This book is likely different from those you usually use. The typical mathematics text follows most new ideas or techniques with a series of 10 to 30 exercises intended to demonstrate the idea or practice the technique. The problems usually have short answers and asking students to do all of them before the next class is reasonable. In this book you’ll find new ideas and techniques, but the problems are quite different. Very few problems have short answers and even fewer can be done quickly. Assigning problems to be completed before the next class is usually unreasonable. Problems require both thought and work, and assigning them over an extended period is appropriate. I believe an ideal class use of this book would be to discuss the ideas and techniques only once a week, then allow students a full week to complete a series of problems.

The grade level of this book is not well-defined. A better criterion for use is that students using it should have completed their first year of algebra. They should also have a basic knowledge of some programming language. Java is the first choice, but a basic knowledge of C, C++, or BASIC is sufficient.

I suggest obtaining each of the actual games before discussing it. Each game discussed in the text can be understood without actually having the game itself, but having a game makes the discussions more interesting and considerably more fun. EBay is an excellent source of all the games at exceptionally reasonable prices. Ask the students to do the research.

The two chapters of this book are independent of each other. They emphasize different problem solving techniques and programming procedures, but either can be done first, or either can be done alone.

My experience using this material with students repeatedly found that students rarely test their game-playing programs sufficiently. I’m not sure why this is the case, but the fact that such testing requires considerable time and has many different cases is probably sufficient reason. Do everything you can to encourage students to thoroughly test their work. One technique that I’ve found successful is to have every student who submits a program include a “certification” from another student that the program has been thoroughly tested. When students learn that my evaluation of their work affects both the program writer and the program certifier, student testing becomes much more rigorous. A side benefit of this approach is increased student collaboration as they attempt to understand each others’ programs.

I’ve also found that asking students to include a list of all the test cases they’ve tried is helpful. When making the list, they tend to think of the unusual cases more often. Their list also provides me with a good starting place when I’m testing their program. By comparing their list with my own list of test cases, the cases they might have omitted can be quickly identified.

If you are using this book in a classroom setting, encourage the best students to develop an attractive display and user interface for each of the games. Techniques for doing this are not included in this text, but they are readily available in the texts included in the “Java Programming” section of the bibliography.

Remember that no two Java programs are alike. Students can create correct and effective solutions for many of the problems that are very different from those found in the Problem Solutions section of the text. The solutions in the text are not necessarily better than different solutions created by students. Evaluating student programs is similar to evaluating student proofs in geometry. Each program must be evaluated on its own merits. You may have a standard list of items each program must complete, but how the programs complete them will be quite different. The result is that properly evaluating student programs requires considerable time. I also suggest that the programs can’t be properly evaluated unless they are actually executed many times.

You might choose to use this text as a resource book that supplements a course in programming or in problem-solving mathematics. I encourage you to do so. When the book is used in this way you can pick and choose the problems that best fit the material you are already teaching. If you do this, I suggest assigning problems in this text, then continuing with other material to give students sufficient time to adequately think about the assigned problems.