Data and AI Thinking are Crucial Problem-solving Skills for the 21st Century

Once upon a time, the wealthiest were those with the most valuable resources. Now, it is data.

Data in the 21st century is like oil in the 18th century, an immensely valuable asset. It is like oil for those who see the fundamental value of data, learn to analyze it, and use it to improve decision-making processes, there will be enormous rewards for them in the future.

The process of decision-making is very time consuming. To resolve this issue artificial intelligence comes into the picture. In simple terms, artificial intelligence is a machine, a replica human brain that stores data, learns from the data, adapts, derives, and interprets insights out of complex data.

Artificial intelligence is no longer limited to only the IT industry, but it is significantly used in our day-to-day lives as well. For instance, to unlock our mobile phones we use facial recognition, we use Alexa and Siri as our digital voice assistant, or even booking a cab on Uber, we are using AI-enabled technology all the time without even realizing it. And the fun fact is Artificial Intelligence learns from historical data and updates itself. For example, Netflix uses AI, it collects the data about the movies or shows you have been watching and suggests similar content that suits your taste.

Artificial Intelligence is taking over the world, and the future holds endless opportunities. Gaining data and AI-oriented capabilities can help you become confident problem solvers.

Problem-solving skills are immensely powerful and can help in future endeavours.

Why Problem-Solving Skills Matter?

Srini Vemula, Founder, {igebra.ai}

● Gives You the Ability to Generate Creative Ideas: Thinking outside of the box is an important problem-solving skill. It provides new perspectives, imaginative and experimental solutions to all kinds of problems. It allows individuals to uncover innovative and progressive solutions to problems which often lead to better outcomes than had been expected originally.

● Improves Your Academic Performance: Problem-solving enhances the ability to judge well. It also develops grit, a trait that is routinely displayed in successful students. It gives students a deeper understanding of cause and effect relationships, they look for patterns, or make predictions. Problem-solving skills, then, boost reflective, critical thinking.

● Makes You a Better Performer: Solving problems is a critical part of our daily lives both as individuals and organizations. Developing and refining problem-solving skills through practice, training and learning can improve your ability to solve problems more effectively and over a period of time, you can address and resolve problems of greater complexity and difficulty.

● Boosts Your Career Opportunities: Having good problem-solving skills is an attribute liked by employers and it can leverage your career opportunities. Because it shows them that you have a range of other competencies such as imagination, logical thinking, creativity, resilience, lateral thinking, and determination.

● Makes You an Innovator: Problem-solving is not just about responding and fixing the problems that exist in the environment today. It is also about innovating, creating new things, and changing the environment to be more desirable. Having problem-solving skills will enable you to identify and exploit more opportunities in the environment and exert some level of control over the future.

● Make You Understand the World Better: Having problem-solving skills will help you understand the relationships and implement the improvements and changes required to compete and thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment.

Problem-Solving Framework

People who feel overwhelmed or hopeless usually run away from an issue at hand and won't even attempt to address the problem. But when given a clear comprehensive formula to solve problems, they will surely gain more confidence in their ability to give it a try. Here is the five-step process to solve a problem efficiently and effectively:

1. Identify and define the problem: The first step in solving any problem is to first identify it. It may sound obvious but often requires more thought. This stage requires analysis of the current situation, identification of the problem, evaluating why the problem is occurring. It also involves looking at any contributing factors that are directly influencing the problem and where they are coming from. Just defining the problem out loud can make a huge difference to those who are feeling stuck. Defining the problem will not only make one understand it more clearly themselves but they will be able to communicate it to others, which leads to the second step.

2. Develop possible solutions: The next step in solving a problem is to develop various possible solutions that could be the remedy for the issue defined. This step involves a lot of brainstorming to come up with potential solutions to the identified problem. Be creative and try to list all the possible ways to find a solution. At this stage don’t worry about the quality of the solution, even a silly answer or far-fetched idea is a potential solution. Hence, coming up with several potential interventions is the key to success in this stage.

