Elegant Solutions

Some of my most elegant solutions are preceded by periods of intense frustration.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

I don't know about other people, but there is an emotional component to my problem solving. Mine is not a cool intelligence methodically sorting through hypotheticals.

After I throw my "gut instinct" and my "first approximation" and my "usual toolbox of methods" at a problem, and it still busts me, I GET MAD! This is not a calculated thing, it's an out-of-control thing.

One of my favorite quotes says something to the effect that the right perspective is worth 35-points of I.Q. But before I can think outside the box of my own comfortable thinking, my emotions have to forcibly evict me from my own prejudices.

YOU CAN ONLY SEE

AS
FAR
AS
YOU
CAN
THINK

That states it backwards, but still makes the essential point that the way we approach a problem and how fond we are of our own preconceptions can limit our ability to solve that problem.

All through the first draft of DAUGHTER MOON, I was sweating the ending, and having my time traveler meet himself the second time, and tying up all the loose logical ends. I wrote the novel on faith, with a default plot, hoping that I would think of something before I got to the end. But when I got near the end, I realized that I had been thinking about the ending all wrong. I didn't need to tie up any loose ends; what I needed was an emotionally satisfying ending and a lead-in to the sequel!

In plastics profile extrusion, there is always something that limits line speed: Maximum extruder output, top puller speed, length of cooling tank, whatever. As a general rule, the faster you can run the part the better, because electrical costs and labor costs are fixed. There is a category of profile parts that has to be run absurdly slow because it has a lopsided cross-section and thus the cool final product will be curved and out-of-spec if it is run too fast. The faster the line speed the greater the uncontrollable curve becomes. Heater strips can be used down-stream to straighten out the part, because applying heat to one side of the moving part will make the part bend in toward the heat. I wasted a huge amount of time trying different experiments to heat up the side of the part so the line could be sped up.

I have a good deal of intellectual baggage that I bring with me to problem solving. Sometimes this baggage is helpful, and guides me to a quick fix. But sometimes it just locks me up and traps me inside a box of thought that I can't get out of to where the answers are. It's always hard for me to throw out my preconceptions. Intense frustration is sometimes needed.

With a lopsided profile part, the solution was not more heat applied to one side downstream, but lopsided cooling upstream. But it took a whole different way of looking at the problem for me to get there. In fact, delivering extra cooling to the part upstream (to make the part bend away from the cooling) is an order of magnitude more powerful in controlling the straightness of the final part. Most of our parts in that category could be extruded at double the line speed, some parts at triple speed; with the "heavy-lifting" straightening adjustments made upstream with cooling, and the fine adjustments made downstream with heater strips. But I sure got mad before I thought of it.

It's like one of my favorite POSERS by Philip Kaplan:

A man has 12 coins, one of which is defective in that its weight is not the same as the other 11. In all other respects, the coins are identical.

With the aid of a balance scale how can the man determine which coin is defective and also whether it weighs more or less than the others, provided he is allowed only 3 weighings?

I remember I wasted about an hour and 15 minutes weighing 6/6 on paper, until I was finally so mad I couldn't sit still any longer. Then I calmed down and tried something insane: 4/4 for the first weigh. 15 minutes later I had the solution.

@hg47