Review of How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

George PĆ³lya
Rating: 3/5

I'm conflicted about this book. There is a lot of good advice around the art of problem solving, but my god is there a lot of shit too. The layout is mostly a big alphabetical glossary of _math things_ --- everything from leading questions to notions of symmetry to anecdotes about absentminded professors --- and the layout doesn't particularly help. It's not organized by topic or ordered by first things first, it's just plopped down alphabetically. As such, it's hard to get into the flow.

This book however is lacking primarily in that it deals with how to solve "well-posed questions," which is to say, toy problems. There is very little about conducting your own open-ended research, and about how to turn wisps of ideas into well-posed ones.