Two thousand years ago, if you wanted to shape your own future,

you needed to master only one skill: choosing your parents. If

you picked an emperor to be dad, you were set. Otherwise, you
were pretty much doomed to the poor, nasty, brutish, and short
life Hobbes promised. Fast forward to 200 years ago, and you
at least had another option. Choosing your parents still worked
then. But if you didnt like your lot in life, you could pitch it
all and Go West. Building a new life in a new land required
incredible bravery, strength, and, above all, luck.
Nowadays, however, the only physical frontiers are space
and the bottom of the ocean, so fortitude and wanderlust arent
enough to blaze your own trail. If you want the freedom to
build your own future and pursue your dreams, then your best
bet is to learn how to solve problems youve never seen before.
The Problem Youve Never Seen
Todays frontiers are intellectual, not physical. The heroes
of your generation wont have titles before their names, like
General or President. Teyll have titles afer their names, like
PhD and CEO. Teyll earn those titles, and the freedom that
can come with them, with their minds.
The action is out on the intellectual frontier, so thats
where you want to be. How do you get there? Is getting As
in all your classes enough? Of course not, and it hasnt been
for a long time, not even if you plow through the regular cur-
riculum twice as fast as everyone else. When I frst started Art
of Problem Solving, I received an e-mail from a Princeton
classmate of mine. He wrote:
I certainly wish your website and materials existed when I
was in high school. I went through junior high and high school
without ever missing a question on a math test, and then took
Math 103 and 104, which was one of the most unpleasant
and bewildering experiences of my life, and poisoned me on
math for years.
Its been more than 20 years since Ive been in high school,
but from my discussions with students at Art of Problem Solving,
not much has changed in the schools in this regard. Homework
assignments and tests still reward memorization and regur-
gitation of mastered facts, and never confront students with
problems that are unlike anything the student has seen before.
Repeating mastered tasks may have been valuable 50 years
ago, but now we have machines, not to mention billions more
people who are very good at mastering straightforward tasks.
Unfortunately, the frst time most students learn this lesson is in
college, staring at a test with fve unfamiliar problems for four
grueling hours, wondering why those long nights of doing the
same problems over and over in high school didnt include any
problems like these.
Learning How to Learn
If acing all your classes isnt enough to prepare you for the
most rigorous schools and the most competitive careers, then
what should you do? Tis is where problem solving comes in.
Teres no set path to success. No batch of drills to follow. No
magic formula to memorize. As good as the instructors at Art
of Problem Solving are, even we cant teach you that single skill
whose mastery will bring you fame, fortune, and world domina-
tion. We cant teach you that super skill because no one knows
what specifc skills will be important in the future.
Most of the jobs Ive had since graduating college in 1993
essentially did not exist when I started high school in 1985. Tere
werent a bunch of hedge funds stafed by mathematicians and
physicists, and no one had even heard of the Internet. How could
my teachers have prepared me for careers in these areas? Te
situation will be even more extreme for your generation. We
educators cant predict the tools youll need, and many of those
tools dont even exist yet. Worse yet, mastering narrow skills just
sets you up to compete with computers. Tats a battle youre
Launched in 2003, Art of Problem Solving (www.artofproblemsolving.com) is an online community for students who love
math. In discussion forums, free online learning opportunities, online competitions, and fee-based classes, students receive
both challenge and support as they develop their mathematical problem-solving skills. And problem solving is a topic that
AoPS founder Richard Rusczyk is passionate about. Here, he explains why learning to solve problems youve never seen
before is the most important thing you can do to shape your future.
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doomed to lose. Computers are better than we are
at pretty much every function they perform.
But while machines are gradually taking over
more and more well-understood tasks, theyre
still usually no match for us when facing novel
problems. Tis critical skill, overcoming obstacles
youve never encountered before, is problem solv-
ing. Te key to becoming an excellent problem
solver is learning how to learn. Tis is not only
the holy grail of those hoping to develop artifcial
intelligence, but the main goal of those of us try-
ing to develop human intelligence, too.
Math & Beyond
We at Art of Problem Solving use mathematics as
a vehicle to teach problem solving. Math isnt the
only way to learn problem solving, but we think it
is the best way. Sadly, math is not ofen taught as a
vehicle for problem solving. Its taught as stuf we
know. But mathematics isnt just stuf we know.
Its how we know it. Math is the process by which
we combine facts to deduce new facts. At heart, it
is discovery. Its the language we use to model the
world around us, which makes it our most power-
ful problem-solving tool.
Of course, math also has the beneft of being
beautiful, but its not an end point for most of our
students. Its merely a beginning, as they move on
to make their marks in a wide variety of felds,
using the problem-solving skills they honed with
math. My math peers from high school and col-
lege and my past students are not only among
the countrys best mathematicians. Theyre
also among the countrys best doctors, lawyers,
engineers, educators, economists, traders, entre-
preneurs, scientists, and programmers.
Increasingly, the world is being shaped by the
best problem solvers. Tey make crucial scientifc,
technological, and medical discoveries that are
coupled with innovative engineering and economic
implementation to make our lives healthier, longer,
and richer in immeasurable ways. Moreover, advanc-
ing technologies make our best problem solvers
more powerful than ever. We can now leverage the
eforts of the few to the beneft of the many in ways
never before possible. A century ago, Henry Ford
needed thousands of people to revolutionize trans-
portation by building cars. Now, entire industries can
be turned upside down, or created out of thin air, by
a few dozen people implementing a powerful idea
in a creative way. At the core of every one of these
revolutions is a small cadre of problem solvers.
We know who many of the best problem
solvers of tomorrow will betheyre among the
best problem-solving students today. Tis is what
motivates many of us who work with these stu-
dents: We know that they will shape not only their
own futures, but ours, too.
Richard Rusczyk is the
founder of the Art of
Problem Solving, the
author of several AoPS
textbooks, a co-creator
of the Mandelbrot
Competition, and a
past director of the
USA Mathematical
Talent Search. He was a
participant in National MATHCOUNTS, a three-time
participant in the Math Olympiad Summer Program,
and a USA Mathematical Olympiad winner (1989). He
graduated from Princeton University in 1993, and worked
as a bond trader for D.E. Shaw & Company for four years.
AoPS marks Richards return to his vocationeducating
motivated students.
A Skill for the 21st Century
To learn more about
Art of Problem Solving,
visit www.artofproblemsolving.com.
by Richard Rusczyk
www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine