Problem solving

“A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution.”

“Social workers help people increase their capacities for problem solving and coping, and they help them obtain needed resources, facilitate interactions between individuals and between people and their environments, make organizations responsible to people, and influence social policies.”

“In mathematics the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems.”

“The concern of OR with finding an optimum decision, policy, or design is one of its essential characteristics. It does not seek merely to define a better solution to a problem than the one in use; it seeks the best solution... [It] can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problems.”

“The design of my philosophical life is based on an examination of the following question: is it possible to secure improvement in the human condition by means of the human intellect? The verb 'to secure' is (for me) terribly important, because problem solving often appears to produce improvement, but the so-called 'solution' often makes matters worse in the larger system...”

“A solution which does not prepare for the next round with some increased insight is hardly a solution at all.”

“And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient—that we are only 6 percent of the world’s population—that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind—that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity—and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”

“There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

“It makes sense to ask, "Which methods might work for the problem I'm facing—and which representations are likely to work well with those methods? ...Most computer programs still, today, can do only one particular kind of task, using only a single representation—whereas our human brains accumulate multiple ways to describe each of the Types of Problem we face. ...we need to learn how to switch to another alternative whenever the method we're using fails.”

“So much of our human resourcefulness comes from having multiple ways to describe the same situations—so that each one of those different perspectives may help us to get around the deficiencies of the other ones.”

“The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world—or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.”

“In the literature of problem solving, the topic I am now taking up is called "problem representation." In the past 30 years, a great deal has been learned about how people solve problems by searching selectively through a problem space defined by a particular problem representation. Much less has been learned about how people acquire a representation for dealing with a new problem—one they haven't previously encountered.”