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'Just Sleep On It' Solves Tricky Problems?
An anonymous reader writes "CBC news reports that the effectiveness of 'sleeping on it' when faced with a difficult task may have more than just anecdotal roots. 66 students were trained to perform a calculation on an eight digit number using two simple rules which would take seven steps to complete. A different method existed to perform the same calculation 'almost instantly', but was not shown to the students. After eight hours, where half the students were allowed to sleep and the other half remained awake, 60% of the rested and 22% of the wakeful students discovered the more efficient method."
If nothing else, it means I've been thinking very hard indeed while at work this morning.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I've just forwarded this to my boss, sleeping on the job is now a good thing.
I know I've solved Calculus projects in my sleep before. The tricky part is trying to remember it when you wake up.
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
I thought it was pretty well-established that sleep plays a role in post-analysis of the days accumulatd information ? There have been too-many-to-count articles on the subject in New Scientist / Scientific American ...
There must be an evolutionary advantage to having a time when nothing else was going on to do something, and what else apart from the days events could occupy a brain if it has no external sensory input... I seriously doubt all the higher life-forms on the planet would do it if there wasn't a good reason....
Simon
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It'd be interesting to see what type of sleep these students had. I regularly take 20 minute naps that leave me refreshed and able to better handle problems. Can I assume that traditional / deep sleep is better than light sleep / napping?
And what about induced sleep through alcohol or medication? Could it be beneficial to have the ability to "sleep on demand" to solve a tough problem?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
I find I solve a lot of bugs in the shower. Or while out buying lunch. Or anywhere that my brain is not engaged in the current task, but where that current task is something other than the bug I'm trying to fix.
It's almost letting your subconscious thought processes work on the problem instead of trying to tackle it directly.
The upshot is that I feel no shame in saying "I'm not going to fix that bug today. I'll fix it tomorrow" when I'm stumped on something. Or a tricky design problem, etc - works for most problem solving situations.
Of course, this is all anecdotal..
~Cederic
I'm going to post something +5 Insightful, but I have to take a nap first. Check back later.
daed si luap
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3418017.stm
What's worse is when you actually do have pencils and paper nearby and you manage to scribble something down at 3 am., it's either illegible or utterly surreal at 8 am.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
The other day I had to remember a name from ten years ago. I could picture the person but no name was forthcoming. Several hours later, while doing something quite menial, and not actively thinking about earlier, the name just suddenly appeared.
A couple of friends remarked that this was quite common for them, but I'd never really thought of it before. It seems some dark area of your brain remembers tasks you're trying to achieve, or things you're trying to remember, and sets about working on them in the background, while you get on with something else entirely.
This may be why people often come up with great ideas in the shower or while driving in the car, as their minds were 'set the task' earlier, and finally it's finished. Not too unlike a computer I guess, but certainly cool when you do it yourself. You realize that brain has a lot more tricks up its sleeve than are mentioned in the handbook.
This method was employed by many creative people over the years. A famous case is the discovery of the molecular structure of benzene by Friedrich August von Kekule after he had a dream about snakes whirling. He famously said "Let us learn to dream, gentlemen." I like to use this technique myself to boost creativity.
The method used to sleep actively on top is to slacken by using hypnosis, meditation, progressive relaxation or any other method which you know (a simple manner with the breath deeply several times all as affirming ). Now you speak the spirit without knowledge and ask for your spirit without knowledge to provide a solution during the night to you problem. Now let go from all the concern and go to sleep. It can be not also easy in the beginning to make this but with the practice you can become an expert with it.
Have a paper and a pencil with range of the hand so that you can write your thoughts and solutions with your problem as soon as you awake. Just continue to practise this and each time you have success by solving your problems by the sleep on top you will amplify your self-esteem and will increase the probability of success the next time.
Please be understanding that English is not my first language, Thank you ^_^.
This happens so often with me it's almost a standard procedure. If I'm working late trying to fix a problem, debug a difficult issue, or find that really elegant solution to a tricky problem, I leave it until the next morning. Almost every time, the solution is then obvious, clear, and works immediately.
Most likely it's because the unconcious mind needs space to work, and concentrating on the issue is counter-productive. Someone once wrote a nice article about why it helps to be stupid when you want to play football, because _thinking_ is not what you want to do when you're standing in front of the goal with an open shot.
Similarly in more intellectual challenges, the subconcious mind does a large part of the work but needs to be left alone to do its thing.
There are other ways to get the same effect:
- playing music while working
- going for a brisk walk (not heavy sport, because that tires you out)
- smoking a joint (depends on the person but for many people this does the trick)
- playing a game (solitaire?)
But sleeping is definitely the best way, probably because the brain is designed to do exactly this.
Incidentally, it works for social problems too. Having trouble with a colleague? Sleep on it, they say.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Bush probably never sleeps at all ;-)
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
"I've been working for five days without any sleep to finish this report. At first I had a mental block. But on the fourth day I was visited by an Incan monkey god who told me what to write. Now I just have to find somebody who can translate his simple but beautiful language."
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
RTFA. They also tested a group that had slept, but not been exposed to the problem, and none of them solved it. Thinking about it before sleeping gave the best result.
Comparing two population proportions:
n1=n2=30
p1 = 0.6
p2 = 0.22
Null Hypothesis: Population proportions equal
Pooled proption = 0.41; standard deviation = sqrt(0.41 * 0.59) = 0.49
Z statistic = (p1-p2) / (sigma * sqrt(1/n1+1/n2)) =2.99
p-value = 0.0014.
That seems pretty significant to me. Go to the top of the class, and jump off.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Let me see if I get this straight.
Sixty people in a controlled study is not enough to be 'meaningful'.
Yet a bunch of anecdotes coming from you and some of your coworkers is significant? Bizarre.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Uh, no.
Coleridge was in an opium-induced stupor when he got the inspiration for the poem. Here are some sources that back this up (including comments from the poet himself):
You can read about the poem and its origins here, or you can read original notes on the poem from the author and others who knew him here. You can also read the original poem here.
--Mark
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
The way I had it explained to me as a kid was that it's like asking the records clerk for your mind a question.
If you keep *trying* to remember something, it's like you keep calling the guy back to the counter and otherwise pestering him such that he can't actually do the thing you're asking of him.
But if you're patient and let him work back there, he'll find the answer. Usually.
Take an 8-digit string formed from the numbers 1, 4, and 9. A series of two-digit comparisons is done. The result of the comparison is the same digit if they are the same, or the "missing" digit if they are different. That is, 1 1 -> 1, while 1 4 -> 9.
Start by comparing the first two digits, and from then on, compare your current result with the next digit in the string. Their example is 11449494, which leads to the results 1, 9, 1, 4, 4, 1, 9. The last result is the final answer.
The trick is that the original strings were "generated in such a way that the ... second [result] coincided with the final solution." People who found this trick were deemed to have gained insight into the pattern.
I think the study is bogus because of this. Sure, some people will notice the pattern, but careful people might choose to carry out the full calculation anyway, just to make sure. Any given string could follow the pattern or not. What they're demonstrating is how easily people can be tricked into finding patterns that may or may not be there. This kind of learning leads to racial profiling --- the result of the easy observation (race) implies the result of the more difficult one (criminality).
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
I remember reading about an experiment a couple of years ago. A group of people who had never played Tetris before were asked to do so, in a controlled environment, every day for a period of time. The people who had vivid dreams about the game showed a marked improvement where the others did not.
I believe that dreaming is a way of working through our problems and possibly indexing our memories.
Dreams are better as dreams than reality.