Problem Solving

Problem Solving is the capacity and the ability to evaluate information and to predict future outcomes. The ability to seek out logical solutions to problems, calmly and systematically, without making things worse.

"There are No Problems, Only Solutions"



Every Problem can be solved, you just have to learn how to solve it. There is a Process to Problem Solving, but you also need skills, knowledge and information in order to be a good problem solver. Problem Solving Skills are the most important skills to have. They are the most widely used skills in every human’s life. The majority of our lives are spent solving problems. Most problems are easy to solve and take very little time, while other problems could take hours, days, weeks, months and even years to solve. But if you don't start, you will never finish, and the problem will never go away. Feasible.

If you don't learn how to solve problems, then you will always have problems. Never underestimate the importance of learning. The benefits from learning are endless. "Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions".

Decisions - Planning - Cause and Effect

Know how to think for yourself and know how to make decisions on your own. You have to be able to solve a problem without being dependent on a tool or dependent on another person, and you also have to be able to solve a problem without transferring your problem or forcing your problem on other people. Some things you have to learn how to do yourself, that is a fact of life. Some problems will never be solved unless you learn how to solve them yourself. Sometimes you can't wait for other people to solve problems for you. Some things you have to do yourself. But if you have a chance to work with other people in order to solve a problem, then you should consider the help of others, because when people work together to solve a problem, then problem solving can be a lot easier and be a lot faster than trying to solve a problem all by yourself. Everyone has responsibilities that are needed to maintain a healthy and comfortable life. But not everyone learns the necessary knowledge and skills that are needed to become a problem solver. But once you learn the necessary knowledge and skills, then your potential and possibilities are endless. This is our future, and in 2019 we are on the verge of an enormous advancement, the advancement of the human mind. "Modern Problems require Modern Solutions."

Problems - Difficult Situations

Problem is a state or a source of difficulty that needs to be resolved. A question raised for consideration or solution. A problem could be an accident, or a misunderstanding, or a mistake, or a consequence, or an emergency, or a phenomenon or an error.

Problem Domain is the area of expertise or application that needs to be examined to solve a problem. Focusing on a problem domain is simply looking at only the topics of an individual's interest, and excluding everything else.

Problematic is something open to doubt or debate. Making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve or believe. Not settled, uncertain, of uncertain outcome; debatable, questionable, open to doubt. Difficult to overcome, solve, or decide.

Problem Solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems. First gather as much information about the subject as you can. Then learn as much as you can about how this Information relates to each other and to the subject. Planning - Collaborations - Group Decisions.

Trouble is an event causing distress or pain. To cause inconvenience or discomfort to. Emergency.

Predicament is a situation from which extrication is difficult especially an unpleasant or trying one.

Circumstances are the set of facts or circumstances that surround a situation or event. Information that should be kept in mind when making a decision. A condition that accompanies or influences some event or activity. Extenuating Circumstances.

Conditions is the state of things at a particular time. The prevailing context that influences the performance or the outcome of a process. The set of circumstances that affect someone's welfare. A state at a particular time. An assumption on which rests the validity or effect of something else. Information that should be kept in mind when making a decision. The procedure that is varied in order to estimate a variable's effect by comparison with a control condition. Odds.

Situation is the general state of things or the combination of circumstances at a given time. A complex or critical or unusual difficulty. Emergencies.

Edge Case is a problem or situation that occurs only at an extreme maximum or minimum operating parameter. For example, a stereo speaker might noticeably distort audio when played at maximum volume, even in the absence of any other extreme setting or condition. An edge case can be expected or unexpected. In engineering, the process of planning for and gracefully addressing edge cases can be a significant task, and yet this task may be overlooked or underestimated. Non-trivial edge cases can result in the failure of an object that is being engineered. They may not have been foreseen during the design phase. And they may not have been thought possible during normal use of the object. For this reason, attempts to formalize good engineering standards often include information about edge cases. Relative.

Difficulty is something that is not easy that requires great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure. Something hard to control and almost beyond one's ability to deal with or overcome. A factor causing trouble in achieving a positive result or tending to produce a negative result. Stress.

Challenge is a demanding or stimulating situation. Risk - Adventurous Undertakings.

Complicated is something difficult to analyze or understand. Vague or Complex?

Conundrum is a confusing and difficult problem or question. A difficult problem or a riddle that involves a pun or an unexpected twist.

Einstellung Effect is the development of a mechanized state of mind of a person's predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though better or more appropriate methods of solving the problem exist. The Einstellung effect is the negative effect of previous experience when solving new problems.

Rabbit Hole is a metaphor for when you enter what seems to be a simple process or journey but then becomes increasingly complex, strange, problematic and difficult as it develops or unfolds, becoming a bizarre or difficult state or situation conceived of as a hole into which one falls or descends. Over Thinking.

"I have gone down the rabbit hole and it's more incredible than you can imagine. But I have to poke my head out of the rabbit hole every now and then just to make sure that I'm not missing anything or missing anyone. It's important to know how deep the rabbit hole goes, but not more important than losing touch with how the whole thing began."

Pattern Recognition - Spatial Intelligence - Chess

Enigma is something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained. A difficult problem.

Unorthodox is contrary to what is usual, traditional, or accepted. Not orthodox.

Riddle is a difficult problem that is hard to figure out. Puzzled.

Brain-Teaser is a problem or puzzle designed to be solved. Brain Exercise.

Puzzle is a confusing or perplexing problem that is hard to think clearly about and difficult to find a solution for.

Jigsaw Puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often oddly shaped interlocking and mosaicked pieces. Each piece usually has a small part of a picture on it; when complete, a jigsaw puzzle produces a complete picture. Puzzle is a game that tests your ingenuity, creative imagination, inventiveness and skill.

Solving - Finding Solutions

Solve is to find the solution to a problem or question or understand the meaning of. Figure out. Answer Correctly. 

Sort it Out is to make plans or arrangements to do what is necessary to deal with a problem, disagreement, or difficult situation successfully.

Process of Elimination - Reason by Deduction - Heuristic - Engineering - Problem Solving Tips - Competence.

Piece Things Together is to create something or understand something by joining the separate parts of it together or by joining different things together. Connect the Dots - Investigate.

Resolution is finding a solution to a problem. The outcome of decision making or something settled or resolved. A statement that solves a problem or explains how to solve the problem. A decision to do something or to behave in a certain manner. Adapt.

Resolve is to reach a conclusion after a discussion or deliberation. Settle conclusively. Reach a decision. Find the solution.

Resolute is being firm in purpose or belief and characterized by quickness and determination.

Solution is a statement that solves a problem or explains how to solve the problem. A method for solving a problem. Work out in Detail. The successful action of solving a problem. The set of values that give a true statement when substituted into an equation. Solution as a Substance.

Independent Learning - Reasoning - Analyze - Diplomacy - Collaboration

Resourceful is having the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. The Power of Re.

Improvise is to make something up on the spot, or figure it out as you go. Manage in a makeshift way; do with whatever is at hand. Perform without preparation. Ingenuity - Creative Problem Solving.

Case-by-Case is used to describe decisions that are made separately, each according to the facts of a particular situation.

Ad hoc is for one specific case, or improvised for one specific purpose. Ad hoc signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be adapted to other purposes (compare with a priori). Common examples are ad hoc committees and commissions created at the national or international level for a specific task. The term ad hoc networking typically refers to a system of network elements that combine to form a network requiring little or no planning. Ad hoc testing is a commonly used term for software testing performed without planning and documentation, but can be applied to early scientific experimental studies. It is performed by improvisation. The tester seeks to find bugs by any means that seem appropriate. Ad hoc testing can be seen as a light version of error guessing, which itself is a light version of exploratory testing.

Feasible is something that is capable of being done with the means at hand and with the circumstances as they are. Something that is doable, manageable or workable. Resilient.

Answer is a statement that solves a problem or explains how to solve the problem. Being sufficient and adequate enough to fulfill a need or requirement. Having the requisite qualities or resources to meet a task. Be satisfactory for; meet the requirements of or serve the purpose of, either in quality or quantity. Answering.

Change is an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another. Become different in some particular way, without permanently losing one's or its former characteristics or essence. The result of alteration or modification. Exchange or replace with another, usually of the same kind or category. A difference that is usually pleasant.

Planning is an act of formulating a program for a definite course of action. The act or process of drawing up plans or layouts for some project or enterprise. The cognitive process of Thinking about what you will do in the event of something happening. Have the will and intention to carry out some action. Make a design of; plan out in systematic, often graphic form.

Method is a way of doing something, especially a systematic way. Method is an orderly logical arrangement that is usually in steps. A condition of regular or proper arrangement. Science Methodology.

System is instrumentality that combines interrelated interacting artifacts designed to work as a coherent entity. An organized structure for arranging or classifying. A procedure or process for obtaining an objective. An ordered manner; orderliness by virtue of being methodical and well organized. Systems.

Positive Feed Back Loop - Feedback from the Public

Extrication is the act of releasing from a snarled or tangled condition. Trauma.

Practical is being guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory. Being actually such in almost every respect. Having or put to a practical purpose or use.

Kill Two Birds with One Stone is an old saying that means to achieve two aims at once, or achieving two things in a single action, or solving two problems at once with one action.

Unfinished Business is something that a person needs to deal with or work on before they can move on to something else. A responsibility that needs to be taken care of so as to avoid leaving a problem for someone else to solve. To complete something that has not yet been done or dealt with.

Learning Methods - Decision Making - Planning - Collaboration - Communication Skills - Temp Workforce - Skill Sharing - Problem Solving Words - Problem Solving Tips - Capstone Project - Chess.

Root Causes - Where the Problem Began

Root Cause is an initiating cause of either a condition or a causal chain that leads to an outcome or effect of interest. Commonly, root cause is used to describe the depth in the causal chain where an intervention could reasonably be implemented to improve performance or prevent an undesirable outcome.

Root is the place where something begins or originates from or where it springs into being. Seed.

Cause and Effect - Underlying Causes

Root Cause Analysis is a method of problem solving used for identifying the root causes of faults or problems. A factor is considered a root cause if removal thereof from the problem-fault-sequence prevents the final undesirable event from recurring; whereas a causal factor is one that affects an event's outcome, but is not a root cause. Though removing a causal factor can benefit an outcome, it does not prevent its recurrence with certainty. "The Root of the Problem". Meaning.

Underlying Cause is one of the main reasons for a problem that needs to be addressed. This cause of a problem that may be overlooked and not even considered. If you don't address the root cause of the problem, you may be only temporally putting off a problem, a problem that wasn't solved, only delayed. So the problem will most likely resurface again and be worse or even more deadly. Like with some pharmaceutical drugs. They don't solve the real problem, they only give you the illusion that you're being treated. You can't take a drug for weight loss without eating healthy and exercising. You can't effectively treat drug addiction by using another addictive drug.

Get to the Bottom of It is to find an explanation for a problem by doing a thorough investigation and finding out its real cause or the true reason.

Critical Thinking - Thinking Carefully

Critical Thinking is clear and rational thinking involving critique. Making clear and reasoned judgments. An intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. The deconstruction of ideas that should be reasoned and well thought out and judged. "Critical Thinking is Critical".

Analytical Skill is the ability to visualize, articulate, conceptualize or solve both complex and uncomplicated problems by making decisions that are sensible given the available information. Such skills include demonstration of the ability to apply logical thinking to breaking complex problems into their component parts. Deconstruct - Seeing the Whole Picture.

Critical Theory is reflective assessments and critique of society and culture by applying knowledge from the social sciences and the humanities.

Critical Thinking - Critical Thinking - Critical thinking can be taught

Creative Thinking (creativity) - Thinking Styles (thought)

Foreign Language Logic. The language we use can affect the decisions we make. People can sometimes make more rational decisions when using a second langue instead of their native tongue or the language they usually speak. Second Opinion.

Questioning - Heuristic - Over Thinking

Meticulous is being in precise accordance with details. Marked by extreme care in treatment of details.

Cognitive Acceleration is an approach to teaching designed to develop students' thinking ability. CA acknowledges a set of subskills which underpin abstract thinking and shares with constructivism the view that concepts cannot be learned in the same way as facts and descriptions. Learners need to construct meaning for themselves. Lessons centre on a challenge which can only be mastered by using an abstract idea. Early CASE lessons focus on: classification, scale, ratio, proportion, probability, variables, fair testing. Role of the mediator. The teacher sets up good learning-context and intervenes to guide the learners toward the learning goal. A mediator asks probing questions: "What do you think?", "Which one will heat up most?" "What's happening to the atoms?" gradually leading the learners to discover the answer for themselves. The mediator can offer clues which direct the learner, improving the chance of successful thinking. Lessons which develop abstract thinking directly have the following structure. Setting the scene Concrete preparation serves a similar purpose to the "bridging" section and links the activity to current knowledge, explains the task and checks vocabulary. Challenge must be set just above the current level of secure knowledge - hard enough to be a challenge, but not so hard as to make the learners switch off. In a science lesson this can take the form of a demonstration with an unexpected effect. In English it could be reading a text which has an implied meaning. Group work The teacher cannot be the mediator for every child in the class. If pupils work in groups and discuss their ideas (social construction) there are several benefits: Group members act as mediators for each other, suggesting solutions, trying out ideas. individuals feel less vulnerable and more able to participate. Random ideas from group-members act as the clues offered by the mediator. Plenary Once the groups have solutions, the class shares ideas. The teacher does not give the answer but asks a group for a solution, then asks another if they agree or disagree and why. The discussion continues until there is agreement. The teacher leads the group towards the answer through questioning. Meta cognition During group-work and the plenary, the teacher asks questions that reveal the thinking process, meta-cognition, which has been shown to be effective in securing knowledge. The learner has to enunciate a line of thinking - making the process available to others. Bridging Knowledge in isolation from the learner's secure knowledge is usually lost. The learner needs to bridge new learning to existing experiences. CA lessons conclude with a discussion about where ideas could be used in everyday life, the same concept as "scaffolding" in constructivism, which is a theory in education that recognizes the learners' understanding and knowledge based on their own experiences prior to entering school. It is associated with various philosophical positions, particularly in epistemology as well as ontology, politics, and ethics.

Understanding Information - Formulating

Strategist is a person with responsibility for the formulation and implementation of a strategy. Strategy generally involves setting goals, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources).

Levels of Complexity - Making Comparisons - Scenarios

Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time. Systems operating with all their parts in synchrony are said to be synchronous or in sync; those which are not are asynchronous.

Hypothesis Testing is a hypothesis that is testable on the basis of observing a process that is modeled via a set of random variables. A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference. Commonly, two statistical data sets are compared, or a data set obtained by sampling is compared against a synthetic data set from an idealized model. A hypothesis is proposed for the statistical relationship between the two data sets, and this is compared as an alternative to an idealized null hypothesis that proposes no relationship between two data sets.

