The Teaching of Combinatorial Analysis Through Problem Solving

The combinatorial analysis is applied in several contexts and many areas. Nowadays, it plays a key role in cryptography, since with the advent of electronic communication, secrecy in message exchanges is paramount, especially in the use of the internet and financial transactions. Given the difficulties faced by students and teachers in solving problems in combinatorial analysis, we seek in official documents and some researchers a teaching proposal that provides meaningful learning. The present work aims to present a teaching proposal based on problem solving, in which the concepts and definitions of combinatorial analysis are presented after solving generating problems. As well as build all teaching in combinatorial analysis in the basic principles, being the formulas natural consequences of these principles. For that to happen we made a bibliographical research, with studies that show the conception of teaching through the resolution of problems. Given this perspective, we developed a sequence of problems that led to the concepts, definitions and properties of combinatorial analysis.