3. Choose a solution: The next step is to go through all the possible solutions developed in the previous stage. You’ll now need to carefully analyze each solution and identify the positive and negative consequences of each potential solution. And after evaluating all the potential solutions, select the most appropriate one and eliminate the less desirable or unreasonable solutions. Having strong decision-making skills is essential at this stage.

4. Implementation of the solution: It’s now time to implement the solution chosen as planned and see what happens. There should be clearly defined benchmarks as well that will show whether the solution is working according to the plan or not.

5. Monitoring progress: After the implementation of the solution, progress must be continuously monitored to ensure the effectiveness of the solution. Evaluate how effective the solution is and if it doesn't work out, they can always return to step two to select and try a new potential solution.

How Data Thinking and AI Thinking Can Help Solve Problems:

● Data thinking helps you identify the problems: Data is highly quintessential for understanding and identifying the problem. Data thinking helps you in analyzing the current situation by studying the underlying trends, evaluating why the problem is occurring. It helps in defining the loopholes that need to be fixed.

● Data thinking helps you identify the possible solutions: Once the problem has been defined, you’ll need data to give you the insights needed to turn the problem around with as many potential solutions as possible. The more suitable potential solutions can be developed by studying the historical data, present data, and innovative solutions.

● Data thinking and AI thinking can help you predict the pros and cons of each solution: This part of the process involves thinking through the data, researching and analyzing the positive and negative impact of each potential solution for the complex problem.

● Data thinking and AI thinking can help you pick the best solution: The systems are given required data as input so that they learn automatically and give the best suitable solutions as output backed up with data to make the decision-making process more reliable. The problem solver selects and implements the most appropriate one and eliminates the less desirable or unreasonable solutions.

● Data thinking can help you execute the solution and observe the data on its performance: After the solution has been executed, progress must be continuously monitored to ensure the solution is effective. Here statistical, mathematical, and technological knowledge must be applied and leverage all of the data science tools to crunch the data and find every insight. And if the effectiveness isn’t meeting the pre-defined benchmarks, corrective measures have to be taken by doing more research and analysis.

Why Do Kids Need to Build These Skills?

Like adults, even kids face problems on a day-to-day basis. Whether it is a conflict over a toy, academic difficulties, or negative peer pressure, kids of all ages are constantly facing these rough challenges. Rather than becoming solution-oriented kids have digressed into becoming problem-oriented, and this needs to be changed immediately. Kids who learn how to solve problems at a young age are more curious, motivated and tend to appreciate lifelong learning. Here are a few more reasons why kids need to build these skills.

● Make them Future Ready: The future belongs to those who are curious and can think imaginatively especially since there are so many problems that society faces today that are new. If kids have good problem-solving skills they can identify and turn these problems into opportunities and succeed in the future.

● Boosts their Creativity: Usually, problems are solved either intuitively or systematically. Both ways require knowledge about historical data, logical reasoning, cognitive thinking to come up with creative solutions to solve a problem. Because the same old solution cannot be used for every given problem. Therefore, it boosts the creative thinking of kids.

● Makes them Innovative: Problem-solving skills help kids to develop the ability to consider a task or a problem in an innovative way. It is the process of using intuition to try and formulate new ideas. It can help kids to solve complex problems and find different, more interesting ways to approach various tasks.

● Builds Confidence: Problem-solving means making choices. When kids have data and ai oriented thinking they look at every challenge from a fresh perspective, it improves their ability to process information, take more calculated risks, and tackle problems on their own. This makes kids resilient, more confident not only as problem solvers but also it will make them happier and more independent individuals.

● Makes them Become a Problem Solver: Data and AI thinking to provide solutions to countless problems by interpreting data and finding answers. Thus, learning about data and AI can help kids develop problem-solving abilities.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence is fueled by data and it is already here, but it is transforming with every passing day. The future holds endless possibilities for these technologies, giving progressive opportunities for kids. Imbibing data and AI thinking in kids is essential for them to thrive in the future.

Problem-solving skills encompass all areas of human development be it social, emotional, creative, cognitive, or physical. The sooner kids build these skills, the better it is.

Author: Srini Vemula, Founder, {igebra.ai}