Challenge Assignments

The challenge assignments develop intuition and thinking. They encourage students to apply creativity, intuition, originality, and careful reasoning to a wide range of mathematical puzzles. It is more important that student try than to get "the answer."

Challenge problems are often multistep. This means students are first challenged to formulate good questions about the problem before they can even begin to solve it. There will often be more than one way to a solution, and the advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed in class.

Because the path itself is the assignment, "getting the answer" is not a requirement. Still, working on challenging problems is more satisfying if after some struggle a solution is found. The next morning we discuss the challenge in class. This is when wonderful surprises often occur as students present elegant and original solutions of their own.