I won't go explain the problem, although it was a new one for me and interesting to solve. (Our group managed to come up with two solutions, so we were pretty chuffed with ourselves.) I want to mention what the exercise taught me instead. Danny gave us a series of steps to follow when solving a problem:
1. Understand the problem. Essentially, decide what the input is and what output should be generated.
2. Devise a plan. Or two or three if you can think of several ways of approaching the problem.
3. Carry out the plan. Having more than one plan can be beneficial for when you get stuck with one approach.
4. Look back. Have you followed the plan? Where has it got you? Have you discovered something helpful?
5. Acknowledge when, and how, you are stuck. This is the hardest step for me, because it's not always easy to know why you're stuck. It's important to solve this before moving on.
*Update (19 Oct 2014): I read in a fellow student's blog that these steps were devised by Polya.*
In general, I think I have intuitively followed these steps when problem-solving, but knowing the steps formalises the process. Recording what you're doing and plan to do helps with communication among team members and with your future self if you need a break from the problem. We found that our original plan lead to other ideas, and eventually, each of us was working on a separate approach but still keeping the others informed of any breakthroughs.
There was surprisingly little frustration (maybe because the problem wasn't too difficult) because we kept making steady progress. I'm going to be applying these steps to my other classes and to life when I am stuck.
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