Vereshchagin's Collection of Arithmetic Problems

3,238 ARITHMETIC PROBLEMS FROM IMPERIAL RUSSIA — WITH THE COMPLETE ANSWER KEY, IN ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME.

In 1891 a St Petersburg schoolmaster named Iraklii Vereshchagin published the seventh edition of a problem collection that had already become standard equipment in Russian classrooms. It was approved by the Ministry of Public Education for the Empire's secondary schools and teachers' seminaries, and separately approved for the girls' gymnasia and institutes of the Empress Maria department. It ran to eighteen editions. Until now, none of them existed in English.

This is the first complete English translation, prepared from the seventh edition of 1891 and typeset to modern standards — every one of the 3,238 numbered problems, together with every answer the original printed.

WHY THIS BOOK

- 3,238 problems — the largest arithmetic problem collection available in English, in three Parts and fifty-seven sections.
- The complete answer key, reproduced exactly as the original selected it, with each Part's answers following that Part.
- The whole of school arithmetic: whole numbers and compound named numbers; divisibility, GCD and LCM; common and decimal fractions; the metric system; ratio and proportion; and the commercial rules — rule of three, percentage, interest, discount, partnership and alligation.
- Graded and cross-referencing. Problems rise in difficulty and draw deliberately on earlier sections. Six are revision sets; the last was singled out by the Ministry's reviewer in 1884 as material for school-leaving examinations.
- Source-exact numbering — 1 to 3238, with the original's lettered sub-problems preserved.
- A verified text. Every printed answer was re-derived by exact arithmetic and checked against the source page.

ARITHMETIC THROUGH THE WORLD OF 1891

Vereshchagin insisted his data be real, and named the reference works he took it from. So the problems run on railway timetables and track lengths, the heights of Elbrus and Everest, the depth of the Atlantic, the Suez Canal, kerosene lighting, the assay of the new silver ruble. Eratosthenes measures the earth's meridian between Syene and Alexandria and the reader converts the result into versts. Kulikovo, Poltava and Borodino are dated so that intervals can be computed. Nothing here is a made-up number.

WHO IT'S FOR

Homeschooling families, tutors, teachers and self-learners who want a deep, proven bank of arithmetic problems with answers. Nothing beyond arithmetic is required — no algebra is used and none is needed — but the problems reward reasoning rather than procedure. Pair it with Kiselev's Arithmetic for theory and practice together, or work it on its own. Adults welcome; more than a few will give them pause.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Iraklii Petrovich Vereshchagin (1846–1888) graduated in mathematics from St Petersburg University in 1868. The faculty kept him on to prepare for a professorship, but his health would not carry an academic career and he gave it up for the classroom, teaching for twenty years at the Sixth St Petersburg Gymnasium, the Smolny Institute and the Imperial School of Jurisprudence. Before the fourth edition he re-solved every problem in this collection by hand and corrected the answers. He died in December 1888; the 1891 edition translated here is posthumous.

Kiselev proves the rules. Vereshchagin gives you 3,238 chances to use them.

Part of Russian Math Classics — English Editions. Translated by Valery Manokhin, PhD (Royal Holloway, University of London). Published by Northern Star Academic Press. Full catalogue at russianmathbooks.com.