What's the best way to learn/increase problem-solving skills?
- by tucaz
Hi all!
I'm not sure this is the right place to ask this question, neither if this is the right way to ask this question but I hope you help me if it is not.
I work as a programmer since I was 15 (will be 24 next week) so learning programming logic was somehow natural during the course of my career and I think that it helped me to get pretty good problem-solving. One thing none of us (programmers) can deny is that programming logic helps us in a lot of fields outside computer programming. So I'd say it is a very valuable resource that one should learn.
My girlfriend is not a programmer and graduated in college on a non related course (Foreign Relations) because she didn't know what to study back then. As the years passed she discovered that she liked Logistics and started to work with it almost two years ago. However, since she does not have a technical background (not even basic Math) she is really having a hard time with it. She is already trying to catch up with Math, but even simple questions/brain-teasers are hard to her. For example, trying to find the missing numbers of this sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, _, _, 34 and so on.
We know that this is Fibonacci but if we didn't we would probably be able to get to the correct answer just by "guessing" (using our acquired problem-solving skills).
I'm not sure if problem-solving skills or logic are the correct name for it, but this is what I mean: quick solve problems, brain-teasers, find patterns, have a "sharp" mind.
So, the question is: what is the best way for someone to learn this kind of skills without being a programmer (or studying algorithms and such)? If you say it is a book, could you please recommend one?
Thanks a lot!
