Problem-Solving Techniques Quotes

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.

No solution can be more elegant than the problem at which it is aimed allows.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem

How do we attack important problems? Pose the right question.

I don't look at a problem and put variables in there that don't affect it.

Make a Goal Box, a chart of positive daily contact with a family when you are working with them.

Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.

Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which... leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of... the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this orther sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process.

There's a solution to every problem. I just have to find the right solution to fix this problem

You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and [the problem's] past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it.

If I can bring some light to bear on problems like that, I feel that people will be enlightened not only on the question but also on a way of approaching such questions.

It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.

Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.

You can't always come up with the optimal solution, but you can usually come up with a better solution.

There's a never-ending ocean of techniques out there.

The principle of Sturgeon's Razor states that the simplest answer to any problem is 90% crap.

I do my precalc homework, and then when I'm done I actually sit with the textbook for like three hours and try to understand what I just did. That's the kind of weekend it is--the kind where you have so much time you go past the answers and start looking into the ideas.

I've worked with a lot of good coaches, so I would be stupid if I did not pick anything up.

That's all managing is: just coming up with the right questions and getting the right answers.

How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasturenothing but years of effort can extract it. You can't hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon.

You know my methods. Apply them.

Neumann, to a physicist seeking help with a difficult problem: Simple. This can be solved by using the method of characteristics. Physicist: I'm afraid I don't understand the method of characteristics. Neumann: In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

It's a question of methods. Everybody wants results, but nobody wants to do what they have to do to get them done.

To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.

Methodology gives those with no ideas something to do.