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{"id":758,"date":"2017-02-22T12:38:46","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T17:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/?p=758"},"modified":"2017-06-24T19:04:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T23:04:38","slug":"problem-solving-questions-determine-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/2017\/02\/problem-solving-questions-determine-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Problem solving perspectives: questions determine answers"},"content":{"rendered":"

If we look at problem-solving as “figuring out something truly novel” as opposed to “grinding out an answer \"Figureusing different insertions for the variables”, the game gets much more complicated… and there’s a lot more to ‘teach’ and to discover. I’ve posted a number of different “derived wisdoms” elsewhere (Polya<\/a>, me<\/a>, thinkBio’s problem-solving games directory<\/a>), now I want to highlight a specific example about a general principle: “The way represent a problem defines the answers we can come up with.” Take the famous figure on the right. If presented as “Look at the black images; what do you see?” most come up with a pair of faces. If asked\u00a0“What is depicted in white?” you\u00a0see\u00a0the goblet. The derived challenges are:\u00a0how do we make sure we cast problems correctly? and how do you ‘unsee’ an\u00a0initial finding?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other day, walking around barefoot in the master bath, as I got close to the window, the floor suddenly felt quite warm. The window faces West, so my brain handed me “yo, that’s where the sun is!” So I turned all my thinking to deposition of\u00a0heat\u2026 could light come in the window and heat the floor, which retains it? Could that section of floor be over the porch, where insulation is not as good? Could this be a recent addition that\u2019s simply insulated more poorly?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Last night, I resolved to check more carefully. I checked as prior to\u00a0air conditioning\u2026 no real difference. I later randomly went into the guest bathroom and noticed how COLD the floor was\u2026 no doubt the outcome of air-conditioning ducts in the ceiling that blow toward\u00a0the floor. But this was a new realization\u2014maybe the coldness<\/em> of the floor was the \u2018active\u2019 result; the ‘background’\u00a0starting condition in the master bath had\u00a0not been mild-that-became-warmer but warm-with-generalized-cooling.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
So my new hypotheses are 100% different: instead of focusing on the RETENTION of heat from a hot day, I am now looking at the\u00a0acquisition of coolness<\/i>\u00a0from a\u00a0vent high overhead\u2026 that can plausibly be seen as ‘pointing at’ the central part of the master bath, while missing\u00a0the region that caught my attention the first time.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The central fact is that the\u00a0framing of the question\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0(\u201cWhy is this part of the floor hotter?\u201d vs. \u201cWhy is most\u00a0of the floor cooler, but not this spot?\u201d) is a wonderful example of restricting inquiry. <\/i>It suggests a problem-solving rule, such as\u201cRe-state your observations in as many variant ways as possible\u201d). If you’re familiar with PatternMaster<\/a>, you see it in the \u201cis the pattern about a\u00a0clockwise neighbor making ME happy, or am I making IT happy?).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It\u2019s interesting to note that the layout\u00a0of the master bedroom \u00a0essentially drove my thinking. Since I walked FROM the cold floor to the warm area. So my brain\u2019s default presentation was \u201cthe cool floor is the norm; what is this new WARM change?\u201d. So my entire focus was \u201ccauses of excessive warmness\u201d. The next night, I noticed the cool floor in the absolute, but it was \u2018so cool\u2019 that my brain told me that the floor \u201chad been cooled a lot\u201d, so I thought of COLD as the \u201caberrant state\u201d.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Bottom line: when helping students develop their problem solving toolkit, consider whether “explore multiple phrasings\/sketches\/castings of the\u00a0problem<\/em> as part of the quest for solutions.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If we look at problem-solving as “figuring out something truly novel” as opposed to “grinding out an answer using different insertions for the variables”, the game gets much more complicated… […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-problem-solving-strategies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}