-how of running a mathematical circle. The curriculum, which is based on the rich and long-standing Russian math circle tradition, has been modified and adapted for teaching in the United States. For the past decade, the author has been actively involved in teaching a number of mathematical circles in the Seattle area. This book is based on her experience and on the compilation of materials from these circles. The material is intended for students in grades 5 to 7. It can be used by teachers and parents with various levels of expertise who are interested in teaching mathematics with the emphasis on critical thinking. Also, this book will be of interest to mathematically motivated children. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book, which consists of twelve interactive seminars, is a comprehensive and careful study of the fundamental topics of K-8 arithmetic. The guide aims to help teachers understand the mathematical foundations of number theory in order to strengthen and enrich their mathematics classes. Five seminars are dedicated to fractions and decimals because of their importance in the classroom curriculum. The standard topics are covered in detail, but are arranged in an order that is slightly different from the usual one. Multiplication is treated first, and with that in hand, common denominators and equivalent fractions are more readily understood and are available for use when discussing addition. The book is intended for the professional development of teachers. It is appropriate for teacher education programs as well as for enrichment programs such as Mathematical Circles for Teachers. There are numerous activities in each seminar that teachers can bring into their classrooms. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

Geometry has been an essential element in the study of mathematics since antiquity. Traditionally, we have also learned formal reasoning by studying Euclidean geometry. In this book, David Clark develops a modern axiomatic approach to this ancient subject, both in content and presentation. Mathematically, Clark has chosen a new set of axioms that draw on a modern understanding of set theory and logic, the real number continuum and measure theory, none of which were available in Euclid's time. The result is a development of the standard content of Euclidean geometry with the mathematical precision of Hilbert's foundations of geometry. In particular, the book covers all the topics listed in the Common Core State Standards for high school synthetic geometry.The presentation uses a guided inquiry, active learning pedagogy. Students benefit from the axiomatic development because they themselves solve the problems and prove the theorems with the instructor serving as a guide and mentor. Students are thereby empowered with the knowledge that they can solve problems on their own without reference to authority. This book, written for an undergraduate axiomatic geometry course, is particularly well suited for future secondary school teachers. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Math Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

One of the traditional ways mathematical ideas and even new areas of mathematics are created is from experiments. One of the best-known examples is that of the Fermat hypothesis, which was conjectured by Fermat in his attempts to find integer solutions for the famous Fermat equation. This hypothesis led to the creation of a whole field of knowledge, but it was proved only after several hundred years.This book, based on the author's lectures, presents several new directions of mathematical research. All of these directions are based on numerical experiments conducted by the author, which led to new hypotheses that currently remain open, i.e., are neither proved nor disproved. The hypotheses range from geometry and topology (statistics of plane curves and smooth functions) to combinatorics (combinatorial complexity and random permutations) to algebra and number theory (continuous fractions and Galois groups). For each subject, the author describes the problem and presents numerical results that led him to a particular conjecture. In the majority of cases there is an indication of how the readers can approach the formulated conjectures (at least by conducting more numerical experiments).Written in Arnold's unique style, the book is intended for a wide range of mathematicians, from high school students interested in exploring unusual areas of mathematics on their own, to college and graduate students, to researchers interested in gaining a new, somewhat nontraditional perspective on doing mathematics. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

The ARML (American Regions Math League) Power Contest is truly a unique competition in which a team of students is judged on its ability to discover a pattern, express the pattern in precise mathematical language, and provide a logical proof of its conjectures. Just as a team of students can be self-directed to solve each problem set, a teacher, math team coach, or math circle leader could take these ideas and questions and lead students into problem solving and mathematical discovery.This book contains thirty-seven interesting and engaging problem sets from the ARML Power Contests from 1994 to 2013. They are generally extensions of the high school mathematics classroom and often connect two remote areas of mathematics. Additionally, they provide meaningful problem situations for both the novice and the veteran mathlete.Thomas Kilkelly has been a mathematics teacher for forty-three years. During that time he has been awarded several teaching honors and has coached many math teams to state and national championships. He has always been an advocate for more discovery, integration, and problem solving in the mathematics classroom.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

Classical Euclidean geometry, with all its triangles, circles, and inscribed angles, remains an excellent playground for high-school mathematics students, even if it looks outdated from the professional mathematician's viewpoint. It provides an excellent choice of elegant and natural problems that can be used in a course based on problem solving.The book contains more than 750 (mostly) easy but nontrivial problems in all areas of plane geometry and solutions for most of them, as well as additional problems for self-study (some with hints). Each chapter also provides concise reminders of basic notions used in the chapter, so the book is almost self-contained (although a good textbook and competent teacher are always recommended). More than 450 figures illustrate the problems and their solutions.The book can be used by motivated high-school students, as well as their teachers and parents. After solving the problems in the book the student will have mastered the main notions and methods of plane geometry and, hopefully, will have had fun in the process.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

