Programming and Problem Solving with the Tl-83 Plus: The Structured Search

Problem solving has always been one of the most difficult areas of the mathematics curriculum to teach well. Despite 25 years of research devoted to improving problem-solving skills, many students still struggle with how to start a problem and how to be flexible (that is, switching from an ineffective strategy to a new one). Our students do not seem to have a wide range of problem-solving strategies at their disposal and instead focus on such strategies as guess and- test when no algorithm seems immediately available. Guess-and-test seems to have become even more popular in an age when calculators and computers aid in making quick, accurate computations.