The desire to persuade students to avoid strictly memorizing formulas is a recurring theme throughout discussions of curriculum and problem solving. In combinatorics, a branch of discrete mathematics, problems can be easy to write--identify a few categories, add a few restrictions, specify an outcome--yet extremely challenging to solve. A lesson…

Mathematics is considered the universal language, but students who speak languages other than English have difficulty doing mathematics in English. For instance, because of a lack of familiarity with the problem's context, many have trouble understanding exactly what operations to perform. In the United States, approximately one in seven students…

The placement tests used at most colleges represent what is probably the biggest hurdle in the transition between school and collegiate mathematics. This article looks at different aspects of the problems and suggests some strategies for attempting to resolve the difficulties.