Problem Solving

Human kind reached great heights only because of their problem solving abilities. In my view, problem solving is the only factor that differentiate humans from other living beings. We had the same problems that other animals had in the past. But we solved those problems and climbed one step above, exposing ourselves to different set of problems. We solved every problems so far (atleast found an alternate for some problems that we couldn’t solve) in our path for 2 million years.

Now, in this more civilized world, we have loads of problems to be solved. In this article, I am going to explain my way of problem solving and how I approach a problem from beginning to end.

So these are the steps I follow:

• Define problem statement
• Structured thinking
• Ask right Questions
• Get data
• Explore... Explore... Explore...
• Choose right visualizations
• Select appropriate tools

Define Problem Statement :

Say Hi to your problem.

You cannot go to a war without knowing who is your enemy in the first place. Similarly you cannot solve a problem without actually knowing your problem completely. Just take a piece of paper and write your problem completely. Its very important to define the “out of scope” as well, because you cannot solve the entire problem at a single shot.

Structured Thinking :

20% of factors will lead to 80% of the problem

In short, Structured Thinking is putting a framework on an unstructured problem. This framework will be unique for every problem solver. This is the critical skill any problem solver should possess in my view. Without the ability to strategically structure the problem, its very difficult to approach it. A vast number of unnecessary additives will be clinging to the actual problem. One has to wash those additives away to have the look of the real problem. Once reached the core problem, move again to the first step and say Hi to it and define it again.

Read my article on Structured Thinking to learn how I solved a funny yet complex problem here

Ask Right Questions :

Once you get to the problem, you should be knowing what questions to be asked. Asking right questions is the most critical and valuable skill possessed by a problem solver. This skill can be attained by practice alone.

Let me brief an incident to let you learn the value of asking the right question. On 13th June 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found dead at Los Angeles. Nicole’s ex-husband O J Simpson, an actor was the main suspect, who already had physical violence history on his wife Nicole. During the trial, O J Simpson’s lawyer argued that only 1 in 2,500 men who physically attack their wives also killed them, which is infinitesimally small percentage(1/2500 = 0.04%). Judges eventually accepted this point and O J Simpson was released.

Now the question to ask is not “How many men who beat their wives killed them?” but “How many murdered women were killed by their wife-beating husbands ?”, which is completely a different perception. You know what? The answer for the second question is around 90% which ofcourse is a considerable percentage.

This case clearly illustrates the effects of asking wrong questions.

Get Data :

Data is the new currency of digital world

You can either dig into the data already available at your disposal or make other ways to get relevant data. There are various methods to collect the data to address your problem on hand. Knowing which data is relevant and which is not is also a valuable skill to possess.

Pendleton & Son Butchers is a small restaurant business in North-west London. They noticed slowdown of their business and couldn’t make considerable revenue. They decided to conduct a data science project to know the reasons and to get actionable insights. For this project, they don’t have any required data so far. So they found a new way to get the data by fixing proximity sensors on their notice board facing the road and count how many people cross the restaurant and how many of them came closer to the board to read the content and how many of them get into the restaurant ultimately. This data let them realize the content of notice board attracts a considerable amount of customers and placed more attractive content on the board.

So even if we don’t have required data to solve the problem, we can always make ways to get data. Armed with better data, better solutions can be attained.

Explore… Explore… Explore…

Torture the data long enough… It will confess to anything… - Ronald H. Coase

We all know this little cutie Dora who made our childhood awesome :

One of the most important thing that we learned from her is to explore. Apply the lesson from Dora to our data in hand. Explore more and more of the available data to find any patterns and inter connections between attributes. New attributes can be formed from the existing attributes that can give better informations. Once you completely explored the data and learned every nook and corner of it, you will become master of your data and can pull out actionable insights from it.

Check this link out to learn how I did data exploration using python on a dataset for Indian States. 

Choose right Visualizations :

In my opinion, visualization is something that should be carried out in each and every stage of problem solving. It is not a separate step but an integral part and I would even call it as life line of problem solving procedure. Even if you are not creating charts and graphs on screen in every stage, it is very important to have a big picture of the problem in your mind always.

Read my other article on Data Visualization & Chart preparation here to know more.

Select appropriate tools :

You cannot shave with an axe and cut a tree with a razor.

Appropriate tools should be used at every steps of problem solving. Today, we have huge number of tools for every tasks. Each and every stage itself have large number of tools to perform a single task. One cannot master in all the tools. Select a particular tool and learn every feature of it and keep you updated whenever newer version of that tool is released.

Following above structured approach make me better at handling any problems (even in personal life). What is your way of approaching a problem ?