Heuristics Help

"Useful heuristics include breaking a problem into sub-problems, expressing conditions algebraically, estimating an answer, trying several values, drawing a picture, listing possible cases, working backward, visualizing data, and solving a simpler related problem. These methods are not a guaranteed recipe, but they expand the solver’s repertoire during the understanding and planning stages. The nature of the unknown can also suggest whether arithmetic, algebraic, graphical, statistical, geometric, or spatial reasoning is appropriate."