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Apply the different strategies in

solving math problems
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Problem Solving Strategies

What Are Problem Solving Strategies?

Strategies are things that Pólya would have us choose in his second
stage of problem solving and use in his third stage (What is Problem
Solving?). In actual fact he called them heuristics. To Pólya they were
things to try that he couldn’t guarantee would solve the problem but, of
course, he sincerely hoped they would. So, they are some sort of general
ideas that might work for a number of problems. And then, again they
might not.
The following are common strategies that children of primary age
can use to help them solve problems.

Common Problem Solving Strategies

1. Guess (this includes guess and check, guess and improve)

2. Act It Out (act it out and use equipment)
3. Draw (this includes drawing pictures and diagrams)
4. Make a List (this includes making a table)
5. Think (this includes using skills you know already)

An In-Depth Look at Strategies

We now look at each of the following strategies and discuss them in
some depth. You will see that each strategy we have in our list is really
only a summary of two or more others.

1 Guess
This stands for two strategies, guess and check and guess and
improve.
Guess and check is one of the simplest strategies. Anyone can
guess an answer. If they can also check that the guess fits the conditions
of the problem, then they have mastered guess and check. This is a
strategy that would certainly work on the Farmyard problem but it could
take a lot of time and a lot of computation.
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Because it is such a simple strategy to use, we may have difficulty

weaning some children away from guess and check. If we are not careful,
they may try to use it all the time. As problems get more difficult, other
strategies become more important and more effective. However,
sometimes when children are completely stuck, guessing and checking
will provide a useful way to start and explore a problem. Hopefully that
exploration will lead to a more efficient strategy and then to a solution.
Guess and improve is slightly more sophisticated than guess and
check. The idea is that we use our first incorrect guess to make an
improved next guess. We can see it in action in the Farmyard problem. In
relatively straightforward problems like that, it is often fairly easy to see
how to improve the last guess. In some problems though, where there are
more variables, it may not be clear at first which way to change the
guessing.

2 Act It Out
We put two strategies together here because they are closely
related: Act it Out and Use Equipment.
Young children especially, enjoy using Act it Out. Children
themselves take the role of things in the problem. In
the Farmyard problem, the children might take the role of the animals
There are pros and cons for this strategy. It is an effective strategy
for demonstration purposes in front of the whole class. On the other hand,
it can also be cumbersome when used by groups, especially if a large
number of students is involved. We have, however, found it a useful
strategy when students have had trouble coming to grips with a problem.
The on-looking children may be more interested in acting it out
because other children are involved. Sometimes, though, the children
acting out the problem may get less out of the exercise than the children
watching. This is because the participants are so engrossed in the
mechanics of what they are doing that they don’t see through to the
underlying mathematics. However, because these children are
concentrating on what they are doing, they may in fact get more out of it
and remember it longer than the others, so there are pros and cons here.
Use Equipment is a strategy related to Act it Out. Generally
speaking, any object that can be used in some way to represent the
situation the children are trying to solve, is equipment. This includes
children themselves, hence the link between Act it Out and Use
Equipment.
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One of the difficulties with using equipment is keeping track of the

solution. Actually, the same thing is true for acting it out. The children
need to be encouraged to keep track of their working as they manipulate
the equipment.
Some children may need encouragement and help to use
equipment. Many children seem to prefer to draw. This may be because
it gives them a better representation of the problem in hand. Also, if
they’re a little older, they may feel that using equipment is only 'for babies'.
Since there are problems where using equipment is a better strategy than
drawing, children must be encouraged the use of equipment with the
modelling its use from time to time.

3 Draw
It is fairly clear that a picture has to be used in the strategy Draw a
Picture. But the picture need not be too elaborate. It should only contain
enough detail to solve the problem.
It’s hard to know where Drawing a Picture ends and Drawing a
Diagram begins. You might think of a diagram as anything that we can
draw which isn’t a picture. But where do we draw the line between a
picture and a diagram? As we can see with the chickens and pigs,
discussed above, regular picture drawing develops into drawing a
diagram.
Venn diagrams and tree diagrams are particular types of diagrams
that we use so often they have been given names in their own right.
It’s probably worth saying at this point that acting it out, drawing a
picture, drawing a diagram, and using equipment, may just be disguises
for guessing and checking or even guessing and improving.

4 Make a list
Making Organized Lists and Tables are two aspects of working
systematically. Most children start off recording their problem solving
efforts in a very haphazard way. Often there is a little calculation or
whatever in this corner, and another one over there, and another one just
here. It helps children to bring a logical and systematic development to
their mathematics if they begin to organize things systematically as they
go. This even applies to their explorations.
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There are a number of ways of using Make a Table. This ranges from
tables of numbers to help solve problems like the Farmyard, to the sort of
tables with ticks and crosses that are often used in logic problems. Tables
can also be an efficient way of finding number patterns.
When an Organized List is being used, it should be arranged in such
a way that there is some natural order implicit in its construction.