Vladimir Arnold (1937-2010) was one of the great mathematical minds of the late 20th century. He did significant work in many areas of the field. On another level, he was keeping with a strong tradition in Russian mathematics to write for and to directly teach younger students interested in mathematics. This book contains some examples of Arnold's contributions to the genre.``Continued Fractions'' takes a common enrichment topic in high school math and pulls it in directions that only a master of mathematics could envision.``Euler Groups'' treats a similar enrichment topic, but it is rarely treated with the depth and imagination lavished on it in Arnold's text. He sets it in a mathematical context, bringing to bear numerous tools of the trade and expanding the topic way beyond its usual treatment.In ``Complex Numbers'' the context is physics, yet Arnold artfully extracts the mathematical aspects of the discussion in a way that students can understand long before they master the field of quantum mechanics.``Problems for Children 5 to 15 Years Old'' must be read as a collection of the author's favorite intellectual morsels. Many are not original, but all are worth thinking about, and each requires the solver to think out of his or her box. Dmitry Fuchs, a long-term friend and collaborator of Arnold, provided solutions to some of the problems. Readers are of course invited to select their own favorites and construct their own favorite solutions.In reading these essays, one has the sensation of walking along a path that is found to ascend a mountain peak and then being shown a vista whose existence one could never suspect from the ground.Arnold's style of exposition is unforgiving. The reader--even a professional mathematician--will find paragraphs that require hours of thought to unscramble, and he or she must have patience with the ellipses of thought and the leaps of reason. These are all part of Arnold's intent.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book starts with simple arithmetic inequalities and builds to sophisticated inequality results such as the Cauchy-Schwarz and Chebyshev inequalities. Nothing beyond high school algebra is required of the student. The exposition is lean. Most of the learning occurs as the student engages in the problems posed in each chapter. And the learning is not “linear”. The central topic of inequalities is linked to others in mathematics. Often these topics relate to much more than algebraic inequalities.There are also “secret” pathways through the book. Each chapter has a subtext, a theme which prepares the student for learning other mathematical topics, concepts, or habits of mind. For example, the early chapters on the arithmetic mean/geometric mean inequality show how very simple observations can be leveraged to yield useful and interesting results. Later chapters give examples of how one can generalize a mathematical statement. The chapter on the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality provides an introduction to vectors as mathematical objects. And there are many other secret pathways that the authors hope the reader will discover—and follow.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

Mathematical circles, with their question-driven approach and emphasis on problem solving, expose students to the type of mathematics that stimulates the development of logical thinking, creativity, analytical abilities, and mathematical reasoning. These skills, while scarcely introduced at school, are in high demand in the modern world.This book, a sequel to Mathematical Circle Diaries, Year 1, teaches how to think and solve problems in mathematics. The material, distributed among twenty-nine weekly lessons, includes detailed lectures and discussions, sets of problems with solutions, and contests and games. In addition, the book shares some of the know-how of running a mathematical circle. The book covers a broad range of problem-solving strategies and proofing techniques, as well as some more advanced topics that go beyond the limits of a school curriculum. The topics include invariants, proofs by contradiction, the Pigeonhole principle, proofs by coloring, double counting, combinatorics, binary numbers, graph theory, divisibility and remainders, logic, and many others. When students take science and computing classes in high school and college, they will be better prepared for both the foundations and advanced material. The book contains everything that is needed to run a successful mathematical circle for a full year.This book, written by an author actively involved in teaching mathematical circles for fifteen years, is intended for teachers, math coaches, parents, and math enthusiasts who are interested in teaching math that promotes critical thinking. Motivated students can work through this book on their own.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book is based on selected topics that the authors taught in math circles for elementary school students at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; Dominican University (Marin County, CA); and the University of Oregon (Eugene). It is intended for people who are already running a math circle or who are thinking about organizing one. It can be used by parents to help their motivated, math-loving kids or by elementary school teachers. We also hope that bright 4th- or 5th-graders will be able to read this book on their own.The main features of this book are the logical sequence of the problems, the description of class reactions, and the hints given for when the kids get stuck. This book tries to keep the balance between two goals: inspire readers to invent their own original approaches while being detailed enough to work as a fallback in case the teacher needs to prepare a lesson on short notice. Kids will be introduced to combinatorics, Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, and the notion of area, among other things. The authors chose topics with deep mathematical context that are part of the continuously developing stream of mathematical thought. These topics are just as engaging and entertaining to children as typical ``recreational math'' problems, but they can be developed deeper and to more advanced levels.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

