The Stair-Step Approach in Mathematics

Book excerpt: This book is intended as a teacher’s manual and as an independent-study handbook for students and mathematical competitors. Based on a traditional teaching philosophy and a non-traditional writing approach (the stair-step method), this book consists of new problems with solutions created by the authors. The main idea of this approach is to start from relatively easy problems and “step-by-step” increase the level of difficulty toward effectively maximizing students' learning potential. In addition to providing solutions, a separate table of answers is also given at the end of the book. A broad view of mathematics is covered, well beyond the typical elementary level, by providing more in depth treatment of Geometry and Trigonometry, Number Theory, Algebra, Calculus, and Combinatorics.