Factoid a false statement presented as a fact. Lie

Axiom is a statement in mathematics often shown in symbolic form that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question. Thus, the axiom can be used as the premise or starting point for further reasoning or arguments, usually in logic or in mathematics.

Pattern Recognition - Analyzing Information

Investigation - Management

Calibration is the process of finding a relationship between two quantities that are unknown (when the measurable quantities are not given a particular value for the amount considered or found a standard for the quantity). When one of quantity is known, which is made or set with one device, another measurement is made as similar way as possible with the first device using a second device. The measurable quantities may differ in two devices which are equivalent. The device with the known or assigned correctness is called the standard. The second device is the unit under test, test instrument, or any of several other names for the device being calibrated.

Conjecture is a conclusion or proposition based on incomplete information, for which no proof has been found.

Means-Ends Analysis is a strategy to control search in problem-solving. Given a current state and a goal state, an action is chosen which will reduce the difference between the two. The action is performed on the current state to produce a new state, and the process is recursively applied to this new state and the goal state. Note that, in order for MEA to be effective, the goal-seeking system must have a means of associating to any kind of detectable difference those actions that are relevant to reducing that difference. It must also have means for detecting the progress it is making (the changes in the differences between the actual and the desired state), as some attempted sequences of actions may fail and, hence, some alternate sequences may be tried. When knowledge is available concerning the importance of differences, the most important difference is selected first to further improve the average performance of MEA over other brute-force search strategies. However, even without the ordering of differences according to importance, MEA improves over other search heuristics (again in the average case) by focusing the problem solving on the actual differences between the current state and that of the goal.

Meaning - Reasoning - Analogy

Memory - Questioning - Puzzles - Brain Games - Ingenuity - Innovation

Sometimes the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one (Occam's Razor) - Scientific Examination (research)

Odds is the likelihood that the event will take place. Odds against reflect the likelihood that a particular event will not take place.
Statistics.

Problem Solving Planning

Having a Plan for Solving a Problem. Determining the Prerequisites of Problem Solving.

1: Use a Team: Establish a team of people with product/process knowledge.
2: Describe the Problem: Specify the problem by identifying in quantifiable terms the who, what, where, when, why, how, and how many (5W2H) for the problem.
3: Develop Interim Containment Plan: Define and implement containment actions to isolate the problem from any customer.
4: Determine, and Verify Root Causes and Escape Points: Identify all applicable causes that could explain why the problem has occurred. Also identify why the problem was not noticed at the time it occurred. All causes shall be verified or proved. One can use five whys or Ishikawa diagrams to map causes against the effect or problem identified.
5: Verify Permanent Corrections (PCs) for Problem will resolve problem for the customer: Using pre-production programs, quantitatively confirm that the selected correction will resolve the problem. (Verify that the correction will actually solve the problem.)
6: Define and Implement Corrective Actions: Define and Implement the best corrective actions.
7: Prevent System Problems: Modify the management systems, operation systems, practices, and procedures to prevent recurrence of this and all similar problems.
8: Congratulate Your Team: Recognize the collective efforts of the team. The team needs to be formally thanked by the organization.

Big 6 Methods - Planning

Situated Cognition is a theory that posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts.

How to Solve It. First, you have to understand the problem. "Understanding the problem is the first step in solving it." After understanding, then make a plan. Then carry out the plan. Then look back on your work and ask "How could it be better?"

After Action Review is a structured review or de-brief process for analyzing what happened, why it happened, and how it can be done better by the participants and those responsible for the project or event.

Case-Based Reasoning is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems.

Improvisation is the process of devising a solution to a requirement by making-do, despite absence of resources that might be expected to produce a solution. Hacking.

Work Around is a method for overcoming a problem or limitation in a program or system by bypassing a recognized problem or limitation in a system. A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed.

Sometimes you have to go several layers deep in order to find the true source of a problem. If you never stop the root cause of a problem, then you will never stop the problem. You may be able to manage the problem a little but you are just treating the disease and not curing the disease. It's kind of like when you have weeds, you can pull the weeds out, but if you leave the roots, then the weeds will always grow back. You have to solve problems at their core. So you have to invest some of your time and energy in understanding the root-cause of a problem, because that will always save you the most time and energy in the long run. What if a problem is related to a particular behavior? Then you will have to modify or change the behavior, if not, then that problem will never get better and it will most likely get worse. Try not to jump to conclusions or be quick to blame. Do your research.

"Any problem worth solving will always be difficult to solve, it's not impossible, it's just a lot of work"

"Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them." - Albert Einstein

"It's always better to solve a problem when it's small then to wait for it to be big problem."

The Five W's and an H are questions whose answers are considered basic in information-gathering or problem-solving.

Decisions - Heuristic - Intelligence

Scientific Methods - Mathematics

Management - Engineering - Repurpose

Methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study. It comprises the theoretical analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with a branch of knowledge. Typically, it encompasses concepts such as paradigm, theoretical model, phases and quantitative or qualitative techniques.

Approach are the ideas or actions intended to deal with a problem or situation. Procedure.

Syllogism is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.

Construct in the philosophy of science is an ideal object, where the existence of the thing may be said to depend upon a subject's mind. This contrasts with a real object, where existence does not seem to depend on the existence of a mind.

Awareness

Concept is a generalization or abstraction from experience or the result of a transformation of existing Ideas.

Reduction Complexity is an algorithm for transforming one problem into another problem. A reduction from one problem to another may be used to show that the second problem is at least as difficult as the first.

Problem Based Learning is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of solving an open-ended problem. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain knowledge.

Project Based Learning is a student-centered pedagogy that involves a dynamic classroom approach in which students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems. Students learn about a subject by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to a complex question, challenge, or problem. It is a style of active learning and inquiry-based learning. PBL contrasts with paper-based, rote memorization, or teacher-led instruction that simply presents established facts or portrays a smooth path to knowledge by instead posing questions, problems or scenarios.

Troubleshooting is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes. It is a logical, systematic search for the source of a problem in order to solve it, and make the product or process operational again. Troubleshooting is needed to identify the symptoms. Determining the most likely cause is a Process of Elimination—eliminating potential causes of a problem. Finally, troubleshooting requires confirmation that the solution restores the product or process to its working state.

Trial and Error is a fundamental method of solving problems. It is characterized by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the agent stops trying. Deductive Reasoning.

Unit Testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code, sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures, are tested to determine whether they are fit for use.

Result is the final consequence of a sequence of actions or events expressed qualitatively or quantitatively. Possible results include advantage, disadvantage, gain, injury, loss, value and victory. There may be a range of possible outcomes associated with an event depending on the point of view, historical distance or relevance. Reaching no result can mean that actions are inefficient, ineffective, meaningless or flawed.

Evaluating is a systematic determination of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards. Information Literacy.

Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an object or event, which can be compared with other objects or events.

Risk Assessment - Awareness 

Demonstration Proof is a deductive argument for a mathematical statement. In the argument, other previously established statements, such as theorems, can be used. In principle, a proof can be traced back to self-evident or assumed statements, known as axioms, along with accepted rules of inference.

Evidence is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.

Anecdotal Evidence is evidence from anecdotes. Where only one or a few anecdotes are presented, there is a larger chance that they may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases.

Coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances which have no apparent causal connection with each other.

Anomaly is a deviation from the normal or common order or form or rule.

Corner Case involves a problem or situation that occurs only outside of normal operating parameters—specifically one that manifests itself when multiple environmental variables or conditions are simultaneously at extreme levels, even though each parameter is within the specified range for that parameter. (or pathological case).

Operational Research is a discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.

Well-Posed Problem is when a solution exists, the solution is unique, and the solution's behavior changes continuously with the initial conditions.

Regularization in mathematics is a process of introducing additional information in order to solve an ill-posed problem or to prevent overfitting.

Overfitting is to fit a "model" to a set of training data, so as to be able to make reliable predictions on general untrained data. In overfitting, a statistical model describes random error or noise instead of the underlying relationship. Overfitting occurs when a model is excessively complex, such as having too many parameters relative to the number of observations. A model that has been overfit has poor predictive performance, as it overreacts to minor fluctuations in the training data.

Reasoning - Researching - Analyzing - Analysis

Verification and Validation are independent procedures that are used together for checking that a product, service, or system meets requirements and specifications and that it fulfills its intended purpose. Validate.

Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.

Proactivity refers to anticipatory, change-oriented and self-initiated behavior in situations, particularly in the workplace. Proactive behavior involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than just reacting. It means taking control and making things happen rather than just adjusting to a situation or waiting for something to happen. Proactive employees generally do not need to be asked to act, nor do they require detailed instructions.

Mind Maps - Process - Creative Process

Parameter is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, or situation, etc). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when evaluating the identity of a system; or, when evaluating the performance, status, condition, etc. of a system.

Spectrum is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary infinitely within a continuum.

Failure - Mistakes - Accuracy and Precision

Definition (meaning)

Alternatives is one of a number of choices and options from which to choose from.

Alternative Dispute Resolution includes dispute resolution processes and techniques that act as a means for disagreeing parties to come to an agreement short of litigation. It is a collective term for the ways that parties can settle disputes, with (or without) the help of a third party.

Using Experience in Learning and Problem Solving (PDF)

You don't have to be an expert to solve big problems: Tapiwa Chiwewe (video and text)

"Problem solving doesn't have to be stressful or irritating. Most big problems should be seen as being a challenge, like when you're trying to win a game, because problem solving can be fun if you want it to be."

Decisions - Decision Making - Making Up Your Mind

Decision Making is the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several alternative possibilities. Every decision-making process produces a final choice that may or may not prompt action. Decision-making is the process of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision-maker. Group Decisions.

The best decision that we can make at this time should be based on our current level of knowledge and information, the feedback we get from experts, the research, the facts, the relevance, our priorities and our experiences. If someone believes that something is working for them, they will keep doing it. If you believe that what you're doing is beneficial and effective, then you will keep repeating that action. If you don't know that you are harming yourself or harming other people, then you will not change your behavior. If you don't know about better choices that are more beneficial or more effective, then you will never make the better choices or improve.

Complex Decision Making is a situation where there is no obviously correct choice. Instead, there are multiple answers that warrant further experimentation before committing to a single approach. Machine Learning - Rational.

For Complex Decisions, Narrow Options down to two. When choosing between multiple alternatives, people usually focus their attention on the two most promising options. The quicker we do that, the faster we make the decision.

Suspension of Judgment involves waiting for all the facts before making a decision. Much of the scientific method is designed to encourage the suspension of judgments until observations can be made, tested, and verified through peer review. The advance of social science often depends on excluding cognitive bias, of which many forms are known. Tough Decisions.

Chew on It is to think about something carefully for a long time, before making a decision about it.

Avoid fear-based decisions or escape-based decisions, focus on target-based decisions. Don't base your life decisions on the advice from people who don't have to deal with the results. Evidence.

Everyone can make better decisions, and everyone has the ability to make good decisions, but not everyone is aware of what good decisions they can make or what good choices are available. This is why informing the public, and educating every student to the highest degree is absolutely necessary. This is life or death decision. And I choose life, like most people do.

People realize the problems in the world but they don't know how to solve these problems. You must put the process of problem solving in motion. You need to find short term and long term solutions. We need to go beyond just treating social diseases, we need to cure these diseases once and for all. Decision Tree.

Conditional is information that should be kept in mind when making a decision. To specify as a condition, provision or requirement in a contract or agreement.

Condition is a state at a particular time. A mode of being or form of existence of a person or thing. The state of good health or being in good condition or in good shape. A bad condition would be an illness, disease, or other medical problem. Condition can also mean to develop children's behavior by instructions and practice, especially to teach self-control or establish a conditioned response. Condition can also mean to make an assumption on which rests the validity or effect of something else. The procedure that is varied in order to estimate a variable's effect by comparison with a control condition. To specify as a condition, provision, demand or requirement in a contract or agreement.

8 Disciplines of Problem Solving (wiki) - Persuasive Definitions

Metaheuristic is a higher-level procedure or heuristic designed to find, generate, or select a heuristic (partial search algorithm) that may provide a sufficiently good solution to an optimization problem, especially with incomplete or imperfect information or limited computation capacity. Metaheuristics sample a set of solutions which is too large to be completely sampled. Metaheuristics may make few assumptions about the optimization problem being solved, and so they may be usable for a variety of problems.

Ad Hoc generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes (compare with a priority).

Panacea is a solution for all problems. Hypothetical remedy for all ills or diseases; Improving Education is a Panacea.

Recursion in relation to computer science is a method where the solution to a problem depends on solutions to smaller instances of the same problem (as opposed to iteration). The approach can be applied to many types of problems, and recursion is one of the central ideas of computer science.

Finite Element Method is a numerical technique for finding approximate solutions to boundary value problems for partial differential equations. It is also referred to as finite element analysis (FEA). FEM subdivides a large problem into smaller, simpler, parts, called finite elements.

Secretary Problem - 37% Rule - if a decision must be made immediately, and you don't have all the information you need, hasty decision will be made.

A new view of how the brain decides to make an effort. How the human ventral striatum kicks in during decision-making
New research gives the first detailed view of ventral striatum activity during three phases of effort-based decision-making -- the anticipation of initiating an effort, the actual execution of the effort and the reward, or outcome, of the effort.

Over Thinking - Can't Decide which way to Go

Analysis Paralysis or paralysis by analysis is the state of over-analyzing or over-thinking a situation so that a decision or action is never taken, which could in effect paralyze the outcome. A decision can be seen as being too complicated with too many detailed options or scenarios, thus being overwhelmed by information overload so that a choice is never made. But you have to try something and change something if a major problem arises. Seek the optimal or perfect solution upfront while always searching for ways for a better solution as time goes on. But always remember that fear can make any decision lead to erroneous results. And asking the wrong questions could make finding the right answers a lot more difficult.

Priorities - Fight or Run - He Who Hesitates is Lost - Ruminate - Passivity - Risk Aversion - Commitment

Optimal Stopping is concerned with the problem of choosing a time to take a particular action, in order to maximize an expected reward or minimize an expected cost.

Stopping Time or stopping rule is a mechanism for deciding whether to continue or stop a process on the basis of the present position and past events, and which will almost always lead to a decision to stop at some finite time.

Thinking about possible scenarios is normal, but most people confuse "thinking about possible outcomes" with "worrying or ruminating about possible outcomes." The next time you're thinking about something, be aware of it and ask this question, is this possible scenario have any value? Are you actually solving a problem and seeking a solution? Or are you just wasting time thinking about things for too long, and not spending enough time doing things? There has to be a balance between thinking and doing. You need to keep learning and developing. A person who thinks in circles usually walks in circles, or does things that are wasteful and never seems to progress.

