Toward Solving Complex Human Problems

Toward Solving Complex Human Problems PDF Author: Brian E. White
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000328902
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This book serves three basic purposes: (1) a tutorial-type reference for complex systems engineering (CSE) concepts and associated terminology, (2) a recommendation of a proposed methodology showing how the evolving practice of CSE can lead to a more unified theory, and (3) a complex systems (CSs) initiative for organizations to invest some of their resources toward helping to make the world a better place. A wide variety of technical practitioners—e.g., developers of new or improved systems (particularly systems engineers), program and project managers, associated staff/workers, funders and overseers, government executives, military officers, systems acquisition personnel, contract specialists, owners of large and small businesses, professional society members, and CS researchers—may be interested in further exploring these topics. Readers will learn more about CS characteristics and behaviors and CSE principles and will therefore be able to focus on techniques that will better serve them in their everyday work environments in dealing with complexity. The fundamental observation is that many systems inherently involve a deeper complexity because stakeholders are engaged in the enterprise. This means that such CSs are more difficult to invent, create, or improve upon because no one can be in total control since people cannot be completely controlled. Therefore, one needs to concentrate on trying to influence progress, then wait a suitable amount of time to see what happens, iterating as necessary. With just three chapters in this book, it seems to make sense to provide a tutorial introduction that readers can peruse only as necessary, considering their background and understanding, then a chapter laying out the suggested artifacts and methodology, followed by a chapter emphasizing worthwhile areas of application.

Toward Solving Complex Human Problems

Toward Solving Complex Human Problems PDF Author: Brian E. White
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000328902
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Get Book

Book Description
This book serves three basic purposes: (1) a tutorial-type reference for complex systems engineering (CSE) concepts and associated terminology, (2) a recommendation of a proposed methodology showing how the evolving practice of CSE can lead to a more unified theory, and (3) a complex systems (CSs) initiative for organizations to invest some of their resources toward helping to make the world a better place. A wide variety of technical practitioners—e.g., developers of new or improved systems (particularly systems engineers), program and project managers, associated staff/workers, funders and overseers, government executives, military officers, systems acquisition personnel, contract specialists, owners of large and small businesses, professional society members, and CS researchers—may be interested in further exploring these topics. Readers will learn more about CS characteristics and behaviors and CSE principles and will therefore be able to focus on techniques that will better serve them in their everyday work environments in dealing with complexity. The fundamental observation is that many systems inherently involve a deeper complexity because stakeholders are engaged in the enterprise. This means that such CSs are more difficult to invent, create, or improve upon because no one can be in total control since people cannot be completely controlled. Therefore, one needs to concentrate on trying to influence progress, then wait a suitable amount of time to see what happens, iterating as necessary. With just three chapters in this book, it seems to make sense to provide a tutorial introduction that readers can peruse only as necessary, considering their background and understanding, then a chapter laying out the suggested artifacts and methodology, followed by a chapter emphasizing worthwhile areas of application.

Complex Problem Solving

Complex Problem Solving PDF Author: Peter A. Frensch
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317781392
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
This volume presents a state-of-the-science review of the most promising current European research -- and its historic roots of research -- on complex problem solving (CPS) in Europe. It is an attempt to close the knowledge gap among American scholars regarding the European approach to understanding CPS. Although most of the American researchers are well aware of the fact that CPS has been a very active research area in Europe for quite some time, they do not know any specifics about even the most important research. Part of the reason for this lack of knowledge is undoubtedly the fact that European researchers -- for the most part -- have been rather reluctant to publish their work in English-language journals. The book concentrates on European research because the basic approach European scholars have taken to studying CPS is very different from one taken by North American researchers. Traditionally, American scholars have been studying CPS in "natural" domains -- physics, reading, writing, and chess playing -- concentrating primarily on exploring novice-expert differences and the acquisition of a complex skill. European scholars, in contrast, have been primarily concerned with problem solving behavior in artificially generated, mostly computerized, complex systems. While the American approach has the advantage of high external validity, the European approach has the advantage of system variables that can be systematically manipulated to reveal the effects of system parameters on CPS behavior. The two approaches are thus best viewed as complementing each other. This volume contains contributions from four European countries -- Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Germany. As such, it accurately represents the bulk of empirical research on CPS which has been conducted in Europe. An international cooperation started two years ago with the goal of bringing the European research on complex problem solving to the awareness of American scholars. A direct result of that effort, the contributions to this book are both informative and comprehensive.

Discipline-Based Education Research

Discipline-Based Education Research PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309254140
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The National Science Foundation funded a synthesis study on the status, contributions, and future direction of discipline-based education research (DBER) in physics, biological sciences, geosciences, and chemistry. DBER combines knowledge of teaching and learning with deep knowledge of discipline-specific science content. It describes the discipline-specific difficulties learners face and the specialized intellectual and instructional resources that can facilitate student understanding. Discipline-Based Education Research is based on a 30-month study built on two workshops held in 2008 to explore evidence on promising practices in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This book asks questions that are essential to advancing DBER and broadening its impact on undergraduate science teaching and learning. The book provides empirical research on undergraduate teaching and learning in the sciences, explores the extent to which this research currently influences undergraduate instruction, and identifies the intellectual and material resources required to further develop DBER. Discipline-Based Education Research provides guidance for future DBER research. In addition, the findings and recommendations of this report may invite, if not assist, post-secondary institutions to increase interest and research activity in DBER and improve its quality and usefulness across all natural science disciples, as well as guide instruction and assessment across natural science courses to improve student learning. The book brings greater focus to issues of student attrition in the natural sciences that are related to the quality of instruction. Discipline-Based Education Research will be of interest to educators, policy makers, researchers, scholars, decision makers in universities, government agencies, curriculum developers, research sponsors, and education advocacy groups.

