Innovation and problem solving 2 29-8-2014

How were the problem of railways routes and number of roses solved using properties of a
graph?
Why did we use this roundabout way to solve our problems?
Not only it aided visualization, but also we could use standard results from the graph domain
to arrive at our solutions instead of doing routine calculations.

Domain mapping
Through the powerful domain mapping concept, problem solving resources
found effective in one domain can be abstracted into the higher layer of Problem Solving
discipline and then mapped to analogous problems in many other domains.

Problem Solving

Graph theory

Handshakes

Before encountering the handshakes problem, the abstracted problem solving

capabilities of Graph theoretic domain already existed in the Problem solving
layer of discipline. While modelling the handshakes problem, similarity to the graph
was identified and the problem model was mapped onto the graph theoretic domain.
Analysis and solution was then obtained in this domain and then through the Problem
Solving layer, the result was passed back to the Handshakes problem domain. This is

domain mapping.
Instead of Handshakes, the problem domain could very well have
involved relationships between a group of people, road connectivity
between cities or a telecom network.
Problem 2.1
A group of students stood in rows with equal number of students in each
row. If number of students in each row were increased by one, the number
of rows decreased by 2 whereas if the number of students in each row were
decreased by 1, the number of rows increased by 3. What was the total
number of students?
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If you use visualization through domain mapping and use deductive reasoning, the
problem solution may be reached much quicker. When we mention domain mapping,
the mapped to domain may just be another branch of mathematics itself.

Problem 2.2
Which one between 854857 and 855856 is larger and why? Any other
method?
Use of the most basic concepts in a domain sometimes produces the
most elegant solution. Here also domain mapping helps you to visualize
how the problem elements behave.

Problem 2.3
In a transmission network model, the transmission devices were
represented along with their route connections (device id, port id all given).
Question: what is the shortest route between two given points in the
network? How can you find it?
It is a real hard problem unless we map the transmission network as a graph
and use standard graph theoretic results.

Every subject domain has its own problem solving resources

Each of the individual subject domains, Maths to Physiology to Marketing
Management, has their own problem solving mechanisms that are specific to the
domains and practitioners of such domains are not usually interested to use problem
solving resources of other domains. This has resulted in problem solving techniques,
methods and concepts to remain fragmented and locked into individual parent
domain islands.
The only exception in this case is Mathematics which contributed most to problem
solving of other subject domains. In this sense Mathematics is somewhat similar to
Problem Solving as a standalone overlay subject.

Problem solving is an overlay standalone subject drawing

resources from suitable sources and serving all domains
Problem Solving is a discipline that includes a set of approaches and ways to
apply suitable rules, techniques, methods and methodologies for solving ANY problem
efficiently and systematically and NOT in a random manner.

A Problem Solver practices the art and science of problem solving, learns on
every opportunity and guides others to solve problems and to learn problem solving.
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Problem solving is domain independent and is applicable to any

domain.
Problem solving is essentially multidisciplinary in terms of the source of
PSA resources.

Problem solving is thus an overlay subject to some extent akin to

Mathematics from its multi-domain applicability aspect, but differs from Mathematics
in its holistic real world applicability whereas much of Mathematics may not have any
identifiable real world attachment.

Presently Problem Solving concepts, resources and practices are

fragmented and spread all over the human knowledge domain. Combining these into
a single framework and subject has the great advantage of furtherance of its scope,
applicability, learning and use.
By its nature Problem Solving is an open-ended extensible discipline
that prescribes the use of an ever expanding set of problem solving armoury

(PSA) resources to solve any problem efficiently and with satisfaction to the
concerned entities.

Problem Solving Armoury Resources

This is a collection of abstract principles, contributing sources, problem solving
techniques, tools, methodologies and approaches that are used suitably by the
Decision Analyst or the Problem Solver to recommend solution to any problem. It is
apparent that no single person can solve all the types of problems that may arise
anywhere any time. To get over this bottleneck a powerful set of techniques exist:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Ask the expert

Find the trouble-shooter
Find the key person
Find the mentor

There are domain proprietary problem solving mechanisms or resources

that are commonly used in the same domain.
While practising the discipline of general Problem Solving, the problem solver always
attempts to identify the powerful domain proprietary problem solving mechanisms
that can be abstracted and absorbed as a part of the generic higher layer of problem
solving discipline for later application to problems in any other domain.