5 Think
In many ways we are using this strategy category as a catch-
all. This is partly because these strategies are not usually used on their own
but in combination with other strategies.
The strategies that we want to mention here are Being Systematic,
Keeping Track, Looking for Patterns, Use Symmetry and Working
Backwards and Use Known Skills.
Being Systematic, Keeping Track, Looking for Patterns and Using
Symmetry are different from the strategies we have discussed above since
they are over-arching strategies. In all problem solving, and indeed in all
mathematics, you need to keep these strategies in mind.
Being systematic may mean making a table or an organized list but
it can also mean keeping our work in some order so that it is easy to follow
when we have to go back to it. It means that we should work logically as
we go along and make sure we don’t miss any step in an argument. And
it also means following an idea for a while to see where it leads, rather
than jumping about all over the place chasing lots of possible ideas.
It is very important that we keep track of our work. We have seen
several groups of children acting out a problem and having trouble at the
end simply because they had not kept track of what they were doing. So,
keeping track is particularly important with Act it Out and Using
Equipment. But it is important in many other situations, too. Children have
to know where they have been and where they are going or they will get
hopelessly muddled. This begins to be more significant as the problems
get more difficult and involve more and more steps.
In many ways looking for patterns is what mathematics is all about.
We want to know how things are connected and how things work and this
is made easier if we can find patterns. Patterns make things easier
because they tell us how a group of objects acts in the same way. Once
we see a pattern we have much more control over what we are doing.
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Using symmetry helps us to reduce the difficulty level of a problem.

Playing zeros and crosses, for instance, we will have realized that there are
three and not nine ways to put the first symbol down. This immediately
reduces the number of possibilities for the game and makes it easier to
analyze. This sort of argument comes up all the time and should be
grabbed with glee when we see it.
Finally working backwards is a standard strategy that only seems to
have restricted use. However, it’s a powerful tool to use when we are
looking at games. It frequently turns out to be worth looking at what
happens at the end of a game and then work backward to the
beginning, in order to see what moves are best.
Then we come to use known skills. This isn't usually listed in most lists
of problem solving strategies. The trick here is to see which skills we know
can be applied to the problem in hand.
This strategy is related to the first step of problem solving when the
problem solver thinks 'have I seen a problem like this before?' Being able
to relate a word problem to some previously acquired skill is not easy but it
is extremely important.

Uses of Strategies
Different strategies have different uses. We’ll illustrate this by means
of a problem.
The Farmyard Problem: In the farmyard there are some pigs and
some chickens. In fact there are 87 animals and 266 legs. How many pigs
are there in the farmyard?
Some strategies help us to understand a problem. Let’s kick off with
one of those, Guess and check. Let’s guess that there are 80 pigs. If there
are they will account for 320 legs. Clearly, we’ve over-guessed the
number of pigs. So, maybe there are only 60 pigs. Now, 60 pigs would
have 240 legs. That would leave us with 16 legs to be found from the
chickens. It takes 8 chickens to produce 16 legs. But, 60 pigs plus 8
chickens is only 68 animals so we have landed nearly 20 animals short.
Obviously, we haven’t solved the problem yet but we have now come to
grips with some of the important aspects of the problem. We know that
there are 87 animals and so the number of pigs plus the number of
chickens must add up to 87. We also know that we have to use the fact
that pigs have four legs and chickens two, and that there have to be 266
legs altogether.
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Some strategies are methods of solution in themselves. For instance,

take Guess and Improve. Supposed we guessed 60 pigs for a total of 240
legs. Now 60 pigs imply 27 chickens, and that gives another 54 legs.
Altogether then we’d have 294 legs at this point.
Unfortunately, we know that there are only 266 legs. So, we’ve
guessed too high. As pigs have more legs than hens, we need to reduce
the guess of 60 pigs. How about reducing the number of pigs to 50? That
means 37 chickens and so 200 + 74 = 274 legs.
We’re still too high. Now, 40 pigs and 47 hens give 160 + 94 = 254
legs. We’ve now got too few legs so we need to guess more pigs.
You should be able to see now how to oscillate backwards and
forwards until we hit on the right number of pigs. So, guess and improve is
a method of solution that we can use on a number of problems.
Some strategies can give us an idea of how we might tackle a
problem. Making a Table illustrates this point. We’ll put a few values in
and see what happens.

pigs chickens pigs legs chickens’ total difference

legs

60 27 240 54 294 28

50 37 200 74 274 8

40 47 160 94 254 -12

41 46 164 92 256 -10

From the table we can see that every time we change the number
of pigs by one, we change the number of legs by two. This means that in
our last guess in the table, we are five pigs away from the right answer.
Then, there have to be 46 pigs.
Some strategies help us to see general patterns so that we can
make conjectures. Some strategies help us to see how to justify
conjectures. And some strategies do other jobs
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What Strategies Can Be Used At What Levels