Hesitant is unable to act or decide quickly or firmly. Lacking decisiveness of character.

Indecisive is not having the ability to make decisions quickly and effectively. Not settling an issue.

Decision Fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making. It is now understood as one of the causes of irrational trade-offs in decision making. For instance, judges in court have been shown to make poorer quality decisions late in the day than they do early in the day. Decision fatigue may also lead to consumers making poor choices with their purchases. There is a paradox in that "people who lack choices seem to want them and often will fight for them", yet at the same time, "people find that making many choices can be [psychologically] aversive." Notably, major politicians and businessmen such as former United States President Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg have been known to reduce their everyday clothing down to one or two outfits in order to limit the number of decisions they make in a day.

When in Doubt - Work it Out

Doubt characterizes a status in which the mind remains suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them. Doubt on an emotional level is indecision between belief and disbelief. Doubt involves uncertainty, distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision. Doubt questions a notion of a perceived "reality", and may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for mistakes or faults or appropriateness. (compare paradox). Denial - Fallacies.

Dilemma is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. One in this position has been traditionally described as "being on the horns of a dilemma", neither horn being comfortable. This is sometimes more colorfully described as "Finding oneself impaled upon the horns of a dilemma", referring to the sharp points of a bull's horns, equally uncomfortable (and dangerous).

Expecting - Scenarios - Variables - Improvising

Ambivalent is uncertain or unable to decide about what course to follow.

Paradox is a statement that, despite apparently sound reasoning from true premises, leads to a self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. Some logical paradoxes are known to be invalid arguments but are still valuable in promoting critical thinking.

Paradigm is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field. Systematic arrangement of all the inflected forms of a word. The generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time.

Catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules. An example would be: To apply for a job, you need to have a few years of experience. But in order to gain experience, you need to get a job first.

Undecidable Problem is a decision problem for which it is proved to be impossible to construct an algorithm that always leads to a correct yes-or-no answer. The halting problem is an example: it can be proven that there is no algorithm that correctly determines whether arbitrary programs eventually halt when run. A decision problem is any arbitrary yes-or-no question on an infinite set of inputs. Because of this, it is traditional to define the decision problem equivalently as the set of inputs for which the problem returns yes.

Proof of Impossibility is a proof demonstrating that a particular problem cannot be solved as described in the claim, or that a particular set of problems cannot be solved in general. Proofs of impossibility often put decades or centuries of work attempting to find a solution to rest. To prove that something is impossible is usually much harder than the opposite task; as it is often necessary to develop a theory. Impossibility theorems are usually expressible as negative existential propositions, or universal propositions in logic.

Quick Decisions - Decisiveness

Affect Heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to make decisions and solve problems quickly and efficiently. Mental shortcuts are efficient mental processes that help humans solve problems and learn new concepts. These processes make problems less complex by ignoring some of the information that's coming into the brain, either consciously or unconsciously.

Processing Speed (quick thinking /thinking quick) - Response Time - Impulse - Spontaneous

Recognition Primed Decision is a model of how people make quick, effective decisions when faced with complex situations or dilemmas. In this model, the decision maker is assumed to generate a possible course of action, compare it to the constraints imposed by the situation, and select the first course of action that is not rejected.

Heuristic is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, stereotyping, profiling, bias, or common sense.

Heuristically is using a general formulation that serves to guide investigation. A commonsense rule or set of rules intended to increase the probability of solving some problem.

Decisiveness is the ability to make decisions quickly and effectively. The conclusive nature of an issue that has been settled or a result that has been produced.

Decisive is settling an issue and producing a definite result. Determining or having the power to determine an outcome.

Snap Judgment is a hurried decision made quickly without thinking. A quick opinion without due deliberation.

Put your Foot in your Mouth is to say or do something without carefully thinking about it, something that ends up offending, upsetting or embarrassing someone.

Hasty is doing something excessively quick without due deliberation or investigation.

Spur of the Moment is a decision made without planning in advance and occurring or developing without premeditation.

Rush is to move or act fast at high speed to cause something to occur rapidly. A sudden burst of activity. The act of moving hurriedly, sometimes in a careless manner when under pressure.

Rush Into Things means to make a big decision too quickly.

Hurry is to move or act fast at high speed. A condition of urgency making it necessary to move or act fast. The act of moving hurriedly, sometimes in a careless manner when urged to an unnatural high speed.

In a Hurry is being eager to get a thing done quickly in a rushed manner.

Fast is capable of acting or moving quickly.

Quick is to accomplished something rapidly and without delay. Hurried and brief. Moving quickly and lightly. Performed with little or no delay. Apprehending and responding with speed and sensitivity.

Make it Quick is used to tell someone to do something quickly or to hurry up. Make it fast or make it snappy.

Hick's Law the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has: increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically. The Hick–Hyman law assesses cognitive information capacity in choice reaction experiments. The amount of time taken to process a certain amount of bits in the Hick–Hyman law is known as the rate of gain of information. Improvising.

Clean Sheet of Paper denotes a situation where a decision can be made without reference to prior events or be limited or affected by past happenings.

Operations Research is a discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.

Eisenhower Decision Principle is when tasks are evaluated using the criteria important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent, and then placed in according quadrants in an Eisenhower Matrix (also known as an "Eisenhower Box" or "Eisenhower Decision Matrix"). Taking your Time - Delayed Responsiveness - Delayed.

Be very careful when rushing to solve a problem fast, because you could make the problem worse, or even prolong the problem.

Group Decision Making

Group Decision-Making is a situation when individuals collectively make a choice from the alternatives before them. The decision is then no longer attributable to any single individual who is a member of the group. This is because all the individuals and social group processes such as social influence contribute to the outcome. The decisions made by groups are often different from those made by individuals. Group polarization is one example. Groups tend to make decisions that are more extreme than those of its individual members, in the direction of the individual inclinations. According to the idea of synergy, decisions made collectively also tend to be more effective than decisions made by a single individual. In this vein, certain collaborative arrangements have the potential to generate better net performance outcomes than individuals acting on their own. Under normal everyday conditions, collaborative or group decision-making would often be preferred and would generate more benefits than individual decision-making when there is the time for proper deliberation, discussion, and dialogue. This can be achieved through the use of committee, teams, groups, partnerships, or other collaborative social processes. Lack of information sharing is a common problem in group decision making. This happens when certain members of the group have information that is not known by all of the members in the group. If the members were to all combine all of their information, they would be more likely to make an optimal decision. But if people do not share all of their information, the group may make a sub-optimal decision. Group discussion pitfalls. Procrastination. Replacing high-priority tasks with tasks of lower priority. The group postpones the decision rather than studying the alternatives and discussing their relative merits. Bolstering. The group may quickly or arbitrarily formulate a decision without thinking things through to completion. They then bolster their decision by exaggerating the favorable consequences of the decision and minimizing the importance of unfavorable consequences. Denying responsibility. The group delegates the decision to a subcommittee or diffuses accountability throughout the entire group, thereby avoiding responsibility. Muddling through. The group muddles through the issue by considering only a very narrow range of alternatives that differ to only a small degree from the existing choice. Satisficing. A combination of the words "satisfy" and "suffice". Members accept a low-risk, easy solution instead of searching for the best solution. Trivialization. The group will avoid dealing with larger issues by focusing on minor issues. The misuse, abuse and/or inappropriate use of information, including: Belief perseverance. A group utilises information in their decision-making that has already been deemed inaccurate. Sunk cost bias. A group remains committed to a given plan primarily due to the investment already made in that plan, regardless of how inefficient and/or ineffective it may have become. Extra-evidentiary bias. A group choosing to use some information despite having been told it should be ignored. Hindsight bias. Group members falsely over-estimate the accuracy of and/or the relevance of their past knowledge of a given outcome. Overlooking useful information. This can include: Base rate bias. Group members ignore applicable information they have concerning basic trends/tendencies. Fundamental attribution error. Group members base their decisions on inaccurate appraisals of individuals' behavior—namely, overestimating internal factors (e.g., personality) and underestimating external or contextual factors. (Note: This phenomenon is reliably observed in individualist cultures, not in collectivist cultures.) Relying too heavily on heuristics that over-simplify complex decisions. This can include: Availability heuristic. Group members rely on information that is readily available. Conjunctive bias. When groups are not aware that the probability of a given event occurring is the least upper bound on the probability of that event and any other given event occurring together; thus if the probability of the second event is less than one, the occurrence of the pair will always be less likely than the first event alone. Representativeness heuristic. Group members rely too heavily on decision-making factors that seem meaningful but are, in fact, more or less misleading.

Democracy - Negotiation - Do You See What I See - Difference of Opinion - Truth

Shared Information Bias is known as the tendency for group members to spend more time and energy discussing information that all members are already familiar with (i.e., shared information), and less time and energy discussing information that only some members are aware of (i.e., unshared information). Harmful consequences related to poor decision-making can arise when the group does not have access to unshared information (hidden profiles) in order to make a well-informed decision.

Confirmation Bias - False Consensus

Hidden Profile is a paradigm that occurs in the process of group decision making. It is found in a situation when part of some information is shared among group members (i.e. all members possess this information prior to discussion), whereas other pieces of information are unshared (i.e. information known to only one member prior to discussion). Furthermore, shared information and unshared information have different decisional implications, and the alternative implied by the unshared information is the correct one given all information available to the group. However, no group member can detect this best solution on the basis of her or his individual information prior to discussion; it can only be found by pooling the unshared information during group discussion.

Consensus is a group decision-making process in which group members develop, and agree to support, a decision in the best interest of the whole. Consensus may be defined professionally as an acceptable resolution,, one that can be supported, even if not the "favourite" of each individual.

Diplomatic - Comments - Critics - Public Forums - Deliberation

Consensus Decision-Making refers to group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. Characteristics of consensus decision-making include: Collaborative: Participants contribute to a shared proposal and shape it into a decision that meets the concerns of all group members as much as possible. Cooperative: Participants in an effective consensus process should strive to reach the best possible decision for the group and all of its members, rather than competing for personal preferences. Egalitarian: All members of a consensus decision-making body should be afforded, as much as possible, equal input into the process. All members have the opportunity to present, and amend proposals. Inclusive: As many stakeholders as possible should be involved in the consensus decision-making process. Participatory: The consensus process should actively solicit the input and participation of all decision-makers. Blocking and other forms of dissent. Providing an option for those who do not support a proposal to “stand aside” rather than block. Requiring a block from two or more people to put a proposal aside. Requiring the blocking party to supply an alternative proposal or a process for generating one. Limiting each person's option to block consensus to a handful of times in one's life. Limiting the option of blocking to decisions that are substantial to the mission or operation of the group and not allowing blocking on routine decisions. Limiting the allowable rationale for blocking to issues that are fundamental to the group's mission or potentially disastrous to the group. Quaker-based consensus is said to be effective because it puts in place a simple, time-tested structure that moves a group towards unity. The Quaker model is intended to allow hearing individual voices while providing a mechanism for dealing with disagreements. The Quaker model has been adapted by Earlham College for application to secular settings, and can be effectively applied in any consensus decision-making process. Its process includes: Multiple concerns and information are shared until the sense of the group is clear. Discussion involves active listening and sharing information. Norms limit number of times one asks to speak to ensure that each speaker is fully heard. Ideas and solutions belong to the group; no names are recorded. Ideally, differences are resolved by discussion. The facilitator ("clerk" or "convenor" in the Quaker model) identifies areas of agreement and names disagreements to push discussion deeper. The facilitator articulates the sense of the discussion, asks if there are other concerns, and proposes a "minute" of the decision. The group as a whole is responsible for the decision and the decision belongs to the group. The facilitator can discern if one who is not uniting with the decision is acting without concern for the group or in selfish interest. Ideally, all dissenters' perspectives are synthesized into the final outcome for a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Should some dissenter's perspective not harmonize with the others, that dissenter may "stand aside" to allow the group to proceed, or may opt to "block". "Standing aside" implies a certain form of silent consent. Some groups allow "blocking" by even a single individual to halt or postpone the entire process. Key components of Quaker-based consensus include a belief in a common humanity and the ability to decide together. The goal is "unity, not unanimity." Ensuring that group members speak only once until others are heard encourages a diversity of thought. The facilitator is understood as serving the group rather than acting as person-in-charge. In the Quaker model, as with other consensus decision-making processes, articulating the emerging consensus allows members to be clear on the decision in front of them. As members' views are taken into account they are likely to support it. Consensus Decision Making.

Scientific Consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Consensus is normally achieved through communication at conferences, the publication process, replication (reproducible results by others), and peer review. These lead to a situation in which those within the discipline can often recognize such a consensus where it exists, but communicating to outsiders that consensus has been reached can be difficult, because the 'normal' debates through which science progresses may seem to outsiders as contestation. On occasion, scientific institutes issue position statements intended to communicate a summary of the science from the "inside" to the "outside" of the scientific community. In cases where there is little controversy regarding the subject under study, establishing what the consensus is can be quite straightforward. Collaboration.

Split Decision a decision based on a majority verdict rather than on a unanimous one, especially on a court panel or among referees judging the winner of a boxing match. Choosing Judges - Court Decisions.

Majority Verdict refers to a verdict of a jury that is reached by a majority. Majority verdicts can be taken in both criminal and civil cases. The verdict need not be unanimous if there are no fewer than 11 jurors and 10 of them agree on the verdict or if there are 10 jurors and 9 of them agree on the verdict. Super-Majority.

Hung Jury is a judicial jury that cannot agree upon a verdict after extended deliberation and is unable to reach the required unanimity or supermajority.

Unanimity is agreement by all people in a given situation. Groups may consider unanimous decisions as a sign of e.g. social, political or procedural agreement, solidarity, and unity. Unanimity may be assumed explicitly after a unanimous vote or implicitly by a lack of objections. It does not necessarily mean uniformity and can sometimes be the opposite of majority in terms of outcomes.

Peer Review is the evaluation of a persons work by one or more people or peers who have similar competence. It can also be a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve performance, and provide credibility.

Group Cognition is a social, largely linguistic phenomenon whereby a group of people produce a sequence of utterances that performs a cognitive act. That is, if a similar sequence was uttered or thought by an individual it would be considered an act of cognition or thinking. The group can be a small group, such as 3-5 people talking together or working together online. The group can also be a larger collective, such as a classroom of students or a global community contributing asynchronously to an extended discourse on a problem or topic or to a knowledge repository like Wikipedia. The theory of group cognition is a postcognitivism philosophy, which considers a larger unit of analysis than an individual mind as a producer of cognitive activities such as creative problem solving.

