Math Contest Preparation, Problem Solving Strategies, and Math IQ Puzzles

Please email your comments or questions to the author Frank Ho at fho1928@gmail.com. We always appreciate your feedback.

I wrote this workbook with a vision that is I wanted to create a workbook which, I think, will be good and useful for children. This workbook was created based on my personal, educational background and teaching experience and my own chess coaching experience with my son. All these experiences and observations tell me that a student who has a higher IQ and has a higher than average math score does not necessarily mean that this student will do well in math contests. Everybody can learn math, but the results could be very different. Other than to have a smart brain and the ability to learn math faster than the other children, a child needs other "qualities" to do well consistently in math contests. These special qualities include perseverance, patience, and willingness to take time to think. The ability to be able to conclude; make comparisons; expand and instill learned knowledge onto other problems; can follow and write procedures or steps neatly and logically; organize and list data; visualize spatial relations. The student could be trained vigorously, but without real interest and willingness to work on problems, then the enthusiasm of training on math contests will last long, so we know to use one straight math contest workbook alone is difficult to achieve the effect of "all-round" training. This is my vision of creating this integrated 3-in-1, unique workbook. Why is this workbook so huge? (What unique is about this workbook?) How to train a child to be more patient? How to train a student to observe and compare? One way of achieving these is to use puzzles. That is the main reason that puzzles are included in this book.

Further, puzzles can increase a child's IQ. How to train a child to think "out of the box" and be creative? The integrated chess, Sudoku, and math computational puzzled can help. When considering all the above purposes, the result is that this workbook has become a huge workbook. How did I get started to create this workbook? I received my university education in Taiwan and later received my Science of Statistics master's degree in the US. My working in teaching and research of math at my learning Centre Ho Math Chess based in Canada, has offered me insights on how math is taught differently in different countries. Integrated game is the right way of learning math; in our case, chess is integrated into our worksheets, not a separate subject. This is one uniqueness of our series of Ultimate Math Contest Preparation, Problem Solving Strategies, and Math IQ Puzzles workbook. Since each of our books has many different parts, students could pick other materials other than math contest. Why teachers, coaches, parents, or students should buy this workbook? We need a book which not only teaches math contest. It should also be fun for children to work on and, at the same time, to enhance their brainpower. This is the vision that leads me to create this workbook, and if you agree with my idea and view, then this world's first 3-in-1 integrated math contest, problem-solving fun math IQ workbook is for you and your student or child.