How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics

'I will tel! you' the hermit said to Lancelot 'the right of the matter.' Anonymous, The Quest of the Holy Grail Gyorgy Polya's How to Solve It [287] stands as one of the most important contributions to the problem-solving literatme in the twentieth century. Even now, as we move into the new millennium, the book continues tobe a favorite among teachers and students for its instructive heuristics. The first edition of the book appeared in 1945, near the end of the Second World War and a few years before the invention of the transistor. The book was a quick success, and a second edition came out in 1957. How to Solve It is a compendium of approaches for tackling problems as we find them in mathematics. That is, the book provides not only examples of techniques and procedures, but also instruction on how to make analogies, use auxiliary devices, work backwards from the goal to the given, and so forth. Es- sentially, the book is an encyclopedia of problem-solving methods to be carried out by hand, but more than that, it is a treatise on how to think about framing and attacking problems.