Read Polya

I was reading the biography of Polya. He was one of the most influential mathematician of the 20th century and curiously enough he was not the math prodigy. In fact he was quite an ordinary student and on top of that he majored in philosophy. His other interests were in biology and physics and he diverted his attention to math a lot later and yet did seminal work in both research and the art of teaching. I have read his other book "How to solve it" and it sure was an influential book in my mathematical career.
I am fascinated by the preface he has written for this book where he is making a distinction between demonstrative reasoning and plausible reasoning. "We secure our Mathematical knowledge by demonstrative reasoning, but we support our conjectures by plausible reasoning.
I am curious and very excited about the effect of reading these two volumes and will comeback and write another post in June about my tryst with these two books. Its like read Polya read Polya he is master of us all. A tribute to him on the lines of one attributed to great Euler.