Group Polarization - Attitude Polarization - Bias in Research

Shared Decision-Making is an approach in which clinicians and patients communicate together using the best available evidence when faced with the task of making decisions. Patients are supported to deliberate about the possible attributes and consequences of options, to arrive at informed preferences in making a determination about the best course of action which respects patient autonomy, as well as ethical and legal norms.

When learning on your own is not enough. We make decisions based on not only our own learning experience, but also learning from others. Is social learning processed differently from direct learning? Neuroscientists provide empirical evidence that there are parallel computations for direct and social learning and they are carried out in distinct but interacting regions in the brain. A brain network supporting social influences in human decision-making.

Decision Trees

Decision Tree Learning uses a decision tree as a predictive model which maps observations about an item (represented in the branches) to conclusions about the item's target value (represented in the leaves). It is one of the predictive modeling approaches used in statistics, data mining and machine learning. Tree models where the target variable can take a finite set of values are called classification trees; in these tree structures, leaves represent class labels and branches represent conjunctions of features that lead to those class labels. Decision trees where the target variable can take continuous values (typically real numbers) are called regression trees. Decision Tree (KM).

Decision Tree is a decision support tool that uses a tree-like graph or model of decisions and their possible consequences, including chance event outcomes, resource costs, and utility. It is one way to display an algorithm. Decision trees are commonly used in operations research, specifically in decision analysis, to help identify a strategy most likely to reach a goal, but are also a popular tool in machine learning. Algorithm.

Random Forest are an ensemble learning method for classification, regression and other tasks that operates by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time and outputting the class that is the mode of the classes (classification) or mean prediction (regression) of the individual trees. Random decision forests correct for decision trees' habit of overfitting to their training. Random Subspace Method (wiki).

Decision Table are a concise visual representation for specifying which actions to perform depending on given conditions. They are algorithm whose output is a set of actions. The information expressed in decision tables could also be represented as decision trees or in a programming language as a series of if-then-else and switch-case statements. Each decision corresponds to a variable, relation or predicate whose possible values are listed among the condition alternatives. Each action is a procedure or operation to perform, and the entries specify whether (or in what order) the action is to be performed for the set of condition alternatives the entry corresponds to. To make them more concise, many decision tables include in their condition alternatives a don't care symbol. This can be a hyphen or blank, although using a blank is discouraged as it may merely indicate that the decision table has not been finished. One of the uses of decision tables is to reveal conditions under which certain input factors are irrelevant on the actions to be taken, allowing these input tests to be skipped and thereby streamlining decision-making procedures. Aside from the basic four quadrant structure, decision tables vary widely in the way the condition alternatives and action entries are represented. Some decision tables use simple true/false values to represent the alternatives to a condition (similar to if-then-else), other tables may use numbered alternatives (similar to switch-case), and some tables even use fuzzy logic or probabilistic representations for condition alternatives. In a similar way, action entries can simply represent whether an action is to be performed (check the actions to perform), or in more advanced decision tables, the sequencing of actions to perform (number the actions to perform). A decision table is considered balanced or complete if it includes every possible combination of input variables. In other words, balanced decision tables prescribe an action in every situation where the input variables are provided.

Menu Interfaces - Reasoning - Feedback - Knowledge Management

Info-Gap Decision Theory is a non-probabilistic decision theory that seeks to optimize robustness to failure – or opportuneness for windfall – under severe uncertainty, in particular applying sensitivity analysis of the stability radius type to perturbations in the value of a given estimate of the parameter of interest. It has some connections with Wald's maximin model; some authors distinguish them, others consider them instances of the same principle.

Opportunity Cost is the Value of the best alternative forgone where, given limited resources, a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would have been had by taking the second best available choice.

Development Process

Probability Interpretations Does probability measure the real, physical tendency of something to occur or is it a measure of how strongly one believes it will occur, or does it draw on both these elements? In answering such questions, mathematicians interpret the probability values of probability theory. Odds.

Operational Research is a discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.

Arbitrariness is the quality of being "determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle."

Decision Making and Problem Solving - Problem Solving Techniques

Two Types of Problem-Solving Models (PDF) - Tuition
PS Expertise - Problem Solving - Scientific Method
College Student’s Guide to Computers in Education - Chapter 3: Expertise and Problem Solving
Dan Ariely Decisions (video and text)

Scenarios - Risks - Error's - Researching - Artificial Intelligence

Non-Linear (output - input) - Priorities

Decentralization is the process of redistributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or things away from a central location or authority.

Decision Support System is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and help people make decisions about problems that may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance—i.e. Unstructured and Semi-Structured decision problems. Decision support systems can be either fully computerized, human-powered or a combination of both. Knowledge Management.

Decision Making Software is used to help individuals and organizations with their decision-making processes, typically resulting in ranking, sorting or choosing from among alternatives.

Decision Matrix is a list of values in rows and columns that allows an analyst to systematically identify, analyze, and rate the performance of relationships between sets of values and information. Elements of a decision matrix show decisions based on certain decision criteria. The matrix is useful for looking at large masses of decision factors and assessing each factor’s relative significance. Decision matrix is used to describe a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) problem. Visualizing.

Computational Thinking is a way of solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science. Computational thinking is thinking in terms of abstractions, invariably multiple layers of abstraction at once. Computational thinking is about the automation of these abstractions. The automaton could be an algorithm, a Turing machine, a tangible device, a software system—or the human brain. Machine Learning.

Computational Thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution(s) in such a way that a computer—human or machine—can effectively carry out. Computational Thinking is an iterative process based on three stages: 1) Problem Formulation (abstraction), 2) Solution Expression (automation), and 3) Solution Execution & Evaluation (analyses) captured by the figure to the right.

Decision Theory is the study of the reasoning underlying an agent's choices. Decision theory can be broken into two branches: normative decision theory, which gives advice on how to make the best decisions, given a set of uncertain beliefs and a set of values; and descriptive decision theory, which analyzes how existing, possibly irrational agents actually make decisions. Game Theory.

Bayesian Decision Theory refers to a decision theory which is informed by Bayesian probability. It is a statistical system that tries to quantify the tradeoff between various decisions, making use of probabilities and costs. An agent operating under such a decision theory uses the concepts of Bayesian statistics to estimate the expected value of its actions, and update its expectations based on new information. These agents can and are usually referred to as estimators. From the perspective of Bayesian decision theory, any kind of probability distribution - such as the distribution for tomorrow's weather - represents a prior distribution. That is, it represents how we expect today the weather is going to be tomorrow. This contrasts with frequentist inference, the classical probability interpretation, where conclusions about an experiment are drawn from a set of repetitions of such experience, each producing statistically independent results. For a frequentist, a probability function would be a simple distribution function with no special meaning. Suppose we intend to meet a friend tomorrow, and expect an 0.5 chance of raining. If we are choosing between various options for the meeting, with the pleasantness of some of the options (such as going to the park) being affected by the possibility of rain, we can assign values to the different options with or with rain. We can then pick the option whose expected value is the highest, given the probability of rain. One definition of rationality, used both on Less Wrong and in economics and psychology, is behavior which obeys the rules of Bayesian decision theory. Due to computational constraints, this is impossible to do perfectly, but naturally evolved brains do seem to mirror these probabilistic methods when they adapt to an uncertain environment. Such models and distributions may be reconfigured according to feedback from the environment.

Reflective Decision Theory is a term occasionally used to refer to a decision theory that would allow an agent to take actions in a way that does not trigger regret. This regret is conceptualized, according to the Causal Decision Theory, as a Reflective inconsistency, a divergence between the agent who took the action and the same agent reflecting upon it after.

Rational Choice Theory is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior. The basic premise of rational choice theory is that aggregate social behavior results from the behavior of individual actors, each of whom is making their individual decisions. The theory therefore focuses on the determinants of the individual choices (methodological individualism). Machine Learning.

Predictions - Thinking Ahead - Panning - Strategy

Prediction is a combination of measurements and estimates that are based on experiences, information and knowledge that helps to accurately calculate the timing and the type of an event that will happen in the future.

Predict is to regard something as probable or likely to happen. A probable occurrence based on reasoning about the future. To tell in advance what will most likely happen.

Predictable is something capable of being foretold in advance that is usually indicated by signs or evidence.

Predetermined is something established or decided in advance or ahead in time. A plan that is premeditated.

Having a Plan - Being Prepared - Decisions - Prevention - Goals

Forecast is to predict something in advance, something that is coming and judged to be probable. A sign of things to come.

Forecasting is the process of making predictions of the future based on past data and present data and analysis of trends.

Foresight is providence by virtue of planning prudently for the future. Seeing ahead and knowing in advance.

Foreseeing is to realize beforehand and act in advance of an event to deal with it ahead of time. Imagine a possible event.

Prescient is perceiving the significance of events before they occur.

Trust - Meaning - Algebra - Cause and Effect - Deterministic - Probability - DNA

Thinking Ahead is to prepare for a future event or situation by thinking about what might happen. To think about a future event or situation and plan for it and be prepared for it.

Think it Through is to consider something in all its aspects before taking action.

Aforethought is something planned or plotted in advance.

Preparation is the activity of getting ready for some future act or event. The cognitive process of thinking about what you will do in the event of something happening. Activity leading to skilled behavior.

Prepare is to be ready or make suitable or equip in advance for a particular purpose or for some use or event. Arrange by systematic planning and united effort. Educate for a future role or function. Create by training and teaching. Undergo training or instruction in preparation for a particular role, function, or profession.

Precaution are actions taken in advance to protect against possible danger, failure, damage or injury. Maintenance.

Caution is to warn strongly and put on guard. Being attentive to possible danger. A warning against certain acts.

Definiteness is the quality of being predictable with great confidence.

Probability - Random Events - Destiny - Odds - Scenarios - Real-Time Computing

Trend is a general direction in which something tends to move. General line of orientation.

Precognition - Risk Assessment (Making a Comprehensive Plan of Actions) - Patterns

Development - Far Future Planning - Planning is in our DNA

Predictive Coding is a theory of brain function in which the brain is constantly generating and updating a mental model of the environment. The model is used to generate predictions of sensory input that are compared to actual sensory input. This comparison results in prediction errors that are then used to update and revise the mental model.

Predictive Inference is an approach to statistical inference that emphasizes the prediction of future observations based on past observations.

Predictive Modeling uses statistics to predict outcomes. Most often the event one wants to predict is in the future, but predictive modelling can be applied to any type of unknown event, regardless of when it occurred. For example, predictive models are often used to detect crimes and identify suspects, after the crime has taken place.

Prediction Interval is an estimate of an interval in which future observations will fall, with a certain probability, given what has already been observed. Prediction intervals are often used in regression analysis.

Conditional Probability is a measure of the probability of an event given that (by assumption, presumption, assertion or evidence) another event has occurred.

Prediction System (PDF) - Assess, Analyze, Articulate, Act.

Predictive Analytics encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from predictive modeling, machine learning, and data mining that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events

Prescriptive Analytics not only anticipates what will happen and when it will happen, but also why it will happen. Further, prescriptive analytics suggests decision options on how to take advantage of a future opportunity or mitigate a future risk and shows the implication of each decision option. Prescriptive analytics can continually take in new data to re-predict and re-prescribe, thus automatically improving prediction accuracy and prescribing better decision options. Prescriptive analytics ingests hybrid data, a combination of structured (numbers, categories) and unstructured data (videos, images, sounds, texts), and business rules to predict what lies ahead and to prescribe how to take advantage of this predicted future without compromising other priorities. It is the third and final phase of business analytics, which also includes descriptive and predictive analytics. Descriptive analytics is a preliminary stage of data processing that creates a summary of historical data to yield useful information and possibly prepare the data for further analysis. Diagnostic analytics is a deeper look at data to attempt to understand the causes of events and behaviors.

Anticipate is to act in advance and prepare yourself for some event in order to deal with it ahead of time. To make a prediction about something and to tell in advance and realize something beforehand and regard that something as probable or likely to happen. Anticipatory is in anticipation.

Anticipation is predicting and expecting something to happen in the future, sometimes causing you to feel pleasure or excitement if you believe that something good is going to happen, or sometimes feel anxiety if you believe that something bad will happen.

Anticipation in relation to artificial intelligence is the concept of an agent making decisions based on predictions, expectations, or beliefs about the future. It is widely considered that anticipation is a vital component of complex natural cognitive systems. As a branch of AI, anticipatory systems is a specialization still echoing the debates from the 1980s about the necessity for AI for an internal model.

Stress thwarts our ability to plan ahead by disrupting how we use memory. Hippocampal-frontal lobe network disruption takes memory replay offline during a planning session due to stress. Kind of like our brain is pushed into a more low-level thought-process state.

Optimism - Confidence - Hope

Providence is the prudence and care exercised by someone in the management of resources.

Prudence is knowing how to avoid embarrassment or distress.

Prudent is being careful and sensible and marked by sound judgment.

Self Simulation is the process of self-projection into alternate temporal, spatial, social, or hypothetical realities is a distinctively human capacity. Numerous lines of research also suggest that the tendency for mental simulation is associated with enhanced meaning. Imagination.

Ensemble Learning uses multiple learning algorithms to obtain better predictive performance than could be obtained from any of the constituent learning algorithms alone. Unlike a statistical ensemble in statistical mechanics, which is usually infinite, a machine learning ensemble consists of only a concrete finite set of alternative models, but typically allows for much more flexible structure to exist among those alternatives.

"If we could not predict the future, life could not exist. Every cell in our body has a way to predict the future through the feedback that it receives from its environment. It's not the reward that keeps us moving forward, it's knowing that a reward is just a signal, and that the actual prize is still waiting for us, and hopefully we can eventually figure out what that prize is."

Theory of Change is a specific type of methodology for planning, participation, and evaluation that is used in the philanthropy, not-for-profit and government sectors to promote social change. Theory of Change defines long-term goals and then maps backward to identify necessary preconditions.

Intelligence Assessment is the development of forecasts of behavior or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership in order to inform decision making.

Vulnerability Assessment is the process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing (or ranking) the vulnerabilities in a system.

Black Swan Event is an occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and is extremely difficult to predict; describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying which presumed black swans did not exist, but the saying was rewritten after black swans were discovered in the wild.

Ex ante is a phrase meaning "before the event". Something based on predictions rather than actual results. Ex-ante or notional demand refers to the desire for goods and services which is not backed by the ability to pay for those goods and services. This is also termed as ‘wants of people’. Ex-ante is used most commonly in the commercial world, where results of a particular action, or series of actions, are forecast in advance (or intended). The opposite of ex-ante is ex-post (actual) (or ex post). Buying a lottery ticket loses you money ex ante (in expectation), but if you win, it was the right decision ex post. Examples: In the financial world, the ex-ante return is the expected return of an investment portfolio. In the recruitment industry, ex-ante is often used when forecasting resource requirements on large future projects.

