Customer Reviews

The Contest Problem Book VII: American Mathematics Competitions, 1995-2000 Contests

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These collections of problems are those used in the American High School Mathematics Examinations (AHSME) for the years 1995-2000. Each examination has thirty questions and detailed solutions to the problems are given. I was especially interested in the classification of problems by type and by decade in the preface. From this, you can see the dramatic change in the topics covered on the exams. Probability, statistics and trigonometry problems did not appear on the exams in the decades 1950-59, 1960 - 69 and 1970 - 79. The significant drops in percentage appearing on the exam were in geometry and logarithms.
When I started reading this book, I was solving the problems in my head, but it wasn't long before I grabbed a pad and pen and starting writing out the solutions. While all of the problems are within the grasp of the advanced high school student, some require a clever insight if you want to solve it in a reasonable amount of time. At the end of each chapter, there is a chart listing the percentage of qualifiers who gave that answer to the question. While rare, there are occasions when a wrong answer was given more often than the correct one. It is interesting to note the general decline in the sum of the percentages as you go down the list to later in the test.
This book is the best study material available for people getting ready for a future AHSME exam. I strongly recommend it for all teachers working to prepare their students for the exams. When you look through the problems over the five years, there are some similarities that repeat on a regular basis.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission

The question are all real test question and the questions are all challenged. However, $40 is too expensive. Hope it could be cheaper