There are a number of math games I’ve been exposed to that give you a set of operations, a starting position then a desired total. E.g. given only the number 1 to 10 and addition, subtraction, multiplication and division determine a sequence of operations to 0 to get you to 1274. Usually these are against a timer / operation limit so it should occur within the minimum number of operations.
I’ve built a fairly simple solver for this that just brute forces the combination of operations and possible operands until it reaches the desired state, with some basic culling of solutions that do not get closer to the goal.
Is there a particular branch of mathematics I should be looking a better approach? I’m constraining the problem to only deal with integers.