Staging Area is a location where organisms, people, vehicles, equipment or material are assembled before use.

Early Warning System is a major element of disaster risk reduction. It prevents loss of life and reduces the economic and material impact of disasters. To be effective, early warning systems need to actively involve the communities at risk, facilitate public education and awareness of risks, effectively disseminate alerts, and warnings and ensure there is constant state of preparedness. A complete and effective early warning system supports four main functions: risk analysis, monitoring and warning; dissemination and communication; and a response capability.

Event Management is the application of project management to the creation and development of large scale events such as festivals, conferences, ceremonies, formal parties, concerts, or conventions. It involves studying the brand, identifying it's target audience, devising the event concept, and coordinating the technical aspects before actually launching the event. The process of planning and coordinating the event is usually referred to as event planning and which can include budgeting, scheduling, site selection, acquiring necessary permits, coordinating transportation and parking, arranging for speakers or entertainers, arranging decor, event security, catering, coordinating with third party vendors, and emergency plans. The events industry now includes events of all sizes from the Olympics down to business breakfast meetings. Many industries, charitable organizations, and interest groups hold events in order to market themselves, build business relationships, raise money, or celebrate achievement.

Hindsight is understanding the nature of an event after it has happened. Learning.

Systems Thinking is the cognitive process of studying and understanding systems of every kind. For others, the focus is on social organizations in particular.

Strategy - Strategic Planning

Strategy is an elaborate and systematic plan of action at a particular point in time.

Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. The art of the general, which includes several subsets of skills including tactics, siege craft and logistics.

Backup Plan - Option

Course of Action is a procedure adopted to deal with a situation.

Devise is to arrange by systematic planning and united effort.

Planning is an act of formulating a program for a definite course of action. Using forethought and the process of thinking to organize the activities that are required to achieve a desired goal. Project planning involves the creation and the maintenance of a plan.

"If you Fail to Plan, then you're planning to fail." "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and a plan."

Strategic Planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. It may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy. Chess.

Concept Driven Strategy is a process for formulating strategy that draws on the explanation of how humans inquire provided by linguistic pragmatic philosophy. This argues that thinking starts by selecting (explicitly or implicitly) a set of concepts (frames, patterns, lens, principles, etc.) gained from our past experiences. These are used to reflect on whatever happens, or is done, in the future.

Deliberate is doing something that was carefully thought out in advance, something unhurried and with care and dignity. To think about something carefully in order to weigh and discuss the pros and cons of an issue. Argument.

Calculate is to predict in advance and judge something to be probable. Rational Calculations.

Consider is to think about something carefully. To regard or treat something with consideration, respect, and esteem. Information that should be kept in mind when making a decision. Kind and considerate regard for others.

Contrive is to make or work out or devise a plan for some goal. To come up with an idea, plan, explanation, theory, or principle, after a mental effort. To put or send forth something.

Measure is to evaluate or estimate the nature, quality, ability, extent, or significance of. How much there is or how many there are of something that you can quantify.

Debate is a discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal. Discuss the pros and cons of an issue. The formal presentation of a stated proposition and the opposition to it (usually followed by a vote). Feedback.

To Predict the Future, the Brain uses Two Clocks. In music, sports and other activities, we calculate movement in two different parts of the brain. One type of anticipatory timing relies on memories from past experiences. The other on Rhythm. A rhythm-based system is sensitive to periodic events in the world such as is inherent in speech and music, and an interval system provides a more general anticipatory ability, sensitive to temporal regularities even in the absence of a rhythmic signal.

Strategic Management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by a company's top management on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization competes.

Strategic Thinking is a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving success in a game or other endeavor. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.

Strategy Dynamics concerns the ‘content’ of strategy – initiatives, choices, policies and decisions adopted in an attempt to improve performance, and the results that arise from these managerial behaviors.

Elaborate is to develop or execute an action with care, an action that's marked by complexity and is examined in detail. To clarify the meaning of something.

Tactic is a plan for attaining a particular goal.

Stratagem is a tactic or maneuver intended to gain an advantage. An elaborate or deceitful scheme contrived to deceive or evade.

SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning technique used to help a person or organization identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to business competition or project planning. SWOT - Strengths - Weaknesses - Opportunities - Threats. It is intended to specify the objectives of the business venture or project and identify the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving those objectives. Users of a SWOT analysis often ask and answer questions to generate meaningful information for each category to make the tool useful and identify their competitive advantage. SWOT has been described as the tried-and-true tool of strategic analysis, but has also been criticized for its limitations. Strengths and weakness are frequently internally-related, while opportunities and threats commonly focus on the external environment. The name is an acronym for the four parameters the technique examines: Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others. Weaknesses: characteristics of the business that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others. Opportunities: elements in the environment that the business or project could exploit to its advantage. Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project. The degree to which the internal environment of the firm matches with the external environment is expressed by the concept of strategic fit. Identification of SWOTs is important because they can inform later steps in planning to achieve the objective. First, decision-makers should consider whether the objective is attainable, given the SWOTs. If the objective is not attainable, they must select a different objective and repeat the process. Strengths and weaknesses (internal factors within an organization): Human resources — staff, volunteers, board members, target population. Physical resources — your location, building, equipment. Financial — grants, funding agencies, other sources of income. Activities and processes — programs you run, systems you employ. Past experiences — building blocks for learning and success, your reputation in the community. Legislation — do new federal requirements make your job harder...or easier?

Strategy Map is a diagram that is used to document the primary strategic goals being pursued by an organization or management team. It is an element of the documentation associated with the Balanced Scorecard, and in particular is characteristic of the second generation of Balanced Scorecard designs that first appeared during the mid-1990s. The Kaplan and Norton approach to strategy maps has: An underlying framework of horizontal perspectives arranged in a cause and effect relationship, typically Financial, Customer, Process and Learning & Growth. Objectives within those perspectives. Each objective as text appearing within a shape (usually an oval or rectangle). Relatively few objectives (usually fewer than 20). Vertical sets of linked objectives that span the perspectives. These are called strategic themes. Clear cause-and-effect relationships between these objectives, across the perspectives. The strategic themes represent hypotheses about how the strategy will bring about change to the outcomes of the organization.

Military Strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Military strategy deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy. Military strategy refers to the employment of all of a nation's military capabilities through high level and long term planning, development and procurement to guarantee security or victory. Tactics is the military science employed to secure objectives defined as part of the military strategy; especially the methods whereby men, equipment, aircraft, ships and weapons are employed and directed against an enemy.

Strategic Planning Models - Failure to prepare means that you're preparing to fail.

Make plans and have goals, but always remember that there are things in life that you can never be prepared for, so be prepared for the unexpected and not just the expected. You can't plan for everything, but you can plan for excepting the fact that you can't plan for everything. If you know that mistakes happen, then you should be prepared for when mistakes do happen. Ignorance - Reasoning - Choice - Statistics - Time Management - Goals - Assessment Tools.

Rational Planning Model is a model of the planning process involving a number of rational actions or steps....Definition of the problems and/or goals; Identification of alternative plans/policies; Evaluation of alternative plans/policies; Implementation of plans/policies; Monitoring of effects of plans/policies.

Interactive Planning focuses on creating the future by designing a desirable present. Interactive planning is unlike other types of planning, such as reactive planning, inactive planning, and preactive planning. Interactive planning has three unique characteristics: Interactive planning works backwards from where an organization wants to be now to where it is now. Interactive planning is continuous; it does not start and stop. Interactive planning lets the organization’s stakeholders to be involved in the planning process. Interactive Planning has six phases, divided into two parts: Idealization and Realization.

Automated Planning and Scheduling is a branch of artificial intelligence that concerns the realization of strategies or action sequences, typically for execution by intelligent agents, autonomous robots and unmanned vehicles. Unlike classical control and classification problems, the solutions are complex and must be discovered and optimized in multidimensional space. Planning is also related to decision theory.

Business Analytics refers to the skills, technologies, practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. Business analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business performance based on data and statistical methods. In contrast, business intelligence traditionally focuses on using a consistent set of metrics to both measure past performance and guide business planning, which is also based on data and statistical methods. Business analytics makes extensive use of statistical analysis, including explanatory and predictive modeling, and fact-based management to drive decision making. It is therefore closely related to management science. Analytics may be used as input for human decisions or may drive fully automated decisions. Business intelligence is querying, reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), and "alerts." In other words, querying, reporting, OLAP, it is alert tools can answer questions such as what happened, how many, how often, where the problem is, and what actions are needed. Business analytics can answer questions like why is this happening, what if these trends continue, what will happen next (predict), and what is the best outcome that can happen (optimize).

Backup Plan - Plan B - What are your Options?

Option Play is an American Football play where a quarterback can have two or more choices or potential plays to choose from, whether to run, pass or lateral. The quarterback reads the defense and then calls out the play in a coded message before the ball is snapped.

Contingency Plan is a plan devised for an outcome other than in the usual or expected plan.

Contingent On is something determined by conditions or circumstances that follow.

Continuous Planning refers to the process of planning in a world under continual change. Traditionally, as new world information is encountered, a planner adapts to it through the refinement of the plans that are under construction.

Unintended Consequences are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action.

Murphy's Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Mistakes can happen too.

What's the worst case scenario? Can you determine cause and effect? What do you do in an emergency?

Worst-case execution time is the maximum length of time the task could take to execute on a specific hardware platform.

Best, worst and average case what the resource usage is on average.

Preparedness refers to a very concrete research based set of actions that are taken as precautionary measures in the face of potential disasters. These actions can include both physical preparations (such as emergency supplies depots, adapting buildings to survive earthquakes and so on) and trainings for emergency action. Preparedness is an important quality in achieving goals and in avoiding and mitigating negative outcomes. There are different types of preparedness, such as public health preparedness and local emergency preparedness or snow preparedness (i.e.: Snow Preparedness Teams - SPT), but probably the most developed type is "Disaster Preparedness", defined by the UN as involving "forecasting and taking precautionary measures prior to an imminent threat when advance warnings are possible". This includes not only natural disasters, but all kinds of severe damage caused in a relatively short period, including warfare. Preparedness is a major phase of emergency management, and is particularly valued in areas of competition such as sport and military science. Emergency Preparedness.

Survival Tips - City Planning - Things To Do List

There's only so much planning that you can do. You can't plan for everything because something's are difficult to plan for. The best thing that you can do is to learn from your mistakes, and also share what you've learned so that others can avoid making the same mistakes that you did. There is always going to be some level of risk, but you have to make a decision. Just don't let the fear of risk stop you. And don't forget to balance your time between planning and doing. If you spend all your time planning, then you may end up planning to do nothing.

Think Aloud Protocol is a protocol used to gather data in usability testing in product design and development, in psychology and a range of social sciences (e.g., reading, writing, translation research, decision making, and process tracing).

Ordination Methods

Standardization is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments Standardization can help to maximize compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality. It can also facilitate commoditization of formerly custom processes. In social sciences, including economics, the idea of standardization is close to the solution for a coordination problem, a situation in which all parties can realize mutual gains, but only by making mutually consistent decisions. This view includes the case of "spontaneous standardization processes", to produce de facto standards.

Positive Feed Back Loop - Feedback (public)

Researchers add a splash of Human Intuition to Planning Algorithms Incorporating strategies from skilled human planners improves automatic planners’ performance.

Intuition - Supernatural Predictions

Oracle is someone who perceives the future intuitively or through some inexplicable perceptive powers.

Prophet is someone who is believed to speak by divine inspiration.

Prophetic is foretelling events as if by supernatural intervention.

Prophecy is a belief that knowledge about a future event was obtained from a divine source, and not from facts or evidence.

Nostradamus was a French physician and reputed seer, who is best known for his book Les Propheties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains allegedly predicting future events. The book was first published in 1555 and has rarely been out of print since his death.

You can almost predict anything. All you have to do recognize certain patterns and use words that will have some resemblance to a future event. Hindsight - Correlation does not prove Causation.

"Bringing hindsight to the present moment."

Prospective Hindsight is a managerial strategy in which a manager imagines that a project or organization has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to the failure of the project or organization. The technique breaks possible group thinking by facilitating a positive discussion on threats, increasing the likelihood the main threats are identified. Management can then analyze the magnitude and likelihood of each threat, and take preventative actions to protect the project or organization from suffering an untimely "death". (A pre-mortem, also known as a premortem).

Collaboration Techniques - Collaboration Tools - Outsourcing - Brainstorming

Collaboration is the process of two or more people or organizations working together to realize mutual goals.

Collaborative Innovation Network is a social construct used to describe innovative teams. A cyberteam of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work. Coordination - Group - Internet.

Collaborative Writing refers to projects where written works are created by multiple people together collaboratively rather than individually. Some projects are overseen by an editor or editorial team, but many grow without any oversight.

Internet Forum is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible. Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; example: a single conversation is called a "thread", or topic. A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish. Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in in order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.

Chat Room is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat and online interaction with strangers (e.g., online forums) to fully immersive graphical social environments. The primary use of a chat room is to share information via text with a group of other users. Generally speaking, the ability to converse with multiple people in the same conversation differentiates chat rooms from instant messaging programs, which are more typically designed for one-to-one communication. The users in a particular chat room are generally connected via a shared internet or other similar connection, and chat rooms exist catering for a wide range of subjects. New technology has enabled the use of file sharing and webcam to be included in some programs. This would be considered a chat room.

Synchronous Conferencing is the formal term used in computing, in particular in computer-mediated communication, collaboration and learning, to describe technologies informally known as online chat. It is sometimes extended to include audio/video conferencing or instant messaging systems that provide a text-based multi-user chat function. The word synchronous is used to qualify the conferencing as real-time, as distinct from a system such as e-mail, where messages are left and answered later.

Collaborative Working Environment supports people, such as e-professionals, in their individual and cooperative work. Research in CWE involves focusing on organizational, technical, and social issues.

Conference is a prearranged meeting for consultation or exchange of information or discussion with a formal agenda. A discussion among participants who have agreed upon a particular topic.

Diplomacy - Debating - Public Speaking - Meetings - Consensus

Integrated Collaboration Environment is an environment in which a virtual team does its work. Such environments allow companies to realize a number of competitive advantages by using their existing computers and network infrastructure for group and personal collaboration. These fully featured environments combine the best features of web-based conferencing and collaboration, desktop videoconferencing, and instant message into a single easy-to-use, intuitive environment. Recent developments have allowed companies include streaming in real-time and archived modes into their ICE.

Peer Review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field.

Critics (literature review)

Collaborative Editing is the practice of groups producing works together through individual contributions. Effective choices in group awareness, participation, and coordination are critical to successful collaborative writing outcomes.

