Narrow Results

The teaching through problem solving approach uses problem solving as a means to stimulate students’ learning of mathematics. Students work either individually or in groups on an open problem before the concept is taught to the class. Teachers act as facilitators, asking probing questions to help students reflect on their thinking. This approach of teaching allows students to explore and think about a problem with a realistic context and discover knowledge in the process and is in contrast to a didactic teaching approach, where the teacher explicitly tells students what they are to learn. The opportunity to explore and think provided by the teaching through problem solving approach may better prepare students to thrive in a rapidly changing world, as opposed to students receiving information directly from teachers. This chapter discusses the teaching through problem solving approach, its benefits and its challenges. A lesson carried out by the author using this approach will be discussed.

This paper deals with traditional algorithms, Newton's method and a higher order generalization due to Euler. These iterations schemes and their Modifications have had a great success in solving nonlinear systems of equations. We give some understanding of this phenomenon by giving estimates of efficiency. The problem we focus on is that of finding a zero of a complex polynomial.