What was the punishment that the captors threatened the professor with ?
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Answer:
Answer:
The first step in solving a problem is understanding what the problem is. This is what, in some of the other answers, is meant by “writing the problem down.” In my experience this is often the single hardest part of addressing a difficult problem.
The second part is understanding what might constitute a solution to the problem. Having defined a problem does not, by itself, determine what constitutes a solution. There are several different meanings buried in this statement. Is the “solution” one that can be approximate, or does it have to be exact? Closely related: can the problem be idealized, and will the solution to the idealized problem be sufficient? For a deeper meaning let me draw upon an historical example taken from my own field of work. At the turn of the 20th century an outstanding problem in physics was understanding how light propagated and how it was that it could propagate at a speed independent of the speed of its source. Many identified the problem; however, only one -E Einstein - recognized that a relationship between space and time, different from the one articulated by Newton, might constitute a solution.
Once you have understood the problem and understood the different forms a solution might take, then comes the execution: moving from the problem statement to solution.
Each of these steps requires a different set of skills: some are good at formulating a problem, but not recognizing the solution or executing the steps to go from one to the other; others can take a well-defined problem and just know what constitutes an acceptable solution; others are great at execution, but not so much at formulation of the problem and solution. Others combine two of three. Very few are great at all the steps.