Vibby identify certain parts of the video, emphasize, share, and discuss them online or offline.

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning is a pedagogical approach wherein learning takes place via social interaction using a computer or through the Internet. This kind of learning is characterized by the sharing and construction of knowledge among participants using technology as their primary means of communication or as a common resource. CSCL can be implemented in online and classroom learning environments and can take place synchronously or asynchronously.

Competitive Programming

Open Office is the generic term used in architectural and interior design for any floor plan which makes use of large, open spaces and minimizes the use of small, enclosed rooms such as private offices.

Fika Culture is a concept in Swedish culture with the basic meaning "to have coffee".

CERF - Collaborative Framework facilitates productivity and decision making for both scientists and project managers.

Document-Centric Collaboration is a new approach to working together on projects online which puts the document and its contents at the centre of the process.

Web Conferencing may be used as an umbrella term for various types of online collaborative services including web seminars ("webinars"), webcasts, and peer-level web meetings. It may also be used in a more narrow sense to refer only to the peer-level web meeting context, in an attempt to disambiguate it from the other types of collaborative sessions. (Bull Session).

Cloud Computing is a type of Internet-based computing that provides shared computer processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a model for enabling ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources.

Cognitive Fixation is the tendency for people working in groups to get stuck on other people’s ideas. "More hands make light work, but too many cooks in the kitchen could be less productive."

Collaborative Filtering is a technique used by recommender systems. Collaborative filtering has two senses, a narrow one and a more general one. In the newer, narrower sense, collaborative filtering is a method of making automatic predictions (filtering) about the interests of a user by collecting preferences or taste information from many users (collaborating). The underlying assumption of the collaborative filtering approach is that if a person A has the same opinion as a person B on an issue, A is more likely to have B's opinion on a different issue than that of a randomly chosen person. For example, a collaborative filtering recommendation system for television tastes could make predictions about which television show a user should like given a partial list of that user's tastes (likes or dislikes). Note that these predictions are specific to the user, but use information gleaned from many users. This differs from the simpler approach of giving an average (non-specific) score for each item of interest, for example based on its number of votes. In the more general sense, collaborative filtering is the process of filtering for information or patterns using techniques involving collaboration among multiple agents, viewpoints, data sources, etc. Applications of collaborative filtering typically involve very large data sets. Collaborative filtering methods have been applied to many different kinds of data including: sensing and monitoring data, such as in mineral exploration, environmental sensing over large areas or multiple sensors; financial data, such as financial service institutions that integrate many financial sources; or in electronic commerce and web applications where the focus is on user data, etc. The remainder of this discussion focuses on collaborative filtering for user data, although some of the methods and approaches may apply to the other major applications as well.

Collaboration Software Tools is an application software designed to help people involved in a common task to achieve their goals. One of the earliest definitions of collaborative software is 'intentional group processes plus software to support them'. List of Collaborative Software (wiki) - Wiki Web Collaboration Tools - Project Management Collaboration Tools (software).

Video Conferencing - PC to PC - Free Conference Call

World Cafe Conversational Process (wiki) - World Cafe

Data Sharing Tools - Google Docs - Share Docs - Google Apps

Dot.world - Collaborative platforms to organize and curate content.

Draw Toast workshops. An Introduction to Systems Thinking and Wicked Problem Solving.

Salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.

Resources for Collaboration Tools - Shapr - Asana - Document Cloud - Hip Chat - Huddle - Constant Contact - Zendesk - Evite - Meetup - Box - Solve For X - Nitro - Catch a Fire - Airtame - Ever Note - Wire Drive media management.

Bright Idea powerful tools and advanced collaboration technology available for innovation.

Monday can simplify the way your team works. Manage your workload, communicate with your team, and celebrate success.

Knowledge Management

Cooperation is the process of groups of organisms working or acting together for common or mutual benefit, as opposed to working in competition for selfish benefit.

Co-Operation in relation to evolution is the process where groups of organisms work or act together for common or mutual benefits. It is commonly defined as any adaptation that has evolved, at least in part, to increase the reproductive success of the actor’s social partners.

First Model to capture Crosstalk in Social Dilemmas. The idea that previous interactions can affect unrelated future decisions might seem obvious. The prisoner's dilemma where both people would be better off if they cooperated than if they both defected.

Symbiosis - Interdependence - Working Together

Conjunctive Tasks are a part of Steiner's taxonomy of group tasks. They are often studied when dealing with process losses in groups. Process loss is observed in groups when there is a reduction in their performance effectiveness or efficiency. This could be due to a variety of interpersonal processes, which may be caused by either motivation loss or coordination loss. Conjunctive tasks fall into the latter category of coordination problems in groups.

Coalition is a pact or treaty among individuals or groups, during which they cooperate in joint action, each in their own self-interest, joining forces together for a common cause. This alliance may be temporary or a matter of convenience. A coalition thus differs from a more formal covenant. Possibly described as a joining of 'factions', usually those with overlapping interests rather than opposing.

Innovation Management

Business Networking activity by which businesspeople and entrepreneurs meet to form business relationships and to recognize, create, or act upon business opportunities, share information and seek. potential partners for ventures.

Related Subject Pages - Mesh Networking - Wireless Mesh Network - Collaborative Learning - Community Collaboration Methods - Group Decision Making - Shared Decision-Making - Consensus Decision Making - Internet (meeting of the minds) - Social Collaboration - Friendship (relationships) - Teamwork (working together) - Networks - Communication - Coops - Clubs - Support Groups - Public Service Announcement - Social Networks - Presentations (charts and graphs) - Funding - Money Alternatives - Marketing - Advertising - Management - Knowledge Management. 

Decision Support System is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and help people make decisions about problems that may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance—i.e. Unstructured and Semi-Structured decision problems. Decision support systems can be either fully computerized, human-powered or a combination of both.

Wi-Fi Direct is a Wi-Fi standard enabling devices to easily connect with each other without requiring a wireless access point.

Electronic Mailing List is a special use of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list – a list of names and addresses – as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers.

Operations Support System are computer systems used by telecommunications service providers to manage their networks (e.g., telephone networks). They support management functions such as network inventory, service provisioning, network configuration and fault management.

Life Support System is a group of devices that allow a human being to survive in space.

Tutoring - The Wisdom of Crowds - Internet

Focus Group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.

Meeting of the Minds used to describe the intentions of the parties forming the contract. In particular it refers to the situation where there is a common understanding in the formation of the contract. Formation of a contract is initiated with a proposal or offer. This condition or element is often considered a necessary requirement to the formation of a contract.

Think Tank is an organization that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most policy institutes are non-profit organizations. Other think tanks are funded by governments, advocacy groups, or businesses, or derive revenue from consulting or research work related to their projects.

Mind Maps - Visuals

Agile Software Development describes a set of principles for software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams. It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change. These principles support the definition and continuing evolution of many software development methods.

Flash Mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.

Word of Mouth is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a story about a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and traditions transmitted by word of mouth through successive generations.

Crowd Sourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially an online community, rather than from employees or suppliers.

Development - Collaborative Classroom

We Can Do This! Tools to Unleash Our Collective Genius

Enterprise Interoperability is the ability of an enterprise—a company or other large organization—to functionally link activities, such as product design, supply chains, manufacturing, in an efficient and competitive way.

Meeting Guidelines

Facilitation of Meetings refers to the process of designing and running a successful meeting. Facilitation concerns itself with all the tasks needed to run a productive and impartial meeting. Facilitation serves the needs of any group who are meeting with a common purpose, whether it be making a decision, solving a problem, or simply exchanging ideas and information. It does not lead the group, nor does it try to distract or to entertain. A slightly different interpretation focuses more specifically on a group that is engaged in experiential learning. In particular this is associated with active learning and concepts of tutelary authority. 

Guidelines: Specify the time of meeting - Have someone record the meeting or take minutes - Take attendance - Specify the agenda and the purpose of meeting - List the action items - List topics - List important questions that need answering - List important information - Provide documents - Provide visuals - Review results and the progress of previous related meetings - Specify the rules of the meeting if needed - Specify speaking time allowed for each person if needed - Allow people to speak and ask questions - Assign people to solve problems - End meeting with brief overview. 

Meeting is when two or more people come together to discuss one or more topics, often in a formal setting.

Public Meetings - Walking Meetings - Time Management - Computers

When should you multitask? When should you ask for help? When should you delegate? When should you use humor?

Delegate is an elected representative sent to a conference. Someone who attends or communicates the ideas of or acts on behalf of an organization at a meeting or conference between organizations, which may be at the same level or involved in a common field of work or interest. Facilitate.

On-Demand Working

Consultant is a professional who provides expert advice in a particular area such as security (electronic or physical), management, education, accountancy, law, human resources, marketing (and public relations), finance, engineering, science or any of many other specialized fields.

Remote Work - Temps

Independent Contractor is a natural person, business, or corporation that provides goods or services to another entity under terms specified in a contract or within a verbal agreement. Unlike an employee, an independent contractor does not work regularly for an employer but works as and when required, during which time he or she may be subject to law of agency. Independent contractors are usually paid on a freelance basis. Contractors often work through a limited company or franchise, which they themselves own, or may work through an umbrella company.

Temporary Work refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Employee Management.

Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", "freelance"; or the word may be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals (particularly in the white-collar worker fields, such as law, engineering, and accounting) refer to themselves as consultants. Part Time Work.

Fill In is to substitute for someone when they are unable to do their job. Hacker Space - Maker Labs.

Substitute is a person or thing acting or serving in place of another. Substitute Teacher is a person who teaches a school class when the regular teacher is unavailable.

Outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business process (e.g. payroll processing, claims processing) and operational, and/or non-core functions (e.g. manufacturing, facility management, call center support) to another party (see also business process outsourcing). Brain Drain - Human Capital Flight.

Subcontracting is the practice of assigning, or outsourcing, part of the obligations and tasks under a contract to another party known as a subcontractor. Subcontracting is especially prevalent in areas where complex projects are the norm, such as construction and information technology. Farm Out.

Subcontractor is an individual or a business that signs a contract to perform part or all of the obligations of another's contract. A subcontractor is a company or person whom a general contractor (or prime contractor, or main contractor) hires to perform a specific task as part of an overall project and normally pays for services provided to the project. While subcontracting often occurs in building works and in civil engineering, the range of opportunities for subcontractor is much wider and it is possible[original research?] that the greatest number of subcontractors now operate in the information technology and information sectors of the economy. One hires subcontractors either to reduce costs or to mitigate project risks. In employing subcontractors, the general contractor hopes to receive the same or better service than the general contractor could have provided by itself, at lower overall risk. Many subcontractors do work for the same companies rather than different ones. This allows subcontractors to further specialize their skills. Some subcontractors also work under "Pay-If-Paid" clauses where a general contractor will work with subcontractors and the subcontractor is only paid if and when the general contractor is paid for their duties.

Freelancer person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance workers are sometimes represented by a company or a temporary agency that resells freelance labor to clients; others work independently or use professional associations or websites to get work. Freelancer - Freelance - e-Lance - elance-odesk - Lyfskill Freelancers.

Basic Income (free money - incentivize)

Contingent Workforce is an employment relationship which is considered non-permanent. These jobs are typically part time (typically with variable hours), have limited job security, and result in payment on a piece work basis. Contingent work is usually not considered to be a career or part of a career. One of the features of contingent work is that it usually offers little or no opportunity for career development. Contingent workers are also often called freelancers, independent professionals, temporary contract workers, independent contractors, or consultants.

Temporary Workforce Resources - Collaboration Tools
Task Rabbit - Task Us
Postmates
Share your Skills
Fancy Hands
Pro
Desk Camping
Amazon Mechanical Turk - Amazon Mechanical Turk (wiki) - Amazon Services
Alt Lab
Kaggle (wiki)
Git Hub
Acu Lab
HC
innocentive
Git Control System
Slack
Brain Storming
The Collaborative Lab
Podio
Info Q
Ctera
Tongal
Moxie Insight
Jive
Extension

Toptal developers and designers. Speak with your dedicated matcher who will understand your project goals, technical needs, and team dynamics.

Related Subjects - Working Together - Independent Learning - Creative Solitude - Social Networking - Community (social learning) - Sharing - Documentation - Human Search Engines - Information Sources - Research Sources.

Capstone Project

Capstone Project is a multifaceted assignment that serves as a culminating academic and intellectual experience for students that shows that they have completed the monumental task of earning their degree. A capstone may also involve a final research paper exploring a topic of interest, emerging from a student's individualized program of study. Capstone projects are generally designed to encourage students to think critically, solve challenging problems, and develop skills such as oral communication, public speaking, research skills, media literacy, teamwork, planning, self-sufficiency, or goal setting and skills that will help prepare them for college. It's called a capstone because it represents a crowning achievement as a capstone does in architecture and is analogous to the capstone or top and final stone added to a building. A capstone is the final stone, usually flat, that is laid at the top of a wall or building to protect it and to symbolize it is finished. A capstone experience is the final "stone" laid on an education that symbolizes the completion of a program and the peak of accomplishment.

Multifaceted is something having many aspects or facets.

Facet is a distinct feature or element in a problem.

Capstone projects should be about working on Real Problems, problems that need solving and problems that are plaguing the world and plaguing local communities. This should involve extensive original investigation, methods of inquiry, critical thinking skills, creativity, scholarly research, communicating ideas, presentation, reading and writing skills and so on. And these skills need to be measured, tested and confirmed. Problems should not be considered to big to solve for this is a part of the learning experience. Capstone projects should prepare students for reality, otherwise you are just wasting time, people and resources. Just teaching Creativity and Innovation will not be enough. Counting the things that Matter.

In order to solve the plethora of problems in our world you first have to educate people on how to be problem solvers, then and only then will our problems be solved. Education Quotes.

Capstone Project for Basic Knowledge 101

The First Problem: # 1 - Students need to create ways to improve education on all levels. To accomplish this, students must collect the worlds most important and the most valuable knowledge and information that is available. Then design a curriculum based on that knowledge and information. This would include creating computerized courses and videotaping the best and most effective teaching lessons, and so on. Then Implementation and Feedback.

Why Improve Education? - Open Source Curriculum? - Hult Prize

The Second Problem: # 2 - Once we have created the perfect education, students have to create ways to make sure that every person on the planet has access to a good education. The more educated and aware people are the more prepared they will be to solve problems. Educated people will also have the skills that are needed to improve their quality of life and improve the quality of life for others.

Laptops and USB Flash Memory Drives - Learning Methods - Teaching Methods - Open Source Education Resources

The Third Problem: # 3 - Clean water for everyone, healthy food for everyone, clean and safe homes for everyone, clean and safe electricity for everyone, and jobs that make a positive difference for everyone.

