Most of the students find it really difficult to understand the concepts of mathematics due to its complex nature. One other reason could be due to lack of attention and confidence. Hence, they start to dislike the subject. Maths involves the study of numbers, space, quantity, theorems, proofs, structure and many more, having a number of applications that are used in our day-to-day life.
As a high school student, children generally fear of solving problems in mathematics which can be either a problem on quadratic equation or permutation & combination. Problem-solving generally involves creating hypothesis, prediction and providing a solution to the given problem while satisfying all the given conditions. Problem-solving can be really crucial for the students to develop an abstract thinking ability, discuss alternatives and acquire knowledge in a meaningful way.
Here are the following strategies that can be really helpful for the students in problem-solving:
1. Understanding the problem:
The most important thing for the students in problem-solving is to understand the nature of a problem, what is the goal for the problem in order to have an approach with an alternative solution.
2. Describe the constraints:
Before obtaining the solution for any problem, students must be aware of the different constraints or the boundaries that will satisfy the function or equation. Encourage students to understand and figure out the constraints in order to get one step closer to finding the solution.
3. Find all alternatives:
After finding out the parameters of the problem; students need to find all the alternatives that will satisfy the given conditions. There can be more than one approach for determining the solution, and all those different possibilities can be found in the following ways:
• Guess work: Students can get undertake a trial-and-error approach in problem-solving. Through guesswork, one can predict the answer or can get very close to the solution.
• Visual method approach: Many students find it easy to solve problems through graphical methods satisfying the given constraints. Graphical images allow the user to map out many dimension of a problem and get an approximate solution.
• Create Table: A table is a way to arrange data in an orderly way. Students can have a better design structure, obtain various alternatives and eliminate them easily to a relative problem.
• Work backwards: It would be much easier for the students to take the end result and compute the result to arrive at the beginning of the statement or problem. This technique can be helpful for objective type of problem-solving.
4. Evaluate the result:
It is really crucial for the students to assess the solution for a problem. Based on different alternatives, there can be more than one approach in problem-solving, thus the probability of obtaining the correct solution can be low. Hence, evaluating the result generally refers to examine all the given constraints satisfies the condition or not.
All these methods can be beneficial in simplifying the given problem and obtaining the correct solution for problem-solving in mathematics.
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