Easy Problems for Smart People Playing Math with Kangaroo

This product is meant to stimulate the promotion of mathematical challenge and enrichment for all. Most of its proposed mathematical tasks are challenging, routine free, inquiry-based, and involve the solver into rich authentic mathematical activities. The interactive book also tries to balance the relationship between exceptional mathematical abilities, motivation and mathematical creativity; and the relationship between mathematics education for the gifted and equity of education for all students. Thus, within each topic and sub-topic, the solver advances gradually from very simple one-step problems into complex tasks. Along the way, insight problems are meant to raise curiosity and motivation. Briefly said, insight refers to the ability of having a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden, intuitive, understanding of a complicated problem or situation. In this case, the solution may appear as the result of unconscious processes that occur when problem solvers get trapped in an impasse, and then they see the problem in another way, ”outside the box”, or when they change the representational goal and thus get to the solution. 

For a long time, insight problems have been addressed to the gifted ones only. Many studies based on neurocognitive analysis emphasize that the ability to solve insight-based problems is a specific personal aptitude related to general giftedness. However, today and tomorrow work places request creativity (as more and more advanced mechanisms and robots take over repetitive work). Therefore, thinking “outside the box” and the capacities of seeing patterns and making transfers become important features of a successful person, for both the job market and personal life, and these capacities can be trained to a certain extent.