

The Feynman Algorithm - jsharpe
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?FeynmanAlgorithm

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10ren
"Writing down the problem" sounds trivial, but it's often the hard part. Once
you understand the question, the answer is obvious (as a commenter said).

I have to break down complex problems in order to come up with questions that
I can understand. The really hard part is in finding the _right way_ to break
them down, because not all modularities and boundaries between them will help
to solve the problem. But all of this properly forms part of Feynman's step
one, of writing down the problem.

I also often get a sense of what the answer should be - but it's very
difficult to even begin to describe it in words, let alone define it clearly,
and even harder to prove it is correct. Yet... it almost always is correct.
This is properly in Feynman's steps two and three.

 _Computers are useless. They can only give you answers_ \- Picasso

 _It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition we discover_ \- Poincaré

 _and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the
actual question was_ \- Douglas Adams

~~~
keefe
I completely agree - I studied algorithms because of a fascination with
general problem solving and this idea came up frequently with my advisor.

I think problems occur at various levels of granularity and only those of a
sufficiently fine grain are actually solvable in any real sense. I see it as
breaking down the probability space of answers until a concrete solution
emerges.

Extremely high level problems are extremely easy to write down:

1\. How can a ship travel faster than the speed of light?

2\. How do I live to be 500 years old?

3\. How do I make $1M?

These problems have appropriately trivial sets of solutions:

3a. Steal it

3b. Make an advertising supported web app

3c. Make a freemium web app

3d. Make an iphone/ipad app

3e. Work hard and slowly invest

3f. Write a facebook app

and so forth. Then it's a cycle of prepending "How do I" until a feasible
solution appears.

3ai. install a virus that steals fractions of pennies from each transaction

3aii. rob a bank

3aiii. blackmail a rich guy

3aiv. atm muggings (some solutions are more feasible than others)

3av. hijack a truck full of computers

3avi. rebill scams from spamming morons

3avii. steal CC #s

and on and on. At this level of granularity, sequential high level plans start
to emerge. I realize these are very different than physics problems, but it's
the same basic process of breaking down the solution space by writing it down
from high level to concrete implementation problems to which insight/intuition
can be applied.

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todayiamme
Maybe Feynman was Feynman because he was willing to work at it longer and
harder than other people around him.

I remember reading once that he was about to have an operation to remove his
tumor within a week and it wasn't certain that he would survive. The doctor in
fact told him point blank that there was a chance that he could die. A friend
came up to him with a physics problem and he spent the entire day and evening
working at it. They failed and decided to call it intractable.

So, Feynman goes home and later in the night he calls him up to say that he
has a solution. That was a man a _week_ away from near certain death. Is that
something innate or someone with the sheer persistence and experience to bend
things his way? I want to ask how many people who will be reading this would
have done the same? I wouldn't have, and perhaps this is why Feynman was
Feynman.

P.S. - The article was awesome.

~~~
chriseidhof
I think there was also part of him that just can't help but solving problems.
He's spent so much time solving problems and became even better at it, but he
was probably still extremely fascinated by his science and just couldn't help
but solving this problem.

I have noticed a similar thing, where if a cs problem is interesting enough, I
just have to think about it, even when other interesting things are going on
in the real world. I think it might be an (unhealthy?) fascination with a
certain field.

~~~
todayiamme
I read your stuff. Awesome.

I want to be something like you as I grow up. :)

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Eliezer
I'm often frightened by how _spontaneously_ my brain seems to come up with
something, because it could just as easily stop doing that and I'd have no
idea how to fix it.

I once walked past a math book one of my friends had left open, glanced over,
stopped, pointed to a formula, and said, "This is wrong." (Which it was.) I
only did it that once, but it's the sort of anecdote you can tell for the rest
of your life. And if my brain stopped doing that, I'd be screwed.

~~~
csl
You're lucky! I'll never get the same innate ability for problem solving, but
what I'm hoping is that it's actually possible to _train_ my brain towards
such spontaneity.

E.g., by spending time to solve a lot of challenging puzzles over a long
period of time. It's like when you try to remember a shopping list by
visualizing the items. After repeating the items enough times, you don't
visualize the list anymore; you just _know_ it.

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Maro
A necessary precondition is to define a good problem. Speaking from
experience, this is easily the hardest step for physicists.

For example "What is dark energy?" or "Are there baby universes?" are not good
problem definitions, but to my surprise "What is the radius of the proton?" is
still a good problem definition today [1].

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/07/08/the-
inc...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/07/08/the-incredible-
shrinking-proton-that-could-rattle-the-physics-world/)

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lkozma
There's another "Feynman Algorithm" which someone mentions towards the end of
the article: he said he kept a small number of problems constantly in the back
of his mind and whenever he heard of a new trick or method, he tested it
against his problems.

I once wrote a blog post about whether the opposite method is effective: you
keep your favorite tricks and techniques sharp and always look for new
problems they might solve.

------
RK
I don't know the context of the Gell-Mann quote, but having heard Gell-Mann
talk about Feynman, it seems more likely to me that that is Gell-Mann's
description of how _Feynman_ imagined the Feynman algorithm.

~~~
kragen
Concur. When I head Gell-Mann talk about Feynman (probably this was in 1994)
he seemed to think he was about equally smart, but Feynman somehow had much
better PR. Probably Feynman writing a series of books of stories about how
smart he was had something to do with it.

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bitwize
Attributed to Norbert Wiener: A student came to him with an incredibly
difficult problem he couldn't solve. Wiener stared at the ceiling for about
fifteen minutes, then wrote down the answer.

The student said, "I'm sorry, Professor, but I didn't quite understand how you
came up with that."

Wiener stared at the ceiling again for fifteen minutes, and again wrote down
the answer.

The student said, "I'm sorry, Professor, but I still don't get it."

Wiener, flustered, replied: "I've just shown you two different ways to solve
this problem! What more do you want from me?"

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jeffcoat

      > Write down the problem.
      > Think real hard.
      > Write down the solution.
    

I had a college physics professor who called this "The Method of Applied
Brilliance".

~~~
stcredzero
Here's how I did my hardest take home exams in grad school:

    
    
        - Attempt to solve problem using tools learned in the course
        - Attempt to solve problem using "standard" tools
        - Fail at the above
        - Go to bed
        - Wake up, shower, eat breakfast
    

I'd have the answers in the last step.

~~~
boryas
For this reason, take home exams are evil. Also, get rid of the fourth
strategy

~~~
stcredzero
I think the fourth is crucial.

~~~
boryas
After a point, but I think a large part of getting a problem is committing
maximal time and energy to solving it or "dying"

~~~
mfukar
Taking your (conscious) mind off a full day's work allows your subconscious to
process it, let your conclusions "sink in". That's why people often have the
solutions in our sleep.

~~~
arethuza
I don't think I've _ever_ solved a difficult problem while actually focusing
on the problem.

------
jey
There's a hidden gem in this article, a link to an excellent talk by Gerry
Sussman: <http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigitacoll09>

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LaPingvino
My way to execute this algorithm is to try to get as distant as possible to
the problem in step 2, taking as much experience into account as possible, and
then hap-hazardly zooming in. Or something like that. And it seems to work.

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monos
not sure what the point of this is, but for hard problems (= you have no
experience or it involves humans) that won't work.

you can't know what the problem is until you tried a couple of solutions.

