Author Archives: gat5038

What Russian Marriage Problem?

In a small Russian village, there were 32 bachelors and 32 unmarried women. Through tireless efforts, the village matchmaker succeeded in arranging 32 highly satisfactory marriages. The village was proud and happy. Then one drunken night, two bachelors, in a test of strength, stuffed each other with pierogis and both of the bachelors died. Can the matchmaker, through some quick arrangements, come up with 31 heterosexual marriages among the 62 survivors?

One who may read this problem could see the impossibility this represents.  There is simply no way to pair the remaining survivors into 31 heterosexual marriages.  Or is there?  The answer is actually quite simple but we might not see it due to the problem solving concept of incomplete or incorrect representations.  This is when the problem solver may focus on the wrong information or misunderstands the goal.

A strategy approach I use often is the Means-End Analysis.  This approach to solving a problem involves comparing the desired end goal with the starting point and choosing the best path to a satisfactory solution.  By defining the “problem space” or boundaries of the problem, the problem becomes easier to solve.  This method provides a way to create hard-stop boundaries; sub-goals.  The integrity of these sub-goals must be maintained throughout the problem solving process:

Russian Marriage Problem –

  • Create 31 heterosexual marriages
  • Use only the remaining 61 survivors; 30 male and 32 female

The incorrect representation here is monogamy.  However, in breaking the solution down into sub-goals, this concept is not represented anywhere in the solution.  This is a concept that we generally imply to this type of situation.  Why?  Polygamy is a known and practiced custom in many cultures.  As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon for Russian men to father children with multiple women.  This has resulted in households that are openly polygamous.  Several Russian politicians and religious leaders have recently advocated legal recognition to polygamous marriages.

So you see, it never explicitly states that some of the bachelors can’t be used twice.  Once identified, the solution to the problem is actually very simple.  The polygamous marriages solution meets both sub-goals, solves the final solution and is even a recognized practice within the country of Russia.  I don’t envy the matchmaker’s job of convincing these two women to share a husband but once again this is all based on concepts that I am currently unfamiliar with.  Who knows, maybe they would find the situation more satisfactory than the previous one.

 

“Russians beating demographics with polygamy”. RT. 26 July 2011. Retrieved 6 August 2012.

Mira Katbamna (26 October 2009). “‘Half a good man is better than none at all'”. The Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2012

Why do I know this? I can’t Recall . . .

A sub-microscopic, potentially pathogenic, nucleoprotein entity, typically devoid of enzymes and unable to survive outside of a living host: This is the definition of a virus as taught to me by my 9th grade biology teacher.  I don’t remember his name, I hardly remember what he looked like.  After 28 plus years his face and many of his instruction are lost to memory.  I remember this definition though, why?  I, many times in my life, have marveled at which things stick and which things hang on the fringes of memory waiting for the right retrieval trigger to bring them into focus.  When I was younger it amazed me that my dad didn’t remember how old I was but he could recall exactly when I was born.  “Just a little math”, he’d say, “to get your age.  I don’t need to remember each year when I was there at the beginning,” he’d tease me with a smile.  Now I admit that my oldest is getting older daily, seemingly, and I find myself employing the same technique as my dad during my youth.

Long Term Memory (LTM) has been termed a biological abstraction. According to the reading material no single activity or class of activities can be identified within the brain to which can be attributed to the term or location of memory.  Memory seems to be difficult to find, no pun intended.  We have proven its existence.  No one argues that it doesn’t exist.  Many questions still remain unanswered about memory in general and specifically the encoding and retrieval process of LTM.

How did this scientifically primed string of words get committed to my LTM? What was special about that day when we went over this definition that made it stick in my brain?  We learned that several influences on encoding of memories exist.  Visual imagery is an encoding method employed where we create a mental image of the words.  “Sub-microscopic, potentially pathogenic” are some very powerful words.  In my mind they create imagery of horrible, pandemic sickness spread unseen through the world population – a bit dramatic for the common cold but otherwise scary stuff.  Is the emotion triggered through imagery what makes the memory so strong?