In the work we have done over the last few years, it seems that
children are able to tackle and use more strategies as they continue with
problem solving. They are also able to use them to a deeper level. We
have observed the following strategies being used in the stated Levels.
Levels 1 and 2

 Draw a Picture
 Act it Out
 Use Equipment
 Guess and Check

Levels 3 and 4

 Draw a Diagram
 Act it Out
 Use Equipment
 Guess and Improve
 Make a Table
 Make an Organized List

It is important to say here that the research has not been exhaustive.
Possibly younger children can effectively use other strategies. However,
we feel confident that most children at a given Curriculum Level can use
the strategies listed at that Level above. As problem solving becomes
more common in primary schools, we would expect some of the more
difficult strategies to come into use at lower Levels.
Strategies can develop in at least two ways. First, children’s ability
to use strategies develops with experience and practice. Second,
strategies themselves can become more abstract and complex. It’s this
development that we want to discuss here with a few examples.
Not all children may follow this development precisely. Some
children may skip various stages. Further, when a completely novel
problem presents itself, children may revert to an earlier stage of a
strategy during the solution of the problem.
Draw: Earlier on we talked about drawing a picture and drawing a
diagram. Children often start out by giving a very precise representation
of the problem in hand. As they see that it is not necessary to add all the
detail or color, their pictures become more symbolic and only the
essential features are retained. Hence, we get a blob for a pig’s body
and four short lines for its legs. Then, children seem to realize that
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relationships between objects can be demonstrated by line drawings.

The objects may be reduced to dots or letters. More precise diagrams
may be required in geometrical problems but diagrams are useful in a
great many problems with no geometrical content.
The simple "draw a picture" eventually develops into a wide variety of
drawings that enable children, and adults, to solve a vast array of
problems.
Guess: Moving from guess and check to guess and improve, is an
obvious development of a simple strategy. Guess and check may work
well in some problems but guess and improve is a simple development of
guess and check.
But guess and check can develop into a sophisticated procedure
that 5-year-old children couldn’t begin to recognize. At a higher level,
but still in the primary school, children are able to guess patterns from
data they have been given or they produce themselves. If they are to be
sure that their guess is correct, then they have to justify the pattern in
some way. This is just another way of checking.
All research mathematicians use guess and check. Their guesses
are called "conjectures". Their checks are "proofs". A checked guess
becomes a "theorem". Problem solving is very close to mathematical
research. The way that research mathematicians work is precisely the
Pólya four stage method (What is Problem Solving?). The only difference
between problem solving and research is that in school, someone (the
teacher) knows the solution to the problem. In research no one knows the
solution, so checking solutions becomes more important.
So, we see that a very simple strategy like guess and check can
develop to a very deep level.

More of Problem Solving Strategies

Read carefully and then do basic operations (if applicable).

Example 1.

How many cars are needed to transport 82 children if each car can
take 6 children?
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 Be sure of what actually is required

 Extract all useful information
 Detect tricks, traps or distractions
 Look for a simple method hidden amongst the details

In some examples, like this one, the calculation is quite simple. The
hard thing is to read the information and the question to see what is
required.
Only simple division is required, dividing 82 by 6 to give 13 and
remainder 4.
You then have to think what the remainder means in this problem.
In this case it means you need an extra vehicle, so that 14 vehicles are
required.

Non-Routine Problems

A problem is a non-routine problem when:

 The solution is not immediately obvious
 The method of finding a solution is not immediately known.

A good non-routine problem should also:

 Make students feel that they have a reasonable chance of finding
a solution
 Motivates students to try to find a solution

What a particular person considers to be a non-routine problem will

depend on their level of understanding and whether or not they have
solved similar problems before.
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Assessment Tasks 2

Read through the problems listed below. Solve each problem and write
down the strategy (write down each step) that you used to solve the
problem.

1. Seven loaded trucks contain 63 tonnes . How many tonnes would there
be in 3 loaded trucks
2. I have just thought of a number. I multiply by 3. Then I add 4. Then I
divide by 7. The result is 4. What is the number I started with?
3. For carrying goods between Looc and Odiongan, a truck driver
charges ₱5.00 for the first 10 kg and ₱3.00 for each additional 5kg or part
thereof. How much does it cost to send 112 kg of cargo between the two
towns?
4. How many numbers between 10 and 1000 have a digit sum of 8?
5. Using only the numbers 1 to 9, fill in the remaining numbers in the figure,
so that the totals along the joining lines in any direction are the same.
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1. [Link]
mathematics-learning-standards

2. [Link]

3. [Link]
problem-solving-activity/

Prepared by:

Sharon M. Galicha, LPT, MS Math Ed

Asst. Professor 2