Domain modelling
A domain model represents a structure of inter-related concepts in a domain of
knowledge, such as Physics or Telecommunication. While physics and telecom both
are formal subjects, a domain can very well be defined for say, handshakes or
matchsticks or for that matter railway routes in a country. Such modelling becomes
necessary to study and solve problems in such domains, as structuring and relating the
concepts in a domain makes analysis of any problem possible and convenient. This
activity is called domain modelling and is a great way to approach very complex
problems in a domain.
Additionally, when a domain is well-structured into a clean model, memory load is
reduced and learning and knowledge transmission are greatly enhanced.
As an example, a very brief telcom domain model can be informally described as:
1. At the outermost boundary of telecom domain are the people and devices that
communicate with each other all across the globe or in a city. These primary
level entities generate the telecom traffic.
2. For communication between two primary level telecom entities to happen,
each such entity must be connected to a telecom network physically near to it.
3. These small local telecom networks in turn are connected and integrated into
larger national networks which again are connected together to form a
worldwide network so that any device or entity connected to a local network
can communicate with any other device or entity anywhere on the globe. The
local networks and other higher layer networks all have resource and revenue
sharing mechanism for such a communication to be feasible from business
point of view.
4. Technologically, a communicating entity is connected to a single active telecom
node in its local network which enables the entity to communicate. But an
active node must be able to pass the traffic generated by the communicating
entity to another active node in a telecom network that is nearer to the
destination communicating entity. Through transmission links an active node
in a telecom network is connected to another traffic generating or absorbing
active node. These transmission links together with the connected traffic
generating and absorbing active nodes form the overall telecom network.
This is, starting at the top concept level. Now level by level the concepts of how a
communicating entity actually communicates with an active node or how an active node
handles the traffic from all such entities and routes a particular communication towards
a particular destination or how a transmission link works can all be expanded and linked
in a well-formed structure so that one can understand concepts from its most abstract
to its most detailed form gradually and easily and according to need. (Use of graph and
network diagram eases visualization).
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Formation of such a model eases analysis and solution of any problem in such a domain.
Technological and basic science domains excluding life sciences are inherently
structured and are generally amenable to domain modelling.
Though Life sciences are inherently unstructured, it is possible to model part of such a
domain for solving a specific problem.
For the problem solver, domain modelling is an invaluable approach and ability.
Though domain mapping is unusual and rare, it can be extensively used to a great
advantage.
Again, even though domain modelling is not usually done, this approach can greatly
helps to form enriched Problem models.
Problem modelling is a subset of domain modelling.

MCDM and AHP

MCDM is the short form of multi-criteria decision making and AHP is the leading
MCDM method standing for Analytic Hierarchic Process. MCDM forms a large class of
problems which includes amongst others:

Choice

R&D Project Selection

Selection of Project leader

Choosing the Lunar Lander Propulsion System

R&D decisions on portfolio management

Design concept selection

Project management, specially Contractor selection

Customer requirement structuring

Defense procurement

Prioritization

Prioritization of R&D projects

Environmental Impact Evaluations

Project Risk Assessment and evaluation

Prioritization of barriers and barrier removal impact assessment

Resource Allocation

Budget Allocation

Tactical R&D Project Evaluation and Funding

Benchmarking

Quality evaluation
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Policy formulation

Strategic Planning

Quite frequently in our regular lives, personal or work, we face problems in which we
have to select one thing out of a few based only on our judgment and practical
common sense. As you perhaps know, both of these qualities are very subjective and
unreliable in general.
In such cases we do not have any means to weigh, or measure its length or such
characteristics to decide which one is our choice. What will you do when you have to
choose between three colleges for after school studies? Or your mobile phone
drops and its display breaks so badly that its repair cost is estimated to be comparable
to the cost of a new mobile. You then face your father with an approximate budget for
a new phone. After he gives you the money the job of choosing a suitable phone still
remains to be done.
All of us go about solving such problems in our own way which we call here instinctive
random ways. For small decisions or personal life problems that is ok, but not for
costly corporate or national level decisions where much is at stake. To deal with
such problems more systematically and scientifically, a new class of advanced
evaluation methods came up amongst which a few leading ones are,
1. AHP
2. TOPSIS, and
3. ELECTRE
Over the years AHP became the most popular and heavily used because of its ease of
use and some amount of mathematical underpinnings. Most people like mathematics,
or support of mathematics. AHP was created during the 1970s by Prof. Thomas L Saaty,
originally a mathematician but later a management scientist.
Problem 2.4. How do you place the three lines drawn on the board
regarding their relative length? How can you say one line is larger or smaller
than another line by how many times? How would you go about it?
In this case, you may measure the length of the lines and form their ratios
rank them according to their length. Length is the comparison criterion
here. But you can do this without much hassle if the lines are all straight
lines.
What if the lines drawn are not straight but are all highly convoluted curved
lines? Even then you can do it carefully placing pieces of thread on the lines
and later measure the lengths of the threads.

