Problem Solving 101

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Overview

This article is a note about reading book Problem Solving 101.

After reading, I believe this book melds The Logical Thinking Process theory with practicality, offering a step-by-step guide with rich examples for applied learning.

Key takeaways from the preface:

1. Problem solving oriented education and thinking, instead of skills oriented education
2. A fundamental approach (mindset) to solve everyday life problems (partially similar to what I'm looking for)

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Class 01: Problem solving kids

Balance Action and Thinking.

• Who are idea problem solvers: The ideal problem solvers are 'problem-solving kids,' exhibiting the ability to balance thinking and action.

• What is problem solving at all? ( very similar to the logical thinking process idea, from A -> B)

• My learning: Through practices, my learnings are
  • brainstorming and embracing multiple perspectives are invaluable, even in familiar domains or everyday problems.
  • Two heads are better than one

as with the help of above two means, we often uncovers root causes better and leads to a broader range of potential solutions.

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In real world scenarios, many problem are open ended, so iteration also happens defining the problem and the goal we identified.

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Class 2 : Part I, The Framework (Rock Bands and Root causes)

Find causes through hypothesis and facts based validation.

• Mental Model tool
  • logic tree
  • Yes or No tree
• Software Tool: Lucid chart
• My learning: How to build the root level tree branches is an art and requires practices.
• Problem solving design plan template, take programming field as an example:

Issue	Hypothesis	Rationale	Analysis/Activity	Information Source
Slow website performance	Inefficient database queries	Database queries are not optimized, leading to longer load times	Profiled database queries and identified bottlenecks	Internal performance tests
Memory leak in application	Unreleased resources in code	Objects created are not being properly disposed of	Reviewed code for object disposal patterns	Code review logs

• Hypothesis validation template, take the textbook's concert case as an example

Question	Hypothesis	Result	Findings
Do you know about the concerts?	5%(25)	30%(150)	There are more people who know about the concert
Have you ever been?	60%(15)	10%(15)	Many more people know about the concert but never came
Do you come consistently?	100%(15%)	80%(12)	Some people stopped coming to the concerts

• The framework of deciding the priority of action

  
  (Note that this assessment is based on the Miss Mushroom example, so it doens't consider long run implication aspect )

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Class 2: Part II, Example (Rock Bands and Root Causes)

This section illustrates the author's step-by-step guide on how he solved the Miss Mushroom's problem.