Strategies and Barriers of Effective Problem Solving

Unit 3

Readings
● Strategies- pg 390 to 399 from Galotti
● Barriers – pg 460 to 465 from Sternberg and Sternberg
1. What will we learn? 2. 3.

• What is a • What • What

problem? strategies barriers
can be can hinder
used to problem
solve solving?
problems?
 Solving a problem

Figure.1.
 What is a Problem?
It is any conflict or difference b/w one situation, as it exists and the situation we wish to produce (OUR GOAL).
For e.g., Convincing your parent to allow you for a college trip.

● you have to move all the disks from peg 1 to

peg 3.

● The difference b/w the INITIAL STAGE (disks

on peg 1) and the GOAL (having them in the
same order on peg 3) constitutes the
problem.
● Certain conditions have to be followed in
solving the problem.
 Problem Solving
● The thinking that we do in problem-solving is goal-directed.
● It is MOTIVATED by the need to reduce the discrepancy b/w 1 state of affairs & another.
● To reach solutions we use info. in LTM & from our ‘here & now’ perception of the problem.
● We process this information according to RULES that tell us what we can and cannot do.

So problem solving is a
form of
RULE-GUIDED,
MOTIVATED
information processing
(Newell & Simon, 1972).
Well-defined problems Ill-defined problems

● Have a clear goal (you know immediately if you’ve Don’t have their goals, starting information, or steps clearly
reached the solution) spelled out.
● Present a small set of information to start from
● Often (but not always) present a set of rules

EXAMPLE- Figuring the sales tax on a purchase, given EXAMPLE-Composing a letter that articulately and
that you know: sensitively conveys a difficult message

● The price of the item you are buying

● Whether it is taxable
● The rate of taxation ❖ What information you should start from?
● Basic rules of multiplication

❖Have you reached the goal? (is the current draft good
enough, or can it be made better?).
Psychologists have focused on well-defined It is assumed that PS for
ill-defined problems
problems for several reasons:
works in similar ways to
PS for well-defined
problems.
● They are easy to present.
But the assumption has
● They don’t take weeks or months to
not been extensively
solve. researched.
● They are easy to score

● They are easy to change Schraw et al. (1995) demonstrated that

performance on well-defined problems
was not correlated with
performance on ill-defined ones.
 CLASSIC PROBLEMS
The way to solve a problem depends on the problem

● These are domain-specific problem-solving approaches—they only work for a limited

class of problems.
● Here, we will only be reviewing a certain class of general, domain-independent
techniques (general enough to be used with a wide variety of problems).
Generate-and-
Strategies Means-end Working
Test Analysis Backwards

Reasoning
Backtracking
by Analogy
 1. Generate-and-Test Technique

● Consists of generating possible solutions then testing them. (TRYING TO GUESS A PASSWORD).
● Loses effectiveness when there are too many possibilities & no particular guidance for the
generation process.
 Useful when there aren’t a
lot of possibilities to keep
track of.

If you’ve lost your keys

somewhere b/w the cafe and
your classroom and you
made an intermediate stop
in the library, you can use
this technique.
2. Means–Ends Analysis

● It is a technique that identifies the current state.

● Defines the END GOAL.

● Determines the action plan to reach the end state in a MODULAR WAY.

● End Goals are split into sub-goals & sub-sub goals.

● Action plans are drawn to achieve sub-goals first and then move towards achieving the main
goal progressively.
● Most of the problem-solving strategies will have either forward actions or backward actions
2. Means–Ends Analysis

● Suppose you want to visit a friend who lives in Lucknow, and you are currently residing in New Delhi.
Means–Ends Analysis

Means–ends analysis involves:

1. Comparing the goal (Lucknow) with the starting point (New Delhi)
2.Thinking of possible ways of overcoming the difference (walking, bicycling, taxi)
3.Choosing the best one.

● The selected option (taking a train) may have certain prerequisite conditions ( E.G.,
● for example, being at the railway station, with a ticket.
● If the pre-conditions aren’t met, then a subgoal is created (for example, “How can you
get to station?”).
● Through the creation of subgoals, the task is broken down into manageable steps that
allow a full solution to be constructed.
 Another example of Means-ends analysis- Newell & Simon in their 1972 book
Human Problem Solving

1. I want to take my son to nursery school. What's the difference between what I have and
what I want? One of distance.
2. What changes distance? My automobile. My automobile won't work.
3. What is needed to make it work? A new battery.
4. What has new batteries? An auto repair shop.
5. I want the repair shop to put in a new battery; but the shop doesn't know I need one.
What is the difficulty? One of communication.
6. What allows communication? A telephone… and so on. —
 Simon, Shaw, & Newell studied means–ends analysis while solving certain arithmetic problems, such as
the following:

Given that D 5, determine the values for the other letters. (Problems in which letters stand for digits are
known as crypt arithmetic problems.)

General Problem Solver (GPS) is a computer program

created in 1959 by Simon, Shaw, and Newell to work
as a universal problem solver machine.
It solves problems in crypt arithmetic & logic using
means–ends analysis.
GPS uses the following basic strategy.

