Problem Solving: How to answer questions you don't know how to answer.

1. Getting stuck vs staying stuck: Just because you are stuck (don't know HOW to solve the problem) doesn't mean you must STAY stuck (it is straight-forward to figure out how to solve a problem using the steps below).

2. The cookbook approach to brilliance

   This problem solving procedure (Schramm, 1991) outlines the critical steps in the thinking process. The procedure is useful for answering questions on class exams as well as for solving problems in homework sets and conducting research. It can even be used to fix things around the house. It is also easy to use.

   Start at step "1" with your question or problem and progress through the steps until you get stuck on a certain one. At this point, don't panic, simply go back to step "1" and repeat the process with a new question designed to resolve the crisis that arose. When step "7" is reached and the new question has been answered, return to the crisis point with your new fact or number and continue with the original question. This process may be repeated as many times as necessary until the original question has been answered. The structure is similar to several nested do loops. You may find the steps easier to keep track of if you number them 1 to 7 in the margin of your paper along with a letter for each question.

   • Step 1: Restate the question so that it is clear which fact or number is to be found.
   • Step 2: Write a picture and a word list of all relevant facts.
   • Step 3: Attempt to kill off each of these facts by proof of absurdity or irrelevance.
   • Step 4: Facts that survive should fit a budget equation; write it.
   • Step 5: Solve the budget equation for the variable most related to the answer.
   • Step 6: Ask yourself what other the variables in the equation are. Make up some good looking numbers, if necessary. Plug them into the equation to get the value of the desired variable.
   • Step 7: Does this answer the question? If yes, stop and write up the answer. If no, get a new sheet of paper, go to step "1" and ask a new question that will yield another fact or a new number.

3. The 5 percent rule: Using the brilliance cookbook method you can rederive all you need to know in life as you go along from about 5 percent of what you are exposed to. This rule saves a heap of memorizing.

This page was last updated by George Young on November 22, 2000