The Big 5 Needs - Paul Gilding: The Earth is full (youtube)

Of course the problems in # 3, along with the thousands of other problems that people are faced with today, will never improve unless we fix problems # 1 and # 2. Team effort between schools is a must when working on this project. Working as a team will save time, people and resources, and at the same time, teach students about one of the important aspects of problem solving, which is teamwork.

How would you Teach it? How would you Learn it? How Would you Test it? Capstone Research Projects Ideas.

Capstone Project # 2 (math) - We'll call this "The Logic Movement" - "if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem."

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." (Albert Einstein) 

Progress Trap - "Problems can't be solved unless they are identified"

"I see most computer problems as just a puzzle, a puzzle I must learn to solve. So when a computer problem arises I usually say "How do I solve this puzzle and where would be the best place to start?" So can learning how to solve complex puzzles teach us about Problem Solving? Of course. Problem solving is not a problem, it's a part of learning." Learning Games.

"Everything on this planet that is alive today is a direct result of information being passed forward and shared with the next generation of its species"...More

"To assume what other people are assuming is a Guessing Game I like to avoid. Looking Back with a backwards brain is as useless as looking Forward with a backwards brain. Backwards Brain Meaning: Making assumptions based on outdated, incorrect or insufficient information. You don't have a question If you have Errors in your Premise, so your question makes No Sense. There's no Relevance to it's timing and it applies to situations of little importance."

Problem Solving Tips

Avoid asking the wrong questions, take time to define each problem carefully before trying to solve it. Ask yourself lots of different questions about the nature of the problem. Strive to look at problems from different perspectives and generate multiple solutions. When evaluating solutions, take time to think about how you should choose between options. Evaluate potential solutions carefully and thoroughly against a predefined standard. Once you choose a solution to a problem, develop an implementation plan with the sequence of events necessary for completing the problem solving task. After a solution has been implemented, immediately look for ways to improve the idea and avoid future problems. Address any belief issues and other consequences of the proposed solution so that others will understand and support the solution. Systematically search for issues that may become problems in the future. Sometimes even small problems often become much bigger in scope, and thus very difficult to solve, but not impossible. Remember that making a decision is not the end of the problem-solving process.

Big Six Skills to Problem Solving

We all have choices and options, but bad decisions can waste a lot of time, and we only have so much time. You don't want to miss out on opportunities because you were not realistic in your planning. It's good to be organized, but you also have to be efficient and effective and have a good understanding of your goals and a good understanding of your responsibilities. As a human you have a finite amount of time, use it well. And remember that all those little moments of wasted time add up in the end. You could lose days and even years of missed potential. If you don't solve the Root of the Problem, then you will still have a problem.

Problem Transference (passing the buck)

We must have immediate solutions when solving problems and long-term solutions when solving problems. We must also learn how to solve problems before they present themselves, especially problems that are critical to our survival. Foresight Having ideas on possible solutions to problems that you can anticipate will save you time and energy. One of the first problem solving skills we need to have is Learning how to Prioritize. This will be one of the first things that you need to solve. Prioritizing has to be done everyday and sometimes several times a day, so defining your priorities is essential. Other wise you will waste precious time doing things at Random with no real purpose. This is when mistakes can be made that could have serious consequences.

Rationality - Heuristic

Once you define your priorities you have to balance your priorities in the most logical order that will maximize your time and available resources. Knowing what needs to be done first and knowing what needs to be done next is crucial. You also have to be prepared and ready to solve new problems that may possibly change your priorities. So knowing how to approach problems is critical. What can you teach and what could be learned about this problem must be considered when approaching and evaluating problems. You must also learn to Recognize Variables to certain problems (low priority problem, high priority problem, new problem, old problem, risks, threats and options). Two key elements to problem solving and prioritizing are having Self-Discipline and the Ability to Focus. So if you have not yet learned to focus or if you lack self-discipline then these two skills will be two of your top priorities. Prioritizing could take just several seconds or several minutes to accomplish (immediate solutions). But sometimes prioritizing could take several hours or several days to accomplish (long-term solutions). So knowing how much time you have is critical.

This makes Time Management the next important problem solving skill to learn. Goals and a timeframe of when they should be accomplished have to be determined.

I try to plan ahead as best as I can, and I usually don't cross bridges until I get to them. But in order for me to focus on my goals, I know it's impossible to plan for everything. So I try not to waste too much time preparing for things that may never happen. But I also don't want to ignore the possibility that things can happen. Believing that I will be able to overcome what ever challenges that come my way, is fine. As long as I except the fact that mistakes can be easily made when you are over confident. I plan as best as I can. And when I learn how to plan better, I do.

"Don't cross a bridge till you come to it" is a metaphor for waiting until a vague or low-probability problem arises so you can learn more about what the problem is, before trying to solve or overcome it.
The following sentences paraphrase various aspects of the proverb:
"Wait for ill-defined problems to be clarified before dealing with them."
"Don't be concerned about distant-future problems until they become near-present problems."
"Don't try to solve that problem until you are prepared to deal with it."
"Don't waste your time preparing for all potential problems, because most of them will no longer be problems when you get to them, or because conditions will have changed by then."
"Don't work on that problem until the scheduled time."

Problem Solving Skills also need to expand, improve and evolve as more information and knowledge is gained at each grade level and at each level of comprehension so that it can cover the many different aspects, different Complexities and specialized areas of unique problems.

Consequentialism the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission from acting) is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence. In an extreme form, the idea of consequentialism is commonly encapsulated in the English saying, "the end justifies the means", meaning that if a goal is morally important enough, any method of achieving it is acceptable. But not Always.

Questioning - Skepticism

You first have to be aware of the mistake or problem before you can correct it.

Just knowing about Cause and Effect is not enough. You also have to fully understand the Consequences and the Results of actions. You have to see the Positive Results and the Negative Results in a Side-by-Side Comparison so that you can easily confirm good from bad and right from wrong (Pros & Cons). Positive and negatives results would be based on Facts and Evidence that can be Confirmed and Repeated in Testing so that the highest degree of accuracy can be achieved. Personal Opinions cannot be used in Analyzing Data because Facts and Evidence have a much higher percentage of accuracy then just Guessing. 

Reasoning - Odds - Risk

Logical - Decision Making - Logical Reasoning

Reaction (physics) - Cause and Effect

Scholarly Method is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public.

Morphological Analysis is a method developed by Fritz Zwicky (1967, 1969) for exploring all the possible solutions to a multi-dimensional, non-quantified complex problem.

You don't have to be a MacGyver to be good at Problem Solving.

Survival Info

"Even a Small Leak will Sink a Great Ship."

You want kids to struggle a little bit to figure things out, as long as you have kids figure things out that benefit them. This way they learn how problem solving is extremely important and extremely valuable. Figuring things out that don't benefit you will not inspire you to learn.

"Good reasoning skills are extremely important to have, but if you are not reasoning the things that matter, then knowing how to reason wont matter."

"There are some problems that you can run away from, but there are problems that will follow you no matter where you go. So learning how to solve problems is an incredibly useful tool and skill to have."

Passing the Buck - Forcing your Problems on other People

Pass the Buck is moving or shifting the responsibility for something to someone else. Expecting someone else to do something for you, or expecting someone else to solve a problem that you refuse to take responsibility for. Passing the buck forces someone else to pay for your mistakes by passing on costs and waste onto innocent people and future generations, which is a type of theft. Passing the Buck can also cause anger and confusion because people may blame someone else for your mistakes. Scapegoat.

Rob Peter to Pay Paul is a phrase that means to take from one person or thing and then give it to another person or yourself. Taking the money from one debt to pay off another debt. Stealing from one person in order to pay another person who's stealing from you or stealing from someone else. Taxes come in many forms.

Cost Externalizing is a socioeconomic term describing how a business maximizes its profits by off-loading indirect costs and forcing negative effects to a third party. Polluters - At Other Peoples Expense - Body Burden.

Somebody Else's Problem is a psychological effect where people choose to dissociate themselves from an issue that may be in critical need of recognition. Such issues may be of large concern to the population as a whole but can easily be a choice of ignorance by an individual. Positive Feed Back Loop.

Diffusion of Responsibility is when a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present. Considered a form of attribution, the individual assumes that others either are responsible for taking action or have already done so. The phenomenon tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size and when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. It rarely occurs when the person is alone and diffusion increases with groups of three or more.

Collateral Damage unintentional or incidental damage, deaths, injuries inflicted on an unintended target.

Externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.

Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another.

What is the True Cost of your Actions? (externalizing) - Planned Obsolescence

Just Following Orders - Conformity - Passivity - Acceptable Risk - Information Literacy - Morals

Sometimes a Solution to a Problem Creates other Problems. That's not problem solving, that's problem transference. Transferring your problems to other people does not make the problems go away. Solution Caused Problems is an indication of an incomplete approach to resolving issues.

You need to know when to Delegate.

Some people tend to solve their problems by giving their problems to other people and make other people suffer the consequences of that problem. If someone steals from you, you shouldn't steal from someone else to make up for your loss. All humans are good at solving problems, but it's the way that some people solve their problems that ends up being the most important part of the problem solving process. If solving your problem causes other people to have problems, then that's not problem solving, that's Buck Passing, that's Scapegoating, that's Blame shifting, and that's Externalization. These are the crimes of corporations, politicians, and even some citizens. Why are you forcing other people to pay for your comforts? Why are you stealing from future generations by exploiting resources and leaving poison water and land as a result. You have to know that some of your actions are indirectly murdering people now, and murdering people in the future. If you don't understand this, then you need to remove your head from your ass and start learning, and stop killing. 

Redirect is to channel into a new direction.

Side-stepping is when someone avoids dealing with or discussing something problematic or disagreeable.

“If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix it” is a stupid idiom because it ignores the word maintenance, and it also does not prepare you for when something does break. Though it's true that sometimes trying to fix something can actually make something worse, but that only means that you were not ready to fix it. You should wait until you are ready to fix something completely and be fully prepared for other problems to arise.

"Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them." - Henry Ford (1863 - 1947).

"Why would you force other people to fix your problems just because you don't want to take the time to fix your own problems, problems that you could easily fix yourself? This is not the same as asking for help. It's just that when people transfer or force their personal problems to other people without their permission, it only creates more problems."

Progress Trap is the condition human societies experience when, in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, they inadvertently introduce problems they do not have the resources or political will to solve, for fear of short-term losses in status, stability or quality of life. This prevents further progress and sometimes leads to collapse.

Social Trap is a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole. Unsustainable Examples of social traps include overfishing, energy "brownout" and "blackout" power outages during periods of extreme temperatures, the overgrazing of cattle on the Sahelian Desert, and the destruction of the rainforest by logging interests and agriculture.

Making rules or laws to discourage particular behaviors will never succeed if the understanding of those rules and laws are never taught in schools or thoroughly explained in the media. Public knowledge is essential to maximize order. But if certain rules or laws are unjustified and are not scientifically proven, so that it shows evidence of the cause and effects and the damage that these rules are doing to people and the environment, and if the schools do not teach people about these ignorant rules, then those rules will continue to kill people and damage the world. So who's worse, the criminals who made the laws or the people who don't teach others about how criminal these particular laws are?

If people are smart enough to know how to steal, then they are smart enough to find better ways of doing things that require no stealing at all. Options and choices are there, but you need to learn what they are. 

Don't make problems worse. Punishing a person, because of a problem, is illogical. If you want to help someone solve a problem, then help them, you can't help people solve their problems when you're adding to their problems. It's just common sense, helping someone is a lot better then hurting someone. 

"You don't make things better by making things worse."

"Replacing worn-out systems with more of the same outdated processes, is wasteful and negligent."

"What you're doing for work should be solving problems, and not adding to our problems or ignoring our problems. So why would you add to our problems when we can be solving our problems?" Instead of making problems, you should be solving problems.

Ostrich Effect is when we tend to ignore negative information and bad news because we are trying to avoid the pain or distress, which does not solve the problem, you're just temporally avoiding a problem by burying your head in the sand.

Things Change. Sometimes the first solution to a problem does not always solve the problem, or solve the problem completely. Problem solving takes more then one try. And the solution itself can also can be improved and modified. So the first solution is seldom the last solution you will have. Problem solving also needs periodic maintenance, because things change. Problem solving is an ongoing process. Don't ever think that something is totally fixed. Just because you solved a problem today doesn't mean that that same problem will be solved tomorrow, because things change. That is one of the main reasons why problem solving skills are extremely important. Things change. Questions.

Ad Hoc generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes.

Counterproductive is tending to hinder the achievement of a goal. Behavior that goes against the goals of an organization or community. Anything that is more of an "obstacle" than a help in the achieving of a productive project or an objective. A situation that prevents a group, organization, or other collective entities from performing or accomplishing its originally stated function. Productive.

"When you see a problem, solve it, Don't run away from a problem and pretend that it will go away on its own, because you could create more problems."

"Being able to solve every problem in the world does mean that you wont see every problem coming that will harm you or kill you. But if you do see the problem coming, and you learn how to defend yourself from this problem, and stop this problem from recurring, then you can solve every problem, or at least make others aware of this problem so they may have a chance to solve it."

"If you ever need a helping hand, sometimes you have to use the hand that's at the end of your arm, because some of life's greatest tests we have to face alone."

"You might see the problem, but you might not see all the other problems that are related to that problem. Problems are like weeds, if you don't get to the root of the problem, then the problem will keep coming back. And if everyone is spreading the seeds of these problems, then those problems will never go away."

