The lesser of two evils

Revision en1, by puma_usa, 2024-12-26 10:45:44

I’ve set myself the goal of achieving 1900 over the year. One of the steps towards this goal is solving problems from the book "Selected Problems and Theorems of Elementary Mathematics". My plan is to solve the entire book over the year, doing 5 problems per day (consecutive ones, of course). The first couple of days went well, but as you know, olympiad math problems can really block you if you can't come up with a specific idea.

Now I’m wondering, what would be the better approach: should I stick to this pace and, if I don’t manage to solve all 5 problems in a day, read the solutions to the unsolved ones and move on, or should I give myself a conditional 3-day limit per problem (and not solve others during that time), after which I can check the solution? In other words, which approach will lead to stronger progress? Will I make more progress by rushing through the whole book and solving about half of the problems myself, or will I benefit more if I get stuck in some areas, solving only 20-30% of the book, but generate more valuable insights and neural connections (with no guarantees that I will solve everything, but at least coming up with a lot of new ideas, whether dumb or smart)?

Tags math, preparation, progress

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  Rev. Lang. By When Δ Comment
en1 English puma_usa 2024-12-26 10:45:44 1229 Initial revision for English translation
ru1 Russian puma_usa 2024-12-26 10:42:45 1158 Первая редакция (опубликовано)