Use the new Principle of Interleaving for solving real life problems

How to apply the new Principle of Interleaving in solving real life problems

 

Principle of Interleaving

When you apply the principle of interleaving, you put layers of two or more than two types of things (tangible or intangible) one after the other. The relationship between two adjacent layers and all the layers as a whole must result in maximizing utility. 

Between two pieces of bread if we put a layer of tasty things such as a dash of marmalade, a bit of green vegetables and small pieces of meat, we get a result different from just two pieces of bread. A well-made sandwich is tastier than just two pieces of bread.

Here I should admit - I have never closely noticed what things exist inside a sandwich. I imagined a scenario to make a point.

Sandwich concept is the simplest example of interleaving. We may go on increasing the number of loaves in a burger to end up with a giant burger, but each two loaves invariably are separated by a layer of material suitable to be used between the two loaves. You just can’t put anything you like between two loaves to make a tasty burger.

Can you guess why I introduce here such an apparently mundane idea of interleaving and call it a basic principle of problem solving?

The question breaks up into two. It is not a simple question; it is a compound one.

Let us answer the second question first; why I call it a basic principle.

Principles of Cognitive importance enhancement and Abstraction — Concept Structures

All of us are familiar with the idea of interleaving; we encounter it every day. We use coir mattress which increases the utility value of a mattress by putting layers of hard coir and soft foam one after the other (tangible). We recharge our energies by interleaving a hard week of work with a refreshing end of the week trip (intangible). We take care to decide on the items to be served after each item in a multi-course dinner to our important guest. 

You can’t just sequence the serving of food items haphazardly, though technically all food items follow the same path to the same destination. We need to maximize the satisfaction of eating; that is the goal here.

We use the idea of interleaving in lots of situations without explicitly acknowledging that the key idea used is in fact interleaving. By this approach, though we may go on to become an expert in making better and better sandwiches, we may not be able to use the idea of interleaving elsewhere in some other complex problem situation.

As soon as we become aware that we are using an idea called interleaving, the next step is to increase its importance further by naming it as Principle of Interleaving. It then becomes an abstract principle and gains significant importance in your mind as a useful concept that you can use later for solving different kinds of problems.

In other words, by calling it as a principle you help to increase the cognitive importance of the simple taken-for-granted idea of interleaving in your mind.

Your mind is a very powerful entity and you do everything through your mind.

It is our job to think about our mind and take proper care of it. We need to actively consider how to make it happy, how to make it more effective in problem solving and so on. 

When you increase cognitive importance of a useful idea, your belief in its usefulness increases and you become prepared to apply the idea later with more confidence. You add one more resource in your Problem Solving Armory (or PSA in short; we will talk about PSA later). All the basic problem solving principles ingrained in your mind are resources to be used for solving real life problems in different situations. As these are abstract principles it is possible to use these principles in widely varying problem situations. If you knew only about how to use interleaving in preparing burgers, the principle won’t have been so effective. You increase the effectiveness of the principle by abstracting the essence of the idea out of the burger preparation activities. This is what we call the Principle of Abstraction.

I am sure abstraction will be referred to again — it is so basic and important for learning and problem solving. The following shows the concept relationships.

 

Principle of Interleaving

Here the abstract principle of interleaving exists on its own in your mind. In making the burgers you apply the principle in a particular way and in designing the sequence of seminar sessions in another way; but still you do use the same principle of interleaving. That is why the box Interleaving is placed above the four other boxes. Interleaving is an abstract concept that you can apply in not only four but many more situations with suitable modifications.

To summarize, you use abstraction and suitable naming to attach importance to an idea and convert it to a part of your problem solving armory resources.

Without cognitive importance, a piece of knowledge has little usefulness to your mind and consequently to your problem solving activities.

You may ask, what does the above figure represent? What is its name? We may call it as:

The concept structure of principle of interleaving.

By concept structure we mean a set of concepts related together in a structured form. Here the abstract interleaving concept at the first level is suitably modified and applied in the four areas at the second level. The first level concept is more abstract whereas the second level concepts (still interleaving concepts but a little modified for each activity area) are more specific to the activity area.

I believe, all knowledge in our mind reside in the form concept structures. Cleaner and richer the structures, more powerful are the use of the knowledge.

Unordered unrelated unstructured chaotic pieces of knowledge have little usefulness and are a burden to our mind.

We will talk about concept structures again.

Coming back to the two part question, we will take up the answering of the first question now (are we moving randomly?). Why do I talk about interleaving at all?

My intention is not very sinister. I only wanted to hint that shortly (next session at the earliest) we will leave this principled world and enter into a different area of discussion on real life problem solving. Later, when I don’t know now, we will again return to the basic principles of problem solving. That will be Principle of Interleaving at work.

Hopefully this will make these sessions a little less boring (are they really boring?).

Just at the point of leaving today I would like to present you a clutch of cute little problems again.

Problem 1: Choice of a murderer

A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns, and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in 3 years. Which room is safest for him?

Problem 2: What was the ancient invention?

Name an ancient invention still in use in most parts of the world today that allows people to see through walls.

Problem 3: Round manhole covers

Why is it better to have round manhole covers than square ones? Have you ever seen any square manhole covers? There may be more than one reason, think of all the reasons. Use principle of exhaustivity.


Read my other blogs on Innovative idea generation and its basic principles and Get smart, get innovative usingTRIZ