The Ideal Problem Solver, Second Edition - John D. Bransford, Barry S. Stein

ISBN: 0716722054, 9780716722052

This is a very well written must read book, very interesting and with tons of useful hints to improve creativity, problem solving abilities and to become better students, where student means who tries to learn.

The authors stress the difference between being able to memorize and being able to learn, while providing a method for proper problem solving.

I particularly enjoyed this claim:

Successful learners are not worried of making errors

In the following I will list some hints that I found valuable and worth keeping in mind. I hope you will also find those enlightening.

• Routine problems can be non routine problems for others with a different knowledge.
• Try to identify problems and opportunities:
  • Problems should be treated as opportunities to do something creative.
  • It pays to look at potential problems. If problems are not identified, solutions are unlikely to be found.
• Take a systematic approach to problem solving. Break the problem into simpler problems and solve them first.
• Philosopher Henson: “The creation of new scientific theories enable people to conceptualize events in new and previously unappropriated ways”.
• Fractionatism, or to break a concept or idea into its component parts so that new thoughts are more likely to come to mind.
• Use analogies.
• Use writing as a discovery technique, development of ideas occur more often when trying to communicate them. The process of putting ideas in communicable form helps the development of ideas.
• Incubation is to stop thinking for a while. This provides a new framework when the problem is approached again. If we keep the problem in the back of our mind, we may find a host of clues that can help us generate creative ideas.
• Scientists often explore the adequacy of their theoretical assumptions by performing thought experiments that involves anticipating outcomes.
• Analysis of factual claims is important to validate the evidence for the claim in the right context. The meaning of the claim must be analysed in the context of the claim.
• Invited inference is often used to make claims without data, and often to express something not true but without telling the false, like for advertising, but inviting false inference over false claims. An example could be a missing physical quantity (as meter, gram, …). It is important to evaluate properly false claims.
• It is a mistake to use correlation as cause and effect. There could be correlation even when there is no cause and effect. However, there are valid cases when correlation could be cause and effect.
• The confirmation bias tend to make people to search only for relevant information that explains what they wanted to know and ignores what is against the hypothesis. Confirmation bias and expectancy bias are two different concepts. The confirmation bias means to search only information that confirms the hypothesis, while the expectancy bias means to modify the result based on the expectancy. For example, if you test your abilities to play tennis but you already think not to be an exceptional player, the confirmation bias means to pass over the matches won, while the expectancy bias means to play without much effort.
• How to detect flaws in arguments:
  • Evaluate the accuracy of factual claims
  • Search for logical flaws and inconsistencies
  • Evaluate the assumptions om which an argument is made
• A memory strategy is to use imagery, or to visualize the statement with an impressive image.
• An effective learner should ask why a particular characteristics and how this is related to its behavior. The effective learner should be able to identify his/her need of additional knowledge and where to search for that. The effective learner’s methods are not unlike those employed by good researchers and detective confronting with a new problem. The creative mind must be able to confront on new problems and understand the needs for new knowledge. Disciplines requiring a strong reasoning techniques will help growing this comprehension strategies. In contrast, the person who simply concentrate on techniques for memorizing facts, will never know whether there is something new to be understood.
• The process of understanding, or better necessary to achieve understanding, are generally more complex that those necessary for memorizing. The ultimate goal of learning is to develop conceptual tools that made it easier to solve important problems.
• Monitoring the outcome of our attempts to learn depends, to a great extent, on our ability to anticipate situations in which we will need to use them. The clearer the idea on what you need to know, the better your ability to assess whether you are prepared.
• In today’s business environment, it is important for employees at all levels to become problem finders and problem solvers rather than simply people who follows detailed orders. Indeed, an order should be more as a goal than an order.
• When teaching, it is important to contextualize, so to use what is taught to real problems. A passive, or transmission model, is quite old and antique. The student must be able to contextualize by itself, which could create the best students, but it is less effective on the majority. Most of the information at school remain inert, because the student does not try to apply it to a real problem. The student does not take the additional effort to do the mind exercise of what-if when required.
• Successful learners are not worried of making errors.