Problem solving occurs when an agent does not know how to proceed from a given state to a desired goal state.

It is part of the “larger problem process” that also includes problem finding and problem shaping.

From wikipedia: Based on work by Dietrich Dörner Joachim Funke, difficult problems have typical characteristics:

• Opacity (lack of clarity of the situation)
  • commencement opacity
  • continuation opacity
• Polytely (multiple goals)
  • inexpressiveness
  • opposition
  • transience
• Complexity (large numbers of items, interrelations, and decisions)
  • enumerability
  • connectivity (hierarchy relation, communication relation, allocation relation)
  • heterogeneity
• Dynamics (time considerations)
  • temporal constraints
  • temporal sensitivity
  • phase effects
  • dynamic unpredictability

The resolution of difficult problems requires a direct attack on each of these characteristics that are encountered.

A number of these characteristics are temporal (e.g. “dynamic unpredictability”). But these temporal features are rarely considered - unless the problem is intrinsically temporal - and almost never taught. This leads to people thinking that a problem is static and, once solved, will not recur.

Problem-solving often requires “freezing” the problem, or has an implicit assumption that the problem is static.

One often reads that design involves choosing/identifying the “best” design. But “best” is a relative term, which should be defined with respect to:

• the candidate designs known to the agents,
• the accuracy and completeness of the requirements with respect to the real world situation at the time the requirements were set, and
• the accuracy of the requirements with respect to the real world situation in the future (e.g. when the design is implemented).

Problem-solving often ignores these post-solution effects.

Once the “best” design is implemented, it will influence the real-world situation (context) in which it exists.

• The context will change.
• Is the design still the best in the new context?

Problem-solving often ignores these post-solution effects.

Note: requirements are models of real-world situations, and as such are always imperfect.

Related Terms

• Problem: An obstacle that prevents achieving a desired state from the current state.
• Problem finding: the specific task of discovering a problem. Typically, this involves finding the real problem; related to diagnosis in that symptoms are (usually) not the real problem in a disease.
• Problem shaping: Changing/expanding a problem statement to facilitate its solution.

To Do TBD

• digest definitions here
• look at related items in wikipedia (see references)
• Some good refs to other work in http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/posting.php?ID=607
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_finding
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_shaping

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