Static snapshot

This is a static snapshot of the Tricki, as it appeared in Aug 2020. The Tricki is no longer under active development or actively maintained, but since it still has a number of excellent articles, we are leaving this static version of the site up. Dynamic features, such as commenting or messaging, will not work. Searches will be redirected to an external search engine. For more information on how the Tricki developed, see this blog post of Tim Gowers's. Do also see the excellent site MathOverflow.

Welcome to the Tricki – a Wiki-style site with a large store of useful mathematical problem-solving techniques. Some of these techniques are very general, while others concern particular subareas of mathematics. The idea behind all of them is to exposit techniques that are used regularly by mathematical problem-solvers, at every level of experience. We hope you will enjoy using and contributing to the site.

If you are new to the Tricki, you may find the following page useful; it has information about what the Tricki is, what its aims are, how to read, write, find, edit, or comment on articles, and more:

Introduction to the Tricki

If you want to go straight to the articles, then you have several options. The best way to understand what these options are is to explore the following links. Clicking on the words "Quick description" will give you some information about what to expect from these links.

• Different kinds of Tricki article

  • What kind of problem am I trying to solve? Quick description ( A list of links, each to a page about some general category of problem, such as "proving equality", or "classification" (which will itself consist mostly of links to articles lower in the Tricki hierarchy). )

  • Subject-area front pages Quick description ( A list of links, each to a page about some area or subarea of mathematics. Although we are primarily interested in classifying articles by the type of problem they solve, it is in many cases natural to begin by restricting attention to the area they belong to. It is also desirable to have different ways of classifying articles, to maximize the chances that they can be found when written. )

  • General problem-solving tips Quick description ( A list of articles that give advice that can in principle apply to any mathematical problem. )

  • How to use mathematical concepts and statements Quick description ( You have heard of a definition or theorem, you know it is important because people say so, you know that people use it to solve problems, but to you it is a bit of a mystery how they use it to solve problems. If that is your situation, then this page is designed to help.)

There are other ways of finding articles. For more information, click on "Navigate" in the toolbar.

Regular maintenance: you may find that the Tricki is down for maintenance for up to an hour every Friday at 09:00 London time (GMT+0100).