A Glimpse of Daily Challenge

Preview the first Day lesson of each of our courses, from Module 0 to Module 5, all at once!  This completely free preview will give you a taste of the Daily Challenge and Prof. Loh's teaching style. Students should have a solid background in Pre-Algebra and the willingness to concentrate on a single math problem for several minutes to take this course. Still not sure if this is right for you? Feel free to contact us at [email protected] to discuss.



Syllabus

Reviews

From Students Who Took This Course

Matthew Du

5 star rating

“This course gave me the best understanding of middle school math than I ever had!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.”

“This course gave me the best understanding of middle school math than I ever had!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.”

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0324 L

5 star rating

“Although I have been pretty good at math, I had not been enthusiastic about learning competition math until I took this course. Previously, competition math appeared to me to be incoherent and therefore not beautiful. There were always some kids w...”

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“Although I have been pretty good at math, I had not been enthusiastic about learning competition math until I took this course. Previously, competition math appeared to me to be incoherent and therefore not beautiful. There were always some kids who were willing to have more training and were so much better than me. Since I didn't like to take tutoring for competition math, I saw little point to pursue competition math. On the other hand, school math is too easy for me. This course shows me math is beautiful and interesting, and piques my interest in working on challenging problems. ”

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dwayne wang

5 star rating

“I like how you condense it so understanding it is easy. The fact that it has many different solutions are also cool with different hidden concepts.”

“I like how you condense it so understanding it is easy. The fact that it has many different solutions are also cool with different hidden concepts.”

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Mistilyn ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀

5 star rating

“I think this class pushed me to think in different ways that I have never thought of before. Such as asking why, is this or is there another way to do this project. And that math isn't just about memorizing formulas it's much more. It's mostly abo...”

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“I think this class pushed me to think in different ways that I have never thought of before. Such as asking why, is this or is there another way to do this project. And that math isn't just about memorizing formulas it's much more. It's mostly about the thinking and how you think. ”

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Shelly Han

5 star rating

“Very clear and I like that it has challenging problems instead of a lot of easy ones.”

“Very clear and I like that it has challenging problems instead of a lot of easy ones.”

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Lala Wu

5 star rating

“It was a really good (well thought out) class, for it showed the student many different ways of doing the problem. ”

“It was a really good (well thought out) class, for it showed the student many different ways of doing the problem. ”

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Like it? Let's Enjoy the Daily Challenge

The best way to build creative thinking skills is to play with challenging new problems every day, especially those for which you don’t know how to start. This course, which can be finished in 1 month, constitutes of 16 Daily Challenges and 4 Weekly Challenges. Each Daily Challenge has two related math problems and their explanations. Don’t worry if they look unfamiliar. Just use the whole time during the problem videos (and hints) to think. You’ll get to invent your own strategies, which is the fun part!

Even if you figure out how to do a problem yourself, watching its explanation video is still very beneficial. It will show multiple interesting ways to do the problem, and introduce deeper ideas in math using everyday language. This brings advanced math down to earth.

There is only one practice problem in each Daily Challenge (the “Your Turn” problem), and there aren’t any homework problems. This is because the way to learn how to solve the widest variety of problems is to learn how to invent your own solution methods! So, we encourage you to solve new problems all on your own instead of working on repetitive exercises. You’ll spend the same time on fewer problems, every one of which needs fresh creativity.

After every four Daily Challenges, we revisit the topics (with some twists), through a Weekly Challenge problem set that lets you focus uninterrupted for 40 minutes, on a variety of specially designed questions. After doing the problems, please read the explanations, even for the problems you solved. There are a lot of fun math coincidences and insights hidden in the problems.

We recommend pacing the course so that you can play with this flavor of mathematical thinking for a bit of time almost every day. 

The standard pace is to pick four days each week for four Daily Challenges, plus one hour on the weekend for the Weekly Challenge. If you think this pace is not challenging enough, feel free to double the pace, so that you can finish eight Daily Challenges and two Weekly Challenge each week.

Instructor

Po-Shen Loh is a social entrepreneur, working across the full spectrum of mathematics and education, all around the world. He is the founder of the free personalized learning platform expii.com, an education technology social enterprise which algorithmically curates openly licensed math/science lessons and problems contributed by the world. Sales of these online courses support the development of these social initiatives.

Loh draws from his experience as a mathematics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and also as the national coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad team. His research and educational outreach takes him to cities across the world, reaching over 10,000 people annually through public lectures and in-person events, and he has featured in or co-created videos totaling over 5 million YouTube views.

He has been continually involved in math competitions since he was a contestant in the late 1990's: when he ranked 3rd at the National MATHCOUNTS competition, and won a silver medal for the United States of America as a contestant at the International Mathematical Olympiad. He can be followed on Instagram (@poshenloh), Twitter (@poshenloh), WeChat (罗博深数学), and Weibo (poshenloh / 罗博深).

Po-Shen Loh