'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."

Comments

This is good news

[gowen]

If nothing else, it means I've been thinking very hard indeed while at work this morning.

Telling the boss

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just forwarded this to my boss, sleeping on the job is now a good thing.

It's True

[CuriHP]

I know I've solved Calculus projects in my sleep before. The tricky part is trying to remember it when you wake up.

Re:It's True

[Mork29]

That's easy. Quit spending all your time on /. !!!

Re:It's True

[the_mad_poster]

You've been modded funny, but there's more truth in your jest then the mods might've realized.

I'm sure most people realize it's very difficult to remember most dreams. People who say they "don't dream" are really just dreaming in deep sleeps and not waking up throughout the night. However, if you're startled awake for some reason (whether by the dream or external factors) during or shortly after a dream, your odds of remembering it shoot way up. Hence the advice to keep a notepad by the bed to write things down if you want to recall your dreams. I don't see why this wouldn't extend to dreams that may help solve problems.

One other thing I remember a professor telling us - If you're faced with a difficult problem of some sort, go do something else for awhile. Your brain will continue working out the solution while you do something else (sort of like './programming_problem &' I suppose with optimization for background processes). I do that at work all the time. I don't know if it would be more effective than sleep, but if I'm faced with a tough programming problem, I'll hit Slashdot or go take a walk. I recall working for hours upon hours once on a tough nested data structure for a custom search system. Finally, in total frustration, I got up and stormed out of the cube, went and sat in my car, and turned on a CD. After 15 or 20 minutes, I got up, came back in, sat down, and Hallelujah! I banged out the data structure and supporting code in about 20 minutes more. A few optimizations and tweaks later, and I was done. No clue where it came from. Wasn't thinking about it consciously in the car, but apparently the ol' brain was still churning and took advantage of the lack of stress from overfocus.

What kind of sleep?

[Gilesx]

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?

taking a shower works too

[Cederic]

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

Good to know

[nob]

I'm going to post something +5 Insightful, but I have to take a nap first. Check back later.

The story as reported by BBC news

[cjellibebi]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3418017.stm

Memory seems to work like this too

[Peter Cooper]

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.

Re:Rubbish.

[worst_name_ever]

I think we can all learn a lesson from Dilbert:

"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."

Re:Rubbish.

[gowen]

Furthermore a single test with just 60 people is not enough to create a meaningful statistical evaluation of the experiment.

Says who?

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.

Re:Rubbish.

[HeghmoH]

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.

Re:Well established

[Beardydog]

Explains dolphins a bit too. Dolphins don't get to sleep in caves and holes like surface mammals, they need to surface to breath, and holding still inthe middle of the ocean too long with your senses shut down makes you extremely edible

But with the ability to shut down one piece at a time, they can let sections rebuild without having to shut down the whole thing.

Like keeping a base system on one of my drives, so if one goes down, I can use the other to fix it without having to futz around with disks.

Records clerk of the brain

[Aexia]

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.