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General Question on Math Challenge II-A Combinatorics class

 
 
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Re: General Question on Math Challenge II-A Combinatorics class
LensmireJohn - 2018年12月17日 Monday 11:06
 

Hello,

I'm happy to answer a bit here, and I'll also share this with our Student Services Director and have him get in touch as well in case you have more questions.

The goal of the live class is to give students the ideas and concepts they need to solve each week's homework. You are correct that sometimes not all the example questions are covered, but this is usually because more time is taken to go into details about the tricks and tips of the handout. Each class I (or other instructors) try to cover what we think are the most important examples the students should see covered, and any examples we do not get to have solutions in the course textbook.

One thing I want to stress for the Combinatorics counting and probability questions in particular is that the problems are often hidden or disguised versions of problems we have done before. The difficulty is thinking about a problems, writing out a few examples, etc., before realizing that one scenario is very similar to another scenario we have done before. In this way, an ideal counting problem seems at first glance like something the student has never seen before, but after working with it a bit, they realize that, in fact, it is similar to something they have done already.

Feel free to ask any more questions you have here, and you can also expect our Student Services department to reach out later today or tomorrow.

Best,

John Lensmire
Director of Curriculum and Instruction