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David McGavock

Wanna Solve Impossible Problems? Find Ways to Fail Quicker | Co.Design - 2 views

www.fastcodesign.com/...lems-find-ways-to-fail-quicker

design solve problems thinking evaluate critical critical_thinking

shared by David McGavock on 11 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • a British industry magnate by the name of Henry Kremer wondered: Could an airplane fly powered only by the pilot's body? Like Da Vinci, Kremer believed it was possible and decided to try to turn his dream into reality. He offered the staggering sum of £50,000 for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could fly a figure eight around two markers set a half-mile apart.
  • A decade went by. Dozens of teams tried and failed to build an airplane that could meet the requirements. It looked impossible.
  • MacCready’s insight was that everyone who was working on solving human-powered flight would spend upwards of a year building an airplane on conjecture and theory without a base of knowledge based on empirical tests. Triumphantly, they would complete their plane and wheel it out for a test flight. Minutes later, a year's worth of work would smash into the ground.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The problem was the problem. MacCready realized that what needed to be solved was not, in fact, human-powered flight. That was a red herring. The problem was the process itself.
  • He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: How can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours, not months? And he did.
  • MacCready’s Gossamer Condor flew 2,172 meters to win the prize. A little more than a year after that, the Gossamer Albatross flew across the English Channel.
  • So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
  • David McGavock on 11 Apr 11
     
    "Wanna Solve Impossible Problems? Find Ways to Fail Quicker A case study in how an intractable problem -- creating a human-powered airplane -- was solved by reframing the problem. " So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
David McGavock

A People's History of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 2 views

en.wikipedia.org/...s_History_of_the_United_States

history people's Howard zinn United States

shared by David McGavock on 30 Dec 10 - Cached
  • David McGavock on 30 Dec 10
     
    "A People's History of the United States - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A People's History of the United States Author Howard Zinn Country United States Publisher Harper & Row; HarperCollins Publication date 1980 (1st edition); 2003 (most recent edition) Pages 729 pp (2003 edition) ISBN see Current editions section A People's History of the United States is a 1980 non-fiction book by late American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to present American history through the eyes of the common people rather than political and economic elites. A People's History has become a major success and was a runner-up in 1980 for the National Book Award. It has been adopted for reading in some high schools and colleges across the United States and has been frequently revised, with the most recent edition covering events through 2005. In 2003, Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du Monde Diplomatique for the French version of this book, Une histoire populaire des Etats-Unis.[1] Over one million copies have been sold."
  • David McGavock on 30 Dec 10
     
    Howard Zinn writes history from an alternative perspective - an important and essential skill if we intend to think critically.
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