Chess is like Life, but Life is not a Chess Game

Chess will not prepare you for life, but chess does teach some important skills that you should know how to use in life. Chess forces you to focus and to be aware of what your doing, which is really important in life. Chess also forces you to see the whole picture, and not just see where you're going, but also see all the possible dangers that comes with every move that you make or from every move that your opponent makes. Chess also makes you plan several moves ahead and forces you to adapt when things change. Chess also makes you anticipate possible obstacles. If you can predict a possible reaction, then you can make a more accurate decision. So chess makes you pay attention to your choices, because with chess, you only have a certain number of choices, and with each choice that you make, you will either have more choices or less choices, which depends on the outcome of the previous choice. So depending on how your opponent moves, or how the environment reacts, will determine the next choices you will have. So there are good moves and bad moves, and one wrong move could have devastating consequences, just like in life. An early mistake in the game can make it very difficult to overcome and recover, so even the first move that you make can be extremely important. You can plan for the future, but the future may change because of how your opponent reacts or how the world changes. So you must be prepared for changes in life and learn how to adapt to these new changes, so that you can make the appropriate moves or choices and be ready to make new plans. In life, and in the game of chess, you may have to take some risks, but they must be calculated risks, but even then, you must be prepared for the mistakes and the effects that are the result of your actions. As the game progresses, and as life progresses, with every move or choice that you make, this means that you will have one less choice, and eventually you will have fewer and fewer choices, but the game is not over. Ending in a draw is when life and humans have agreed that this game cannot be won by either player. You may have a billion options, but each move is as important as the last. Just being good at chess will not make you good at life, but chess could make you a better problem solver. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices, and sometimes you have to give up things in order to gain things or make sacrifices in order to achieve future objectives. But this does not mean that you are less effective or more in danger. It's just that your options have changed. Chess is also a horrible reminder of how cruel people, society and governments can be. Forcing people to always have to be on the defensive, and forcing them to react to life, instead of living life. This gives people very little chance to make progress, unless people can see that their ability to defend themselves will eventually end in a draw, which will prove that even if people get themselves into a mess of trouble, they still have options, so don't give up, because if you do give up, then you will eventually have no options, and you will eventually lose, as many civilizations have done in the past. So chess is similar to life, but life is not a chess game. What makes a good chess player? Someone who can see the farthest into the future and calculate what events could happen, and then apply a particular action, or chess move, based on that information and knowledge, while at the same time, correctly adapt to changes as they happen, and have the ability to recalculate what events could happen based on those changes. So can Chess be used as a learning tool for problem solving? Of course it can. The more you can see into the future, the better your odds will be in making a good decision, and on top of that, it also makes you more aware that things could change at anytime, so you have to be ready to change the path that you're on. And chess is not the only game that can teach you problem solving. We can even teach artificial intelligence to play games, which will make us even better players, on the board and off the board.

Chess-in-the-Schools - Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis

History of Chess can be traced back nearly 1500 years. Chess originated in India, where it was called Chaturanga, which appears to have been invented in the 6th century AD. World Chess Hall of Fame.

Magnus Carlsen (Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster and the current World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, Carlsen earned his grandmaster title in 2004, at the age of 13 years and 148 days. Born: November 30, 1990, Tønsberg, Norway.

László Polgár is a Hungarian chess teacher and educational psychologist. He is the father of the famous "Polgár sisters": Zsuzsa, Zsófia, and Judit, whom he raised to be chess prodigies, with two of them becoming the best and second best women chess players in the world.

Chessboard is a squared Checkerboard shape and its side being divided into eight parts, resulting in a total of sixty-four subdivisions. In other variants, the total number of subdivisions may range from nine to one hundred and twelve. Each subdivision of the board is called a square and receives a unique identification to be used in chess notation, which may be descriptive, algebraic, or numeric. In two-dimensional boards, each horizontal rectilinear array of squares is called a rank, each vertical rectilinear array of squares is called a file, and each line of squares of the same colour touching corner to corner is called a diagonal.

Algebraic Notation in chess is a method for recording and describing the moves in a game of chess. It is based on a system of coordinates to uniquely identify each square on the chessboard. Algebraic notation exists in various forms and languages and is based on a system developed by Philipp Stamma. Stamma used the modern names of the squares, but he used p for pawn moves and the original file of a piece (a through h) instead of the initial letter of the piece name. This article describes standard algebraic notation (SAN) required by FIDE.

"The one who can see the farthest into the future and make the necessary adjustments when things change, will always win, or at the least, survive the longest."

"Strategy is about foresight. It's about anticipating your opponent's moves and devising counter measures. It's plotting one step ahead of the opposition. And playing your trump card just after the opponent play theirs. It's about making sure you surprise them. And they don't surprise you."

In order to be a really good chess player you need to see several moves ahead, which is one of the key factors when solving problems. You need to see into the future goal, you need to see all the steps involved, you need to see the possible obstacles that you may have, you need to know your options if things change. But just because you're good at chess does not mean that you're good at solving problems. You need to learn problem solving.

"If a computer can play chess, then a computer can use chess pieces as symbols to represent all kinds of different information."

Advanced Chess is a relatively new form of chess, wherein each human player uses a computer chess program to help him explore the possible results of candidate moves. The human players, despite this computer assistance, are still fully in control of what moves their "team" (of one human and one computer) makes.

Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. Chess is believed to have originated in India sometime before the 7th century. Play does not involve hidden information. Each player begins with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differently, with the most powerful being the queen and the least powerful the pawn. The objective is to checkmate the opponent's king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player's pieces are used to attack and capture the opponent's pieces, while supporting each other. During the game, play typically involves making exchanges of one piece for an opponent's similar piece, but also finding and engineering opportunities to trade one piece for two, or to get a better position. In addition to checkmate, the game can be won by voluntary resignation, and there are also several ways a game can end in a draw. Game Design.

Three-Dimensional Chess is any chess variant that uses multiple boards representing different levels, allowing the chess pieces to move in three physical dimensions. In practical play, this is usually achieved by boards representing different layers being laid out next to each other. 3D chess is used colloquially to describe complex, dynamic systems with many competing entities and interests, including politics, diplomacy and warfare. To describe an individual as "playing three-dimensional chess" implies a higher-order understanding and mastery of the system beyond the comprehension of their peers or ordinary observers.

Game of Skill is a game where the outcome is determined mainly by mental or physical skill, rather than by chance.

Mind Sport is a game of skill where the competition is based on a particular type of the intellectual ability as opposed to physical ability.

Strategy Game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decision tree style thinking, and typically very high situational awareness.

Sequential Game is a game where one player chooses their action before the others choose theirs. Importantly, the later players must have some information of the first's choice, otherwise the difference in time would have no strategic effect. Sequential games hence are governed by the time axis, and represented in the form of decision trees.

Chess Clock consists of two adjacent clocks with buttons to stop one clock while starting the other, so that the two clocks never run simultaneously. Chess clocks are used in chess and other two-player games where the players move in turn. The purpose is to keep track of the total time each player takes for his or her own moves, and ensure that neither player overly delays the game.

Chess Title is a title regulated by a chess governing body and bestowed upon players based on their performance and rank. Such titles are usually granted for life. The international chess governing body FIDE grants several titles, the most prestigious of which is Grandmaster; many national chess federations also grant titles such as "National Master". More broadly, the term "master" can refer to any highly skilled chess player.

Subgame Perfect Equilibrium is a refinement of a Nash equilibrium used in dynamic games. A strategy profile is a subgame perfect equilibrium if it represents a Nash equilibrium of every subgame of the original game. Informally, this means that if the players played any smaller game that consisted of only one part of the larger game, their behavior would represent a Nash equilibrium of that smaller game. Every finite extensive game has a subgame perfect equilibrium. A common method for determining subgame perfect equilibria in the case of a finite game is backward induction. Here one first considers the last actions of the game and determines which actions the final mover should take in each possible circumstance to maximize his/her utility. One then supposes that the last actor will do these actions, and considers the second to last actions, again choosing those that maximize that actor's utility. This process continues until one reaches the first move of the game. The strategies which remain are the set of all subgame perfect equilibria for finite-horizon extensive games of perfect information. However, backward induction cannot be applied to games of imperfect or incomplete information because this entails cutting through non-singleton information sets. A subgame perfect equilibrium necessarily satisfies the One-Shot deviation principle. The set of subgame perfect equilibria for a given game is always a subset of the set of Nash equilibria for that game. In some cases the sets can be identical. The Ultimatum game provides an intuitive example of a game with fewer subgame perfect equilibria than Nash equilibria.

Nash Equilibrium is a solution concept of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only their own strategy. If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing strategies while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitutes a Nash equilibrium. The Nash equilibrium is one of the foundational concepts in game theory. The reality of the Nash equilibrium of a game can be tested using experimental economics methods.

Extensive-Form Game is a specification of a game in game theory, allowing (as the name suggests) for the explicit representation of a number of key aspects, like the sequencing of players' possible moves, their choices at every decision point, the (possibly imperfect) information each player has about the other player's moves when they make a decision, and their payoffs for all possible game outcomes. Extensive-form games also allow for the representation of incomplete information in the form of chance events modeled as "moves by nature".

Game Theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interaction between rational decision-makers. It has applications in all fields of social science, as well as in logic and computer science. Originally, it addressed zero-sum games, in which one person's gains result in losses for the other participants. Today, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations, and is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, and computers. Modern game theory began with the idea regarding the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games and its proof by John von Neumann. Winning and Losing - Self Interest - Competition.

Zero-Sum Game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants. If the total gains of the participants are added up and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Thus, cutting a cake, where taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others, is a zero-sum game if all participants value each unit of cake equally (see marginal utility). In contrast, non-zero-sum describes a situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses can be less than or more than zero. A zero-sum game is also called a strictly competitive game while non-zero-sum games can be either competitive or non-competitive. Zero-sum games are most often solved with the minimax theorem which is closely related to linear programming duality, or with Nash equilibrium.

Game of Chance is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device, and upon which contestants may choose to wager money or anything of monetary value. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, or numbered balls drawn from a container. A game of chance may have some skill element to it, however, chance generally plays a greater role in determining the outcome than skill. A game of skill, on the other hand, also may have elements of chance, but with skill playing a greater role in determining the outcome.

Game Mechanics are methods invoked by agents designed for interaction with the game state, thus providing gameplay. All games use mechanics; however, there are different theories as to their ultimate importance to the game. In general, the process and study of game design are efforts to come up with game mechanics that allow for people playing a game to have an engaging, but not necessarily fun, experience. The interaction of various game mechanics in a game determines the complexity and level of player interaction in the game, and in conjunction with the game's environment and resources determine game balance. Some forms of game mechanics have been used in games for centuries, while others are relatively new, having been invented within the past decade. Complexity in game mechanics should not be confused with depth or even realism. Go is perhaps one of the simplest of all games, yet exhibits an extraordinary depth of play. Most computer or video games feature mechanics that are technically complex (in terms of making a human do all the calculations involved) even in relatively simple designs. In general, commercial video games have gone from simple designs (such as Space Invaders and Asteroids) to extremely complex ones (such as Gran Turismo 5 and Crysis 2) as processing power has increased. In contrast, casual games have generally featured a return to simple, puzzle-like designs, though some are getting more complex. In physical games, differences generally come down to style, and are somewhat determined by intended market. Virtual Reality.

Simultaneous Action Selection is a game mechanic that occurs when players of a game take action (such as moving their pieces) at the same time. Examples of games that use this type of movement include rock–paper–scissors and Diplomacy. Typically, a "secret yet binding" method of committing to one's move is necessary, so that as players' moves are revealed and implemented, others do not change their moves in light of the new information. Thus, in Diplomacy, players write down their moves and then reveal them simultaneously. Because no player gets the first move, this potentially arbitrary source of advantage is not present. It is also possible for simultaneous movement games to proceed relatively quickly, because players are acting at the same time, rather than waiting for their turn. Simultaneous action selection is easily implemented in card games such as Apples to Apples in which players simply select cards and throw them face-down into the center. Some games do not lend themselves to simultaneous movement, because one player's move may be prevented by the other player's. For instance, in chess, a move of a bishop takes queen would be incompatible with a simultaneous opposing move of queen takes bishop. By contrast, the simultaneous movement is possible in Junta because each coup phase has a movement stage and a separate combat stage; no units are removed until all have had a chance to move. It has been noted that "a certain amount of reverse psychology and reverse-reverse psychology ensues" as players attempt to calculate the implications of others' potential actions. Junta also has simultaneous action selection in that players secretly choose their locations at the same time. This is important in that, for instance, a player plotting an assassination may choose the bank for his or her own location (hoping to quickly deposit the ill-gotten gains) before finding out whether the location of his or her assassination was on the mark. Simultaneous action selection is used in many real-world applications such as first-price sealed-bid auctions. The fact that no bidder knows what others are planning to bid may provide an incentive to bid high if there is a strong desire to win the auction, which can result in much higher winning bids than if better information were available. The prisoner's dilemma is another classic example of simultaneous action selection. SAS can also be used to introduce an element of chance, as when rock-paper-scissors is used to decide a matter.

Simultaneous Game is a game where each player chooses his action without knowledge of the actions chosen by other players. Simultaneous games contrast with sequential games, which are played by the players taking turns (moves alternate between players). Normal form representations are usually used for simultaneous games.

People make the mistake sometimes of zooming in to much on problems that they can't see the whole picture. They seem to focus to much on unique details. When you're zoomed in to far all you can see is a small part of a much larger issue. You need to zoom out and backup far enough to see the whole picture from the beginning and be able to see all the way to a possible outcome. Being able to see a single pixel can be useful sometimes, but just seeing things close is like putting on blinders, which makes it impossible to understand what you're really looking at. So you need to zoom out to see all the pixels that create a picture. This way you can begin to understand what you're truly looking at. You have to see all the levels, all the time frames, and all the different angles. As you zoom out more you will notice that the more you see the more your questions will change at each level of focus. So if you never zoom out enough you will never know if you're asking all the right questions.

Spatial intelligence

"Remember, just solving one problem does not solve all your problems. You have to see the whole picture in order to understand it correctly and collectively, meaning, people acting together as well as seeing the world as a collective, a whole, but made up of different elements."

"Don't worry, we'll figure it out, we can figure out almost anything."

When solving problems sometimes you have to stop, step back and take some time to think. Think about the problem and study it carefully. Think about all the different ways that you can go about solving this problem. You don't want to bang your head against the wall and try to solve problems to quickly because you may end up wasting time, or make it worse, or not totally fix the problem, because quick fixes never last. Plus, when you're feeling stressed or when you're struggling to solve a problem, your thinking becomes less clear and you become less focused. So walk around or lay down, you will be amazed on how much you can learn when you're calmly and creatively thinking.

Did you know that you can learn things and use that knowledge to solve problems. Humans have been doing this since the beginning. But not many people truly understand what learning is in order to effectively use learning to increase their potential. If every school and university in the world taught students how to learn, and what to learn, then every problem in the world would be solved.

Every problem can be solved, but that's easier said then done. There are several skills to acquire and many things that you have to learn in order to be a good problem solver. There are skills and knowledge that will make you good at asking the right questions at the right time. But just knowing that every problem can be solved is not going to benefit you. You have to learn how to solve problems. I can say that the internet is the greatest tool in the world, but if you don't know how to use the Internet effectively, then the internet is not the greatest tool in the world. So that is a problem in itself, but this is a problem that we can solve.

Just knowing that there are answers to every question that you have is not going to help you. You have to know what questions to ask and when to ask those questions. And that is a skill you need to learn. So here we go...


Whip It - Devo (youtube)
When a problem comes along
You must whip it
Before the cream sits out too long
You must whip it
When something's going wrong
You must whip it
Now whip it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It's not too late
To whip it
Whip it good
When a good time turns around
You must whip it
You will never live it down
Unless you whip it
No one gets away
Until they whip it.


"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking." - Voltaire (1694 - 1778).