Mathematics: Rhyme and Reason is an exploration of the aesthetic value of mathematics and the culture of the mathematics community.This book introduces budding mathematicians of all ages to mathematical ways of thinking through a series of chapters that mix episodes from the author's life with explanations of intriguing mathematical concepts and the stories of the mathematicians who discovered them. The chapters can be read independently, and most require only a background in basic high school algebra or geometry to appreciate the topics covered.Part personal memoir, part appreciation of the poetry and humanity inherent in mathematics, this entertaining collection of stories, theorems, and reflections will be of interest to anyone curious about mathematics and the human beings who practice it.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book is a translation from Russian of Part I of the book Mathematics Through Problems: From Olympiads and Math Circles to Profession. The other two parts, Geometry and Combinatorics, will be published soon.The main goal of this book is to develop important parts of mathematics through problems. The author tries to put together sequences of problems that allow high school students (and some undergraduates) with strong interest in mathematics to discover and recreate much of elementary mathematics and start edging into the sophisticated world of topics such as group theory, Galois theory, and so on, thus building a bridge (by showing that there is no gap) between standard high school exercises and more intricate and abstract concepts in mathematics.Definitions and/or references for material that is not standard in the school curriculum are included. However, many topics in the book are difficult when you start learning them from scratch. To help with this, problems are carefully arranged to provide gradual introduction into each subject. Problems are often accompanied by hints and/or complete solutions.The book is based on classes taught by the author at different times at the Independent University of Moscow, at a number of Moscow schools and math circles, and at various summer schools. It can be used by high school students and undergraduates, their teachers, and organizers of summer camps and math circles.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book is a translation from Russian of Part II of the book Mathematics Through Problems: From Olympiads and Math Circles to Profession. Part I, Algebra, was recently published in the same series. Part III, Combinatorics, will be published soon. The main goal of this book is to develop important parts of mathematics through problems. The authors tried to put together sequences of problems that allow high school students (and some undergraduates) with strong interest in mathematics to discover and recreate much of elementary mathematics and start edging into more sophisticated topics such as projective and affine geometry, solid geometry, and so on, thus building a bridge between standard high school exercises and more intricate notions in geometry. Definitions and/or references for material that is not standard in the school curriculum are included. To help students that might be unfamiliar with new material, problems are carefully arranged to provide gradual introduction into each subject. Problems are often accompanied by hints and/or complete solutions. The book is based on classes taught by the authors at different times at the Independent University of Moscow, at a number of Moscow schools and math circles, and at various summer schools. It can be used by high school students and undergraduates, their teachers, and organizers of summer camps and math circles. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book is a collection of 34 curiosities, each a quirky and delightful gem of mathematics and each a shining example of the joy and surprise that mathematics can bring. Intended for the general math enthusiast, each essay begins with an intriguing puzzle, which either springboards into or unravels to become a wondrous piece of thinking. The essays are self-contained and rely only on tools from high-school mathematics (with only a few pieces that ever-so-briefly brush up against high-school calculus).The gist of each essay is easy to pick up with a cursory glance--the reader should feel free to simply skim through some essays and dive deep into others. This book is an invitation to play with mathematics and to explore its wonders. Much joy awaits!In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book, inspired by the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival, aims to engage students in mathematical discovery through fun and approachable problems that reveal deeper mathematical ideas.Each chapter starts with a gentle on-ramp, such as a game or puzzle requiring no more than simple arithmetic or intuitive concepts of symmetry. Follow-up problems and activities require intuitive logic and reveal more sophisticated notions of strategy and algorithms. Projects are designed so that progress is more important than any end goal, ensuring that students will learn something significant no matter how far they get. The process of understanding the questions and how they build on one another becomes an exhilarating ride, revealing serious mathematics before the reader is aware of the transition.This book can be used in classrooms, math clubs, after school activities, homeschooling, and parent/student gatherings and is appropriate for students of age 8 to 18, as well as for teachers wanting to hone their skills.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

The people of the Navajo Nation know mathematics education for their children is essential. They were joined by mathematicians familiar with ways to deliver problems and a pedagogy that, through exploration, shows the art, joy and beauty in mathematics. This combined effort produced a series of Navajo Math Circles--interactive mathematical explorations--across the Navajo Reservation.This book contains the mathematical details of that effort. Between its covers is a thematic rainbow of problem sets that were used in Math Circle sessions on the Reservation. The problem sets are good for puzzling over and exploring the mathematical ideas within. They will help nurture curiosity and confidence in students.The problems come with suggestions for pacing, for adjusting the problems to be more or less challenging, and for different approaches to solving them. This book is a wonderful resource for any teacher wanting to enrich the mathematical lives of students and for anyone curious about mathematical thinking outside the box. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This book is a translation from Russian of Part III of the book Mathematics Through Problems: From Olympiads and Math Circles to Profession. Part I, Algebra, and Part II, Geometry, have been published in the same series.The main goal of this book is to develop important parts of mathematics through problems. The authors tried to put together sequences of problems that allow high school students (and some undergraduates) with strong interest in mathematics to discover such topics in combinatorics as counting, graphs, constructions and invariants in combinatorics, games and algorithms, probabilistic aspects of combinatorics, and combinatorial geometry.Definitions and/or references for material that is not standard in the school curriculum are included. To help students that might be unfamiliar with new material, problems are carefully arranged to provide gradual introduction into each subject. Problems are often accompanied by hints and/or complete solutions.The book is based on classes taught by the authors at different times at the Independent University of Moscow, at a number of Moscow schools and math circles, and at various summer schools. It can be used by high school students and undergraduates, their teachers, and organizers of summer camps and math circles.In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.