> What is the unknown? What are the data? What is the condition?
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> Did you use all the data? Did you use the whole condition? Have you taken into account all essential notions involved in the problem?
What sort of problems are they solving, that they can somehow identify the relevant data to the point that they know once they’ve chomped their way through the data, the problem is done? It seems oddly constructed (I can only imagine that I know I’ve only been given relevant data if I’m working a textbook problem or playing a video game; somebody has set the problem up for me, but clearly this was written by somebody prestigious, so that isn’t it).
It's a good articulation that informs one while working on complex stuff. Here's a recent example of this where the above advice came to mind while reading over this advice the other day (I believe someone linked it on HN)
> A good way to stress-test this sort of false argument is to try to run the same argument without the initial assumption that X is false. If one can easily modify the argument to again lead to a contradiction, it shows the problem wasn’t with X – it was with the argument.
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/be-sceptical-of....
I think the author is talking about maths problems, or proofs of theorems/propositions.
A problem might give you one or more mathematical objects, and ask you to show that some further condition holds true. To get started, you might consider how the given properties of those objects will help you to achieve your goal (and typically you would need to use every given property).
It's about advanced school exercises or math contest questions that are designed by someone, not real-world/research problems, where you don't even know how to best frame the issue or whether it's even solvable or the appropriate thing to tackle at the time.
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> Did you use all the data? Did you use the whole condition? Have you taken into account all essential notions involved in the problem?
What sort of problems are they solving, that they can somehow identify the relevant data to the point that they know once they’ve chomped their way through the data, the problem is done? It seems oddly constructed (I can only imagine that I know I’ve only been given relevant data if I’m working a textbook problem or playing a video game; somebody has set the problem up for me, but clearly this was written by somebody prestigious, so that isn’t it).