Without going through this measurement activity, you may get the lengthwise ranks of the three lines by using your estimating capability and the
MCDM method of AHP.
How many criteria do we have here? This is a single criterion problem for
ranking three objects. The single criterion is the length of the objects.
Problem 2.5. Rank the distances from your classroom here to the Victoria
Memorial, Howrah Station and Dakshinswar temple. Assume you are in
Kolkata.
Here measurement by meter scale is not possible. Estimation and AHP may
be easier.

Task: You can test and increase your length estimation capability,
which is one of the important abilities of a problem solver, by repeatedly
doing this exercise and checking the results from say, Google maps.
Problem 2.6. Rank three round objects of different sizes according to their
size. How would you approach the problem?
Here also with the more involved process of liquid displacement you may
actually measure the volumes of the objects and rank them. If you do not
want to go through this hassle you may again use your size estimation
capability and use the method of AHP.
How many criteria do we have here? This again is a single criterion problem
of ranking three objects. The single criterion is the size of the objects.
Problem 2.7. You have moved to a large new house where your parents
have given you the option to choose one from three rooms as your room.
How would you choose your room? What would be the criteria on which
you would evaluate the rooms, rank them and finally choose the top ranked
alternative?
You might like to see whether the room has an attached bath, how big is the
room, whether it gets good sunlight during the daytime, or how
conveniently you can place your bed, table and other things in the room.
These may be the criteria for choosing the room or you may like to have
your own different set of criteria. Whatever you do, most of these criteria
are not measurable quantities but have to be estimated by judgment.
This now is a truly multi-criteria decision making problem.

Task: Identify different credible alternative sets of criteria for

evaluation of the rooms.

Problem 2.8. Your mobile phone got broken when accidentally dropped
and now you have to choose a new phone. How would you tell the budget
for the new phone purchase to your father, and later when he releases the
money (might be less than what you wanted), how will you go about
choosing first, from where to purchase the mobile and which mobile to
purchase?
This is a four step process (budget, negotiate for funds, choose shop, choose
model to purchase) in which a number of steps involve multi-criteria
decision making.

Task: Expand the job into choices, actions, consequences and criteria.
Rule: In any multi-criteria decision problem, the first step is to form
the problem definition, identify the choices and then to select the
criteria to be used for evaluation of the choices.

Recommendation: If you are in doubt about what criteria to select,

adopt the safe method of choosing a larger set of criteria. While going
through the method, the unimportant criteria would automatically be
weeded out.

Example: Evaluating the worth of a would-be groom.

Basic processes in AHP: Problem 2.6

Step 1: Selection of criteria: this may be the most crucial step in the whole
evaluation process and may be quite complex as a criterion may have its subcriteria also. At the end of this step we get the whole hierarchic tree starting at
the top with the 1st level criteria and ending at the bottom with the last level subcriteria.
Step 2: Assigning relative weights to the criteria at each level: At this step
AHP introduces the concept that, humanly it is more natural to express in
descriptive terms the relative strength of one criterion with respect to another. At
the core of AHP lies the action of pair-wise comparison of criteria rather than
comparison of all criteria together.
So this judgmental assignment of relative weights is split into two parts:

Pair-wise comparison of all possible pairs of the set of criteria being

evaluated. At the first step, only the 1st level criteria are evaluated.
For each pair-wise comparison, one criterion is expressed as how many
times stronger it is in comparison to the other. This selection of
descriptive term is standardized from a pre-defined set and is
immediately transformed into an equivalent number corresponding to
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the comparison term selected. The table below states the descriptive
comparative terms between two criteria and their equivalent numerical
values.
Intensity of Importance

Definition

1
2
3

Equal Importance
Weak or slight
Moderate importance

4
5

Moderate plus
Strong importance

6
7

Strong plus
Very strong importance

8
9

Very, very strong

Extreme importance

Explanation
Two activities contribute equally to the objective
Experience and judgement slightly favour one
activity over another
Experience and judgement strongly favour one
activity over another
An activity is favoured very strongly over
another; its dominance demonstrated in practice

If activity i has one of the Reciprocals of above

non-zero numbers
assigned to it when
compared with activity j,
then j has the reciprocal
value when compared with i
1.11.9

If the activities are very close

The evidence favouring one activity over another

is of the highest possible order of affirmation
A reasonable assumption

May be difficult to assign the best value but

when compared with other contrasting activities
the size of the small numbers would not be too
noticeable, yet they can still indicate the
relative importance of the activities.