Computational Intelligence, III

Computational Intelligence, III PDF Author: G. Valle
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0444597409
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In recent years AI has been experiencing a deep internal debate on the appropriateness of the symbolic-based paradigm and all of its consequences. While various symbolic representation schemes, as well as their integration, have been proposed, their limitations have continuously pushed researchers for improved versions or entirely new ones. New viewpoints such as the complex dynamic-based approach with neural nets can be regarded simply as new problem solving techniques with specific properties. Under this perspective, what seems to be important is the ability to combine heterogeneous representation and problem-solving techniques. Research on heterogeneous, intelligent systems goes hand in hand with research on specific problem solving methods and paradigms, therefore representing their conceptual and practical glueing element. The papers contained in this proceedings are just one instance of such awareness activity in the international scientific community.

Global Business

Global Business PDF Author: Mahesh Joshi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192562479
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In the wake of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, globalization has found itself increasingly under the microscope. An active international discussion is underway, and the ideological viewpoint that the reversal of globalization and a return to protectionism and isolation will cure the world's ills is touted by many. In the midst of the growing prominence of international interconnectivity and contradicting attention attained by skewed misinformation about global impact, Global Business is a straightforward commentary on mega trends in globalization. With insights and observations from academics, practitioners, and practical thinkers from around the world Global Business demystifies the economic, social, and cultural impacts of globalism and globalization, and presents a balanced explanation of what is happening and how it affects everyone. It highlights that technology and change are not new, and explores the path taken to reach our current interconnected global state. It encourages a realistic examination of where we are and invites a dialogue on where we can go together.

Solving Tough Problems (EasyRead Edition)

Solving Tough Problems (EasyRead Edition) PDF Author: Adam Kahane
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1442950196
Category : Communication
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description


Applied Innovation: A Handbook

Applied Innovation: A Handbook PDF Author: Stephen A. Di Biase, Ph.d.
Publisher: Premier Insights LLC
ISBN: 1505416876
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
"Applied Innovation: A Handbook" outlines how a start-up CEO can take an innovation from concept to repeat sales including everything from the strategic elements of what innovation is to business models and intellectual property to how one sets up an advisory board etc. This work focuses on offering a road map for building a company from the ground up but can be applied to existing firms as well. The premise is that anyone can learn and apply the concepts of innovation in any part of their business and personal life if they know what is required.

Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences

Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences PDF Author: Oren Harman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022657007X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
What are the conditions that foster true novelty and allow visionaries to set their eyes on unknown horizons? What have been the challenges that have spawned new innovations, and how have they shaped modern biology? In Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences, editors Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich explore these questions through the lives of eighteen exemplary biologists who had grand and often radical ideas that went far beyond the run-of-the-mill science of their peers. From the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who coined the word “biology” in the early nineteenth century, to the American James Lovelock, for whom the Earth is a living, breathing organism, these dreamers innovated in ways that forced their contemporaries to reexamine comfortable truths. With this collection readers will follow Jane Goodall into the hidden world of apes in African jungles and Francis Crick as he attacks the problem of consciousness. Join Mary Lasker on her campaign to conquer cancer and follow geneticist George Church as he dreams of bringing back woolly mammoths and Neanderthals. In these lives and the many others featured in these pages, we discover visions that were sometimes fantastical, quixotic, and even threatening and destabilizing, but always a challenge to the status quo.

Sociological Re-Imaginations in & of Universities

Sociological Re-Imaginations in & of Universities PDF Author: Mohammad H. Tamdgidi
Publisher: Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press)
ISBN: 1888024534
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This Summer 2009 (VII, 3) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, is devoted to the theme “Sociological Re-Imaginations in & of Universities.” As part of the journal’s continuing series critically engaging with C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination,” i.e., the proposition that the best way to theorize and practice sociology is via a continual conversation between the study of one’s personal troubles and that of broader public issues, the present issue turns its attention to fostering sociological re-imaginations in and of universities. Several faculty, recent graduates or alumni, and current undergraduate students advance insightful, critical perspectives about their own learning and teaching experiences and personal “troubles,” and broader university, disciplinary, and administrative “public issues” that in their view merit immediate attention in favor of fundamental rectifications of outdated procedures and educational habita that continue to persist at the cost of more creative, and in fact more scientific and rational, approaches to production and dissemination of knowledge. Contributors include: Satoshi Ikeda, Sandra J. Song, L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Jason Pridmore, Festus Ikeotuonye, Samuel Zalanga, Donald A. Nielsen, Anne Bubriski, Penelope Roode, Belle Summer, E. M. Walsh, Ann Marie Moler, Minxing Zheng, Andrew Messing, Jillian Pelletier, Christine Quinn, Trevor Doherty, Lisa Kemmerer, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.

Cracked it!

Cracked it! PDF Author: Bernard Garrette
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319893750
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Solving complex problems and selling their solutions is critical for personal and organizational success. For most of us, however, it doesn’t come naturally and we haven’t been taught how to do it well. Research shows a host of pitfalls trips us up when we try: We’re quick to believe we understand a situation and jump to a flawed solution. We seek to confirm our hypotheses and ignore conflicting evidence. We view challenges incompletely through the frameworks we know instead of with a fresh pair of eyes. And when we communicate our recommendations, we forget our reasoning isn’t obvious to our audience. How can we do it better? In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help readers tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide readers through each step in the process: from how to state, structure and then solve problems to how to sell the solutions. Written in an engaging style by a trio of experts with decades of experience researching, teaching and consulting on complex business problems, this book will be an indispensable manual for anyone interested in creating value by helping their organizations crack the problems that matter most.