Laury Ward, Period 4
In life, we must deal with many different sorts of problems. Some are spacial, such as how to fit everything you want to pack into a small box. Others may be verbal, such as filling out a crossword puzzel. Every day you problem solve to various extents, because problem solving is basically a set of mental procedures used for reaching a goal, state, or solution.

There are two types of thinking in problem solving, productive and reproductive thinking. A person using productive thinking looks at the problem under a new light to arrive at a solution. A person using reproductive thinking uses some knowledge of a previously solved problem to aid in the arrival of a solution.

The purpose of this page is to get you familiar with problem solving. In order to do this, the site has been divided up into many different pages. Background will teach you a little bit about how psychologists come up with their hypothesises on thought. Stages will walk you through the various steps a person goes through to solve a problem. Heuristic strategies will help you to identify different ways a problem can be tackled, and hopefully will help you to see problems under a new light, while hindrances will help to point out what may be blocking you from solving that problem. Creative thinking, along with brainstorming, will help you to visual problems in a new way which will, hopefully, aid in the quick discovery of a solution.

Once you have gotten lots of background information, it is time for you to try your luck with some problems, followed by their solutions of course. Test your knowledge and see what you've learned on the page with a short javascript quiz Finally, explore the area of problem solving further by looking at my links and references. Any last minute questions on words used one these pages? Check out the glossary!

Navigation around this page is fairly easy. Each page has fast rewind, rewind, fast forward, and fast-fast forward to speed you around the section. At any time, if you want to flip from section to section simply click on the frames on either side of the screen. And to come home, click on the question mark located in both the upper left and the upper right corner of the screen.