{"id":673,"date":"2010-02-22T14:46:42","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T21:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new-gro.dyn.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/?p=673"},"modified":"2014-07-22T16:54:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T23:54:37","slug":"book-notes-lateral-thinking-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/?p=673","title":{"rendered":"Book Notes: lateral thinking problem(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

So I hate \u201clateral thinking\u201d problems. Seriously. They usually seem to be more of an exercise in thinking about how other people think \u2013 normally an interesting if not enjoyable topic \u2013 but somehow sucked dry of the positives of the experience. Never thought much about why I\u00a0feel that way but I will certainly give it more thought now that I need to write some for my puzzle \/ math book.<\/p>\n

So at some stage I need a tutorial on how to approach these sorts of problems algorithmically \u2013 to that end I wrote up this example.<\/p>\n

A problem I found online for \u201clateral thinking\u201d was stated as:<\/p>\n

Problem: \u201cHow can you throw a ball such that it always comes back to you?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am paraphrasing the problem but this restatement has the critical property of the original \u2013 at least one answer that is obvious from reading it. Answer: \u201cThrow the ball straight up!\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

These problems always have a basis set of assumptions. For example that the person is in a gravity field or on Earth, that that they can\u2019t throw the ball at escape velocity. I broke down some examples below that have easy graphical representations of the problem. The graphics should help with the book and relaying understanding.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Book<\/a>
Book notes: examples on breaking down lateral thinking<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I hate \u201clateral thinking\u201d problems. Seriously. They usually seem to be more of an exercise in thinking about how other people think \u2013 normally an interesting if not enjoyable topic \u2013 but somehow sucked dry of the positives of the experience. Never thought much about why I\u00a0feel that way but I will certainly give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1212,"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions\/1212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hhhh.org\/joeboy\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}