Re: analytical Skill for Java Development

Ingo R. Homann wrote:

On the other hand: If the task is "Write a program that draws a circle
with a certain radius", then this task may be harder to accomplish with
turtle than with Phytaghoras!

And so, an interesting question concerning this is:

Isn't it normal that the second part of the task ("...with a certain
radius") might be consiedered as "normal" even if it is not said
explicitely?

I'm not sure what's implicit in an instruction to draw a circle. For instance
if someone handed me a piece of paper and asked me to draw a circle on it, then
I /might/ ask "how big?" or then again I might not. I might ask "where?" or
"how accurately?". Or, if they had been claiming that (fictitious factoid
alert!) "psychotic personality types draw circles as ellipses slanted towards
the left", then I'd not see any need to ask questions, and would just draw
any old circle (or ellipse ;-).

But how a question, or problem, is phrased can certainly affect "stuckness".
For instance (going back to the example) I suspect that people might have been
more likely to remember turtle graphics if the request had been phrased "draw a
circle anti-clockwise starting at <some point>". OTOH, "draw a circle centred
at <some point> with radius <whatever>" might make a trigonometric solution
leap to mind first (or compasses).

Perhaps one could /define/ stuckness as a state where one has paraphrased a
problem statement into a form which demands a solution of the wrong (or
unproductive) type. For instance the kids in the example might have translated
the general instruction "draw a circle" into a problem in Cartesian geometry --
one that they were unable to solve fully, even though (by hypothesis) there
were other statements of the same problem that they /could/ solve.

And going back even further to the two balls example. If one paraphrases the
problem as "how can I partition the floors most effectively with the first ball
so that the overall number of drops is minimised?" then I don't think one would
get "stuck" on binary search concepts.

Rearranging/rephrasing problem statements is one of the core skills of
problem-solving. (IMO).

-- chris


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Relevant Pages

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