fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Problem Solving: The Tower of Hanoi Puzzle
How do we solve complex problems? In this chapter you learned that while some problems can be solved by a sudden flash of insight, finding an appropriate solution more often involves negotiating a series of sequential steps, such as those required to solve the Tower of Hanoi problem below.
Towers of Hanoi Puzzle
The task is deceptively simple: move all of the disks from the leftmost to the rightmost peg. You may only move one disk at a time and you may not place a larger disk on top of a smaller disk. How many moves did it take you to solve the problem?
Psychological scientists are interested in this problem because its well-defined rules make it easy to study how people approach the task and arrive at a solution. And while this three-disk task is relatively simple (with practice you should be able to solve it in seven moves), adding more disks makes the problem significantly more challenging. For instance, solving a 64-disk version of the Tower of Hanoi problem would require 264 -1 seconds, if you moved disks at a rate of about one per second. In other words, you'd be done in 600,000,000,000 years.
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1. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Information-processing approaches have been likened to computer programming, in which inputs are transformed into outputs through a series of explicit operations. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this analogy?
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2. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Why would patients with frontal lobe damage have serious difficulties solving the Tower of Hanoi problem? |
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