What are the Best Resources for Learning Contest-Type Mathematics?

[ultimatebusta]

I'm currently in IB SL Math (No HL here unfortunately), and I wish to learn more about contest-type mathematics as I have 3-4 contest here this year. Is there any books/materials that's useful for me?

I have taken a look at this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0817645276/?tag=pfamazon01-20 Though i found it a little difficult as the solutions to examples are quite vague, and there's no extra practise questions after each example. Also it doesn't have too much about trigonometry and geometry.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I have a contest coming up in 2 weeks exactly, and a couple in 2011.

 

[disregardthat]

Yes, try looking for "Art and craft of problem solving" by Paul Zeitz. Me and people I know find this an incredibly good and useful book for learning contest problem solving. It does not only contain a large amount of good problems, but it also teaches common techniques from general principles to very specific tricks which can be very useful. You could complement with the slightly more advanced "Problem-solving strategies" by Arthur Engel later on, but both are in themselves very good books.

 

[ultimatebusta]

So in math class, we get a brief note, some examples, and some homework questions.

Anything like that in those 2 books/other materials?

 

[disregardthat]

So in math class, we get a brief note, some examples, and some homework questions.

Anything like that in those 2 books/other materials?

Not at all, I suggest you read some reviews of them on them. The problems in them are ranging in difficulty from the first round of high-school competitions to the IMO. None are like high-school exercises where you apply some basic technique/formula. All problems require some ingenuity, and the book teaches you how to effectively search for solutions to such problems. Both contains material on elementary geometry.

 

[ultimatebusta]

I agree that applying things like number theory requires extensive insight, but I do believe that i have to see a fair amount of those questions (where i solved/attempted to solve) in order to develop the skills to see through the trickeries of those questions and apply the skills