We have three round objects here, the smallest glass marble, the lemon and the
largest plastic ball. To do the pair-wise comparison of sizes of these three objects
according to the two steps above, a comparison matrix is used. In our case the
following is a representative comparison matrix.
Comparison matrix for Marble, Lemon and the Ball with respect to criterion of
Size:

Ball
Lemon
Marble

Ball
1/1
1/4
1/8

Lemon
4/1
1/1
1/3

Marble
8/1
3/1
1/1

The cells on the diagonal of the matrix would always be fraction 1/1 as each represents
a comparison of a choice with itself. Furthermore, if the cell on the second column of
the first row has the value 4/1, the corresponding reverse comparison cell on the first
column of second row will have the reverse value, that is . This will be true for all
cells. This means, you have to fill up one half of the comparison matrix by using your
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judgments. The other half automatically follows as the inverse. Lastly, the value 4/1
means the ball is perceived to be Moderate plus times larger than the Lemon which
translates to when the reverse comparison is made.
Each of the cell values should be a proper fraction at this stage.
Step 2.1: Thus the first sub-step of Step 2 is to form the desired Comparison matrix.
In our case, as the criterion is only one, we do not need to evaluate the relative
weights of the set of criteria. Instead, we directly evaluate the relative weights of the
alternatives or choices with respect to our single criterion. The concept is same only
the application of the concept is on the evaluation of the choices rather than
evaluation of the criteria and then evaluation of the choices.
In a real-life problem we may need to form many such comparison matrices and
evaluate each of those.
Step 2.2: At this step it is routine mathematical calculation to find the Eigenvector of
the Comparison matrix. To find this new thing,

sum up each row

sum up the values of these row sums
form the ratio of each row sum to the sum of row sums.

For each row we would get one weighted value. This is the eigenvector of the matrix.
Eigenvector of Comparison matrix:
Ball
Lemon
Marble

Ball

Lemon

Marble

Row sums

Eigen vector

1.00
0.25
0.13
1.38

4.00
1.00
0.33
5.33

8.00
3.00
1.00
12.00

13.00
4.25
1.46
18.71

0.69
0.23
0.08

As per Prof. Saaty, the Principal Eigenvector of the Comparison Matrix represents
the relative weights of the compared entities (in our case, the round objects) with
respect to the comparison criterion or objective (in our case, size). To find the
Principal Eigenvector, you need to form the square of the matrix, calculate its
eigenvector and compare it with the eigenvector that you got in the previous step.
You have to continue this process till the value of eigenvector does not change. That
will be your principal eigenvector.
First square of Comparison matrix and its eigenvector

Ball
Lemon
Marble

Ball

Lemon

Marble

Row sums

Eigen vector

3.00
0.88
0.33
4.21

10.67
3.00
1.17
14.83

28.00
8.00
3.00
39.00

41.67
11.88
4.50
58.04

0.72
0.20
0.08

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We find that the eigenvector has changed its values. So we have to carry out the
process of squaring this squared matrix and finding its eigenvector again to see
whether the new eigenvector has changed again.

Second square of Comparison matrix and its eigenvector

Ball
Lemon
Marble

Ball

Lemon

Marble

Row sums

Eigen vector

27.67
7.92
3.02
38.60

96.67
27.67
10.56
134.89

253.33
72.50
27.67
353.50

377.67
108.08
41.24
526.99

0.72
0.21
0.08

As there is still some change, we will carry out the squaring again third time.
Third square of Comparison matrix and its eigenvector

Ball
Lemon
Marble

Ball

Lemon

Marble

Row sums

Eigen vector

2296.00
657.07
250.72
3203.78

8022.96
2296.00
876.09
11195.05

21026.11
6017.22
2296.00
29339.33

31345.07
8970.29
3422.81
43738.17

0.72
0.21
0.08

At last in this third stage we find the value of the eigenvector stabilizing and thus these
are the relative sizes of the three round objects.
Though it seems that a lot of calculation is involved in this method, the calculation can
easily be made with the help of spreadsheet functions. The difficulty of this method is
not in calculation but in carrying out proper analysis to form the criteria hierarchy and
then forming the judgment matrices. Subsequent calculations are straightforward and
quite mechanical.
The summation of the final weights must always be 1. Notice that here the sum of the
weights is not 1. This has arisen because of rounding to two digits. The three sets of
values of the last three stages with three digits after the decimal places are,
Eigen vector
0.718
0.205
0.078

Eigen vector
0.717
0.205
0.078
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Eigen vector
0.717
0.205
0.078

For all practical purposes even the eigenvector value at the first matrix squared phase
also can be accepted. To know how many times one value is with respect to another,
the ratio of corresponding weights is to be calculated. For example, the ball to the
marble size ratio is: 0.717/0.078 = 9.19. Originally we judged the paired ratio as 8.00.
When relationships between all the objects are considered through the method, the
proper ratio is returned.
This is the simplest example of applying AHP. It has many rich features for dealing
with large complex problems.

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