Learn Polya’s problem-solving process and strategies, such as divide and conquer and pattern identification, to enhance your analytical skills, tackle puzzles, and solve real-world problems.

CS Bootcamp (Phase 3)- Problem Solving 1.png

Problem-solving skills are vital for personal growth, academic success, and professional achievement. They enable resilience, innovation, and effective decision-making. This course equips you with a lifelong skill set by teaching Polya’s problem-solving process and its applications in tackling real-world problems, games, and puzzles.

You will explore strategies, including top-down and bottom-up approaches, divide and conquer, stepwise refinement, pattern identification, and logical reasoning through puzzle-solving and computing logic.

By the end of the course, you’ll master analytical skills and critical thinking to apply Polya’s method and other strategies to complex challenges. This comprehensive approach establishes a strong foundation for systematically solving intricate problems.

Problem Solving

# Strategy

For this problem, we need to find a strategy to transport a fox, a duck, and a sack of corn across a river without any of them being eaten.

There are a few conditions:

- The farmer can only carry one item at a time in the boat.

- The fox and the duck are never left together without the farmer.

- The duck and the corn are never left together without the farmer. 

We have gathered all the information from the problem statement and must devise a sequence of moves to achieve this goal.
Have you encountered such problems before?

We face similar issues in our daily lives when we have to plan our budget. We start with a high-level plan for the week, then break it down into daily meals, considering individual ingredients and preparation steps without going over the budget.

However, is there any specific solution to our dilemma? We've analyzed the problem. Now, with every step forward, we have to check that we don’t create an unwanted scenario that goes against the rules, for example:

- If the farmer takes the duck, then the fox and the corn are on one side of the river.

- If they take the corn, the fox will eat the duck.

- If they take the fox, the duck will eat the corn.

By following the pattern in the image below, we can successfully transport the farmer, fox, duck, and corn across the river without any of them being eaten by the other. 

Polyas method

Bottom-Up Approach

Top-Down Approach

Wire Length Calculator

Stepwise refinement

Guessing Games

Minesweeper Game

Triangular Wall

Pattern Identification

Conclusion

Devising a Plan: Strategy

Strategy