1. First, it looks at the object it is given and compares it with the desired object- Thereby GPS
detects any differences between the actual and the desired object.
2. Next, GPS considers the operations (MEANS) available to change objects. Here, the available
operations include those that replace certain letters with certain digits, for example, D 5.
3. The operations used are chosen with the aim of reducing differences b/w actual and desired
objects.
4. GPS also tries to keep track of various kinds of differences b/w desired & actual objects and to
work on the most difficult differences first.
5. Thus if several possible operations are found, all of which could apply to an actual object, GPS
has some means of ranking the different operations such that certain ones are used first.
Newell and Simon (1972) gave several problems in logic and in crypt arithmetic to both humans & GPS
and compared the “thinking” of both.

Human participants generated verbal GPS produced a printout of its goals, its
protocols. subgoals, and the operations it applied as it
worked.

There were many similarities between the performance of GPS & Yale students (participants).
● Means–ends analysis is not always the optimal way to reach a solution- .

● Means–ends analysis can make it more difficult to see that the most efficient path
toward a goal isn’t always the most direct one.
Working Backward

Another general problem-solving technique is called working backward.

Working backward often involves establishing subgoals, so it functions similarly to means–ends analysis.

It is a very important technique for solving Towers of Hanoi problem.

The Solution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AUG7zXe-KU
● Notice that the solution process usually does not start with the problem solver
making a move and seeing what happens.

● Instead, the usual pattern is to plan moves in advance, setting up many

intermediate goals along the way.

● Working backward is most effective when the backward path is unique, which
makes the process more efficient than working forward.

● And, as you may have noticed, working backward shares with means–ends analysis
the technique of reducing differences between the current state and the goal state.
“Robert spent one-fifth of his money buying a paperback book, then half
of what was left for a haircut. Then he bought lunch for $7. When he got
home, he had $13 left. How much did he have originally?”

Anne has a certain amount of money in her bank account on Friday

morning. During the day she writes a check for $24.50, makes an ATM
withdrawal of $80, and deposits a check for $235. At the end of the day,
she sees that her balance is $451.25. How much money did she have in
the bank at the beginning of the day?
Backtracking

● There are 5 women: Cathy,

Debbie, Judy, Linda, Sonya.
● Each owns a different
breed of dog
● And each has a different
occupation
● Each has a different
number of children

Figure out how many children

the person who owns the
Shetland sheepdog has.
 Many people solve such problems by
setting up a chart like the one shown here.

The chart is incomplete, and corresponds to

the chart of someone who has read only the
first 11 lines of the problem.
 Reasoning by Analogy
The next problem is famous in the literature and is known as “the tumor problem”:

Given a human with an inoperable stomach tumor and rays that

destroy organic tissue at sufficient intensity, by what procedure
can one free him of the tumor by these rays and at the same time
avoid destroying the healthy tissue that surrounds it?

Originally posed to participants by Duncker (1945), the problem is often a difficult challenge.

Duncker argued that problem solving is not a matter of blind trial and error; rather, it involves a deep
understanding of the elements of the problem and their relationships.
Solution
To find a solution, the solver must grasp the “principle, the functional value of the solution,”
first and then arrange the specific details.

The solution to the tumor problem is to send weak rays of radiation (weak enough so that
no individual ray will inflict damage) from several angles, such that all rays converge at the
site of the tumor.

Although the radiation from any one ray will not be strong enough to destroy the tumor (or
the healthy tissue in its path), the convergence of rays will be strong enough.
Gick & Holyoak (1980) presented
participants with Duncker’s tumor
problem after each person had

read a story such as-

● Although the story appeared very dissimilar to the tumor problem, the underlying method of
solution was the same.
● The tumor problem and the problem of the general differ in their surface features but share an
underlying structure.

● Participants who read the story of the general + were told that it contained a relevant hint
were more likely to solve the tumor problem than participants who read the general story but
did not have the analogy b/w the problems explicitly pointed out.
● The former group of participants were said to be using the problem-solving technique of
reasoning by analogy.
The analogy

● The army is analogous to the rays

● The capturing of enemy force, to the destruction of the tumor
● The convergence of soldiers at the fortress, to the convergence of rays at the site of the tumor.

● To use the analogy, participants must engage in the “principle-finding” analysis

described by Duncker, moving beyond the details and focusing on the relevant
structures of the problem.
● Gick and Holyoak (1980) referred to this process as the induction of an abstract
schema.
● They presented evidence that participants who construct such a representation are
more likely to benefit from work on analogous problems.
● 30% of participants spontaneously noticed the analogy, although 75% solved the problem if
told that the story of the general would be useful in constructing the solution.

● Gick & Holyoak (1983) found that they could do away with explicit hints if they gave 2
analogous stories rather than one.

● Participants read the story of the general and a story about a fire chief’s putting out a fire
by having a circle of firefighters surround it, each one throwing buckets of water at once.

● Participants were told the experiment was about story comprehension and were asked to
write summaries of each story and a comparison of the two before being given the tumor
problem to solve.
The authors proposed that providing multiple examples helps participants to form an
abstract schema (in this case, what the authors called a “convergence” schema), which
they later apply to new, analogous problems.

Catrambone and Holyoak (1989) further suggested that unless participants were
explicitly asked to compare stories, they did not form the necessary schema with which
to solve the problem.