I bet the first thing that comes to your mind when you read problem solving is word problems. YUCK!!! Well we are going to expand your definition of problem solving today. We all solve problems each and every day. Let's say that you got up this morning and brewed a cup of coffee and you go to the fridge to get your creamer and oops, you don't have any. What do you do? Well the first think you could do is just use milk. Yes, I know that milk is not the best but it will work. But then you remember that you used the last of the milk last night. So now you have a problem to solve. You need some creamer and you are almost out of options. You remember that there is some vanilla icecream in the freezer, that should work. Problem solved.

There are problems everyday that each of us solve. We are going to learn about a few ways to actively attack problems and solve them. To start with we are going to look at a 10 x 10 checkerboard of squares. The question is how many squares do you see?

Easy right? How many of you think there are 100 squares? Sure there are100 one-by-one squares. Here is a hint: Consider all the different size squares.

Here is another problem. There are nine dots. The conditions are as follows:

1. Make 4 straight lines.

2. Do not pick up your pencil.

3. Pass through all the points at least once.

Not possible you say???? I beg to differ. Here is a hint: copy these dots on a sheet of paper and then use the entire paper to make your lines, think outside the box.

Ok, you knew it was coming, here is your first word problem. Any time we do word problems there always has to be a train problem. So here it is. There are two trains headed towards each other. One leaves headed south from Atlanta traveling 50 miles per hour. And another train leaves Savannah traveling north at 70 miles per hour. Each train left at the same time. There are 360 miles between Atlanta and Savannah. How long before the trains meet each other.

One more to pick at your brain. This time we are on Farmer Jon's ranch and he tells that he has some dogs and some chickens but not how many of each. But we do know that there are 48 heads and 138 legs total. The question is how many dogs and chickens are there?

Next we will discuss a problem solving strategy.

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