Mind bogglers are problems in which solutions are simple and straightforward, but for some reason or other run counter to human intuition.
Today I present to you with two classic mind bogglers. Let’s see what we can learn from them.
The first one is a classic and I’m sure many of you actually know it:
Three travelers go into a hotel and are charged $30 for a room. They each contribute $10. That evening the hotel manager realizes that the men were overcharged. They should have got a group discount and paid $25. So he sends a bellhop up to the room to return $5. The three travelers however cannot equally split the $5, so they give the bellhop $2 as a tip and keep $3 which they split among themselves - $1 each.
Now each traveler has paid $9, for a total of $27. The bellhop has2$. So $29 is accounted for.
Where has the 30th dollar gone?
Continue reading ‘How do you put a giraffe in a refrigerator?’
Posted in Problem Solving categories |
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“Cogito ergo sum” or “I think, therefore I am” is a famous philosophical quote from René Descartes. 
I have my own version of this statement:
“I think, therefore I am fixated”.
What I mean is that it’s almost impossible for the human brain to produce a really fresh and unique thought. Every thought, opinion or idea is somehow connected to previous concepts stored in the brain.
There are many definitions for fixedness, but I like this one: “The inability to see the solution to a problem although it stares us in the face.”
When we decide or when we are asked to think uniquely or creatively, the fixation intensifies. (So if you want to kill someone’s creativity, just ask him/her to think creatively. I can guarantee you that it works every time!)
So how can we fight fixedness?
Continue reading ‘I think, therefore I am fixated’
Posted in Fixednesses categories |
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Today I was looking for a parking lot and was very happy to find one that displayed a large sign offering one hour free parking with every carwash.
My car certainly needed washing, so I took up the offer and parked my car there. Three hours later I came to get the car and was prepared to pay for two hours parking. To my surprise, the cashier at the booth told me to pay for one hour only.
I couldn’t hide my surprise, and so the cashier explained why.
Continue reading ‘Viral surprise’
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Irving Biederman, USC psychology and computer science professor, tries to explain why we find one thing more “interesting” than another.
©iStockphoto.com/tomml
According to his theory, we tend to be interested in things that are new to us but at the same time still connected to what we already know. New, but not too new…
Biederman proposes a simple mechanism by which the brain seeks to “maximize the rate at which it acquires new but interpretable information.”
Continue reading ‘Why we call something interesting?’
Posted in Ideation categories |
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Several years ago a friend of mine, who runs an Internet site selling wedding gifts, asked for some ideas to help him differentiate his site from the rest, and thus improve sales.
To find ideas, I decided to apply SIT’s Breaking Symmetry technique with the “wedding day” as the starting point.
© iStockphoto.com/fenykepez
To do that, I asked myself in what way is a wedding day symmetrical ?
One simple symmetry that came to my mind is the obvious fact that the husband and wife celebrate their wedding day at the same time.
This helped me come up with the virtual idea or pre-idea (something that is not an idea in itself, but triggers a thinking process that leads to an idea) of having some kind of wedding day that the husband and wife don’t celebrate on the same day.
Here is more or less my line of thought from there: Continue reading ‘“Happy Equality Day, darling”’
Posted in Ideation categories |
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