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• Maximum and minimum problems in secondary school education

  81-98

  Zsolt Fülöp

  Views:

  129

  The aim of this paper is to offer some possible ways of solving extreme value problems by elementary methods with which the generally available method of differential calculus can be avoided. We line up some problems which can be solved by the usage of these elementary methods in secondary school education. The importance of the extremum problems is ignored in the regular curriculum; however they are in the main stream of competition problems – therefore they are useful tools in the selection and development of talented students. The extremum problem-solving by elementary methods means the replacement of the methods of differential calculus (which are quite stereotyped) by the elementary methods collected from different fields of Mathematics, such as elementary inequalities between geometric, arithmetic and square means, the codomain of the quadratic and trigonometric functions, etc. In the first part we show some patterns that students can imitate in solving similar problems. These patterns could also provide some ideas for Hungarian teachers on how to introduce this topic in their practice. In the second part we discuss the results of a survey carried out in two secondary schools and we formulate our conclusion concerning the improvement of students' performance in solving these kind of problems.

• On the nine-point conic of hyperbolic triangles

  195-211

  Zoltán Szilasi

  Views:

  20

  In the Cayley–Klein model, we review some basic results concerning the geometry of hyperbolic triangles. We introduce a new definition of the circumcircle of a hyperbolic triangle, guaranteed to exist in every case, and describe its main properties. Our central theorem establishes, by means of purely elementary projective geometric arguments, that a hyperbolic triangle has a nine-point conic if and only if it is a right triangle.

  Subject Classification: 51M09