May 31, 2020 12:00:00

'Structured Thinking' Tips and Specific Practices to Improve Problem Solving Ability

It used to be

talked about when Google once asked strange questions such as 'How many golf balls fit in a school bus?' 'How many piano tuners in the world?' It is believed that such questions were not intended to motivate job seekers, but to test whether they could make structured thoughts and whether they could make realistic inferences using logic. E-learning `` Four Minute Books '' CEO `` Better Marketing '' on how to specifically acquire `` Structured Thinking '' that aims to solve problems by overlapping questions and logic without relying on knowledge acquired in the past Niklas Göke , the founder and editor, discusses it.

Learn Structured Thinking in 3 Minutes | Forge
https://forge.medium.com/learn-structured-thinking-in-3-minutes-550a2dc2123c

Astrophysicist Neil Degras Tyson once talked about asking two job seekers, 'Do you know the height of the steeple of your building?' One of the job seekers happened to know this answer. The other didn't know the answer, so he went out and compared the length of the spire shadow with his own, and figured out the approximate length of the spire. When asked which one to hire, Mr. Tyson said, 'I've found the answer. I know how to use my head without relying on what I've done in the past.' Mr. Tyson's explanation is one of the indications of what structured thinking is.

Using 'structured thinking' as described above, instead of relying on the ideas you heard in the past or giving up because you do not have knowledge, you can decompose the problem and assemble the puzzle pieces one by one It will be possible to clarify the problem.

There are many ways to train structured thinking. For example, thinking about 'how many people will come to your favorite restaurant per year' is also a training.

Let's specifically consider a restaurant in Munich, Germany. Since 1.5 million people live in Munich, we assume that one-third, or one-third of them, live in the center. It doesn't matter if this assumption is correct or not, it is important to make a hypothesis that further decomposes the problem. Besides this, the following hypotheses can be made.

-Since Munich is divided into 10 districts, one district has 100,000 people.
・ If people in the area where the restaurant is located have both lunch and dinner outside, 14 meals a week will be eaten out per person. However, elderly people and families with small children tend not to eat out, so at a minimum, think about three times a week. Still, 300,000 meals a week are served at the restaurant every week.
・ If there are 100 restaurants in the district, and each restaurant serves the same, 3,000 meals are served per restaurant per week.
・ At this stage, think about whether the restaurant you have in mind provides 3000 meals a week. The store operates 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a total of 84 hours, and assuming that the number of meals provided per hour when operating at 100% is about 125 meals, the number of meals provided per week is about 10,500. Should be possible. This suggests that 3000 meals would be appropriate, even if only 30% of the total time was full.
・ Even if the restaurant is closed for two weeks a year, it will serve 150,000 meals a year in 50 weeks.

It can be said that structured thinking is both starting from a large number to find a small number as described above, and conversely starting from a small number to find a large number. Also, the answer obtained by structured thinking is not 100% correct, and probably falls within the range of 'approximately correct'.

The word 'structure' in structured thinking may sound like it excludes creativity, but in reality, creativity comes into play under the rules. By using structured thinking, you can have excellent problem-solving skills and gain many benefits in your life. Tyson described this as 'people who know the way of thinking have more power than those who know the answer.'