HIRSUTIC & HIEURISTIC: TOOLS TO SOLVE A PROBLEM

 19/02/2002

I was writing an article about hair. How from a normal evolutionary appendage it has become a burden?. I wanted to describe a face full of too much hair and I wrote hirsutic, Microsoft word immediately put a red line under it. I thought the spelling was wrong and corrected it by typing hirsuetic. This was not red lined and I carried on with my article.

 I now know there is no such word as hirsutic or hirsuetic, the correct adjective to use is just hirsute. Microsoft word did not red-lined the latter word because I had mistyped it as heuristic. I got intrigued: what does this word mean?

To find this I used the common sense approach. First use the easiest available method in the word programme it self, by right clicking on it and look for a synonym. But there was none. Then I went to internet and Googled it. Walla! a lot of articles, 4,670,000 in 0.3 seconds. What an interesting word! It means exactly what I was doing: trying to solve a problem. It is derived from a Greek word heur; meaning to find out. Heuristic broadly means common sense or "a set of rule of thumbs" to solve a problem. It is used in almost every discipline of learning from philosophy to mathematics, from soft cognitive psychology to hard core engineering. Most lucid was its use in solving mathematical problems.

   I came across a book " How to Solve It" by G. Polaya who was a Hungarian mathematician settled in USA. In this book Polya describes 4 steps to solve any mathematical problem. Reading through it one quickly realises that these steps can actually be utilised to solve any problem in any walk of life. I will give a brief layman's summery here and you be the judge. Polya's 4 steps to solve a problem

1. 
   
   Understand the problem
   What is unknown? What is the data? What are the conditions?
   Draw a figure.
   Separate the problem in to simpler parts.
2. 
   
   Devise a plan
   Find the connection between data and what is unknown.
   Past experience of a similar or related problem or part of a problem If you can not solve the given problem, try to solve some related                     problem or part of the problem.
   Are you asking the right questions?
   
    
3. 
   
   Carry out the plan
       Check at each step.
   
4. 
   
   Look back
       Examine the result.
       Can the problem be solved in a different way?
       Can you use the method to solve other problem?
   

What do you think?

 Reference : G. Polya, "How to Solve It", 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1957, ISBN 0-691-08097-6.

CHINESE CIRCUS TO CHANGING REALITY

Friday, 05 February 2010

Last week I went to see a performance by Chinese state circus. It was more of a theatre presentation than a proper circus but nonetheless it was a circus with jokers, jugglers, unicycles and lots of pretty faces. The performers were amazing, doing almost impossible feats. Young children seemed very appreciative but among the teenagers and adults it was not so.

In the era of computer generated cinematography nothing seems impossible and we kind of get desensitized to real human achievements. We have become so used to the acrobatics in the Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers that anything less does not satisfy us. We have started to expect the same from reality which we get from imagination. The boundary between media generated virtual reality and our day to day physical reality seems to be getting blurred.

I was in India in November last year. I attended a marriage ceremony in a small provincial town. I was astonished to see how closely it resembled a Bollywood film set. The rituals which have never been a part of that community were adopted effortlessly because they have been shown in the recent films so often.

The films, theatres and arts did have an effect on our behaviour before but because we had only limited exposure to them, it did not overshadow the raw reality of our physical surroundings. Now a days the time for real interaction with people and objects around us has been heavily encroached by the films, television, and computers.

Because we are getting our information more from virtual than real, our reality is changing. The reality is not truly real anyway; it is only what we perceive to be real through our limited sensory input and with a profound modulation by the brain based on our past experiences. And if our experiences are mainly virtual, so will become our reality. A frightening thought !