Deeper processing leads to better memories. Thinking about or reflecting on the meaning of words lead to better memory.  Isn’t that what my biology teacher did when he produced a definition that when reflected upon instilled imagery and emotion at a personal level.  What does this mean to me?  The Self-Reference effect states that we know and remember things about ourselves very well.  I know after hearing those words and thinking about their consequences that I didn’t want to catch a virus.  I might start the whole cycle.  I don’t want to be known as patient Zero, the one responsible for wiping out everyone.  Cinema has fabricated some scary stuff around this idea. Outbreak, 12 Monkeys, Contagion, World War Z are a few that I can think of offhand.  I digress.  This is a blog post about memory not fear.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have total recall. Total recall must then be the ability to instantly pair the encoding conditions with the retrieval conditions.  This concept would allow anyone to remember anything at will.  I speculate that to gain this ability one must be consciously aware of the exact conditions at the time of encoding and then place themselves within that memory state for retrieval.  I will hunt down a memory by retracing my footsteps, so to speak through the encoding process.  I remember sitting in class.  It was winter which meant it was cold.  About half the class was sniffling, sneezing, or coughing, except me; I don’t get sick.  I was sitting behind this girl that I liked.  She turned to smile and say “good morning”.  Her eyes were all red and puffy from her flu.  She had been absent for two days because of it.  It was about that time my teacher commented on all the coughing and sneezing.  He said, “Sounds like many of you have gotten yourself a sub-microscopic, potentially pathogenic nucleoprotein entity, typically devoid of enzymes and unable to survive outside a living host!” Then he started chanting it like Mary Poppins and the Supercalafragalistic song.  We all laughed and thought he’d gone crazy.

Many times in my life I’ve wanted to recall things conveniently but couldn’t. Other times when I’ve given up on grasping at the memory it suddenly pops right into my head unbidden.  Understanding memory and the encoding process can go a long way to gaining total recall.  I use many memory mnemonics triggers daily to help the retrieval process.  I actually helped my youngest daughter just this school year.  She switched teachers and was afraid that she wouldn’t remember her new teacher’s name.  It was an easy example of visual imagery; her new teacher was named Ms. Burns.

Perception Applied

Perception: One might argue that perception rather than fact is what rule our lives, our decisions, our responses. Strictly speaking of perception using the definition from lesson three – taking information from our environment and converting it to action potentials in order to use these potentials to build a representation of our environment – Our personal world through which we decipher reality. The combination of bottom-up and top-down processing and how this combination works together to influence our actions is an amazing event. Our perception changes and we then see the truth to what was beforehand magical illusion. The Gestalt Grouping Laws provide great rule-of-thumb scenarios when this concept can be easily seen.

The Gestalt Grouping Laws are: Proximity, Similarity, Good Continuation, Connectedness, Common fate (movement), Pragnanz. Proximity states that we tend to group things close together. Similarity states that we will group things that appear the same. Good Continuation means that we’ll group things that continue with synchronicity. Connectedness will group objects that seem linked. Common fate group objects that move together as one. Pragnanz – think pragmatic- subsumes that we’ll perceive our environment in the simplest way possible.

A thorough understanding of these laws allows us to explain how we can perceive things incorrectly but we still have difficulty controlling the event as it is happening. In the “Hollow Mask” illusion I knew the mask was hollow. I told my brain it was hollow and the first couple times I watched it revolve around all I saw was a concaved face. Then I stopped thinking about the hollowness and like “magic” a contoured, tan face appeared to change direction and revolve in front of me.

 

I find that I use the six Gestalt laws most concentrated whenever I play paintball. Without previous knowledge of their terms; Proximity, Similarity, Good Continuation, Connectedness, Common Fate (most definitely) and Pragnanz are what I’ve been using to hunt and eliminate my opponent in the woods for years. In the past I would hear the same argument over and over. It was that I had an unfair advantage over other players because my wardrobe more closely blended in with my surroundings – camouflage. I was tired of hearing the complaints and through a wager, I stripped off my outer layering and played the rest of the day in a white tee shirt.

My little experiment enforces what I recently learned about perception, at least as a visual stimulus. I discovered that by breaking up my outline, moving very slowly, and staying close to large objects I was almost as effective as with my camo. The greatest difference being only the distance my opponent would get before I eliminated them. Before, with the camo, they could almost step on me before I marked them whereas with the white shirt they would see me at about 25 feet. Still, this distance was well within my striking range. Inversely, by focusing on movement through the brush, finding outlines among the trees, and a bit of Pragnanz, I’d find opponents long before they knew I was there.

Just for fun take a look at these pictures taken of actual snipers. Try to use some of Gestalt’s laws to find them. It is an interesting exercise.

Gestalt Laws in action