Carrying out the plan of action

Having determined on a plan of action, the mathematician sets about solving the problem. At every step, the mathematician check the work to ensure that the processes that have been chosen are making the problem more tractable to solution. Sometimes the mathematician will have done something unnecessary, sometimes the mathematician will have gone down a blind alley and applied a process that is moving away from a solution, requiring a backtrack. Like a journey through jungle the mathematician has to feel a way through the problem. The willingness to accept that they might be in error and to be flexible is the identifying feature of the good mathematician. Pupils who fail to succeed at maths tend to decide on an approach to a problem and then to apply it ridgidly, and reject any suggestion that they might be barking up the wrong tree. They tend to take criticism of their approach to the problem as a personal insult. The important thing to recognise is that to be successful in maths problem solving needs to be an adventure, maths problems need to be puzzles that are decoded through cunning and guile. Once this is understood, then maths really can become fun. At Puppet Maths we want maths to be fun, so our aim is to inculcate this outlook upon maths within our pupils.