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.