Creative Problem Solving III – Working Backwards

In this video, 2023 CDB Scholar Arul Kolla continues the series of videos about creative problem solving by talking about working backward. Sometimes, we’re given the end state of a series of actions and are asked to find the initial state. How do we recognize these types of problems? And how do we solve them? In this third video, we see how to identify these types of problems and even more tips on how to approach creative problem-solving questions in general.

Creative Problem Solving Series

It seems that everyone today talks about creative problem-solving. Curriculum guides list problem-solving skills as key objectives at all levels, and professional organizations recommend that creative problem solving becomes the focus of school mathematics. Many people believe that the ability to solve problems develops automatically from mastery of computational skills. This is not necessarily true; problem-solving is itself a skill. A problem is more challenging than a typical exercise because the route to the solution is often not known beforehand, and requires some level of creativity.