Customer Reviews

Winning Solutions (Problem Books in Mathematics)

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This is an awesome book on problem solving. While it is true that you should have a couple of seperate references to comprehend fully the mathematics the author uses, I'm sure it's because he assumes a working knowledge on much of the material (contrary to the preface that states that it is a transition from regular high school material---Well, this it is not!). Many exercises and Olympiad questions covering the material presented in each chapter are given. Hints and solutions to the exercises(but not Olympiad questions--whose answer you can find on many sites) are given. There are alot of interesting topics covered (numbers, combinatorics, algebra, induction, pigeonhole, etc) in ways that I hadn't seen them presented. This is an excellent buy for those interested in solving tough and interesting mathematics problems.

This book traverses through many (though not all) of the subjects encountered in olympiad-style problems. One notable exception is the lack of geometry information. The book is very much proof oriented. While this gives the problem solver deeper insight into the mathematics involved, some of the proofs are unessasarily hard to understand. Minor modifications would have made the author's logic more apparent. Included problems well supplement the problem-solver, but require him to explore outside the bounds of what is explained in the text. This book is definately not for the casual reader, but is a must for training high-school and early college students. Expect at least a semester of course work.