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>> Problem-Solving:
The Tower of Hanoi Puzzle
How do we solve complex problems? In Chapter 8 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.
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 sixty-four-disk
version of the Tower of Hanoi problem would require 264 -1
moves! In other words, if you moved disks at a rate of about
one per second, you'd be done in 600,000,000,000 years.
Discussion Questions:
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