In what became 5th most-read new post on LessWrong in 2012, Morendil told us about a study widely cited in its field... except that source cited, which isn't online and is really difficult to get, makes a different claim — and turns out to not even be the original research, but a PowerPoint presentation given ten years after the original study was published!
Fortunately, the original study turns out to be freely available online, for all to read; Morendil's post has a link. The post also tells us the author and the year of publication. But that's all: Morendil didn't provide a list of references; he showed how the presentation is usually cited, but didn't give a full citation for the original study.
The link is broken now. The Wayback machine doesn't have a copy. The address doesn't give hints about the study's title. I haven't been able to find anything on Google Scholar with author, year, and likely keywords.
So how did you find it this time? I'm always curious about this phenomenon where person A goes "I can't do it!", person B says "there is a solution", and person A then goes "ah!"
BTW, if you hate Scribd as much as I do, once you know what issue of the HP journal it's in, you can easily find the official HP archives and download the PDF at http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1989-04.pdf (Scribd shows up as the main hit just because they did OCR on their copy of the PDF, but where did their uploader get it, one should wonder upon seeing it.)
Person B saying "there is a solution" provides person A with useful information.
Little details, such as the speed at which another person finds the solution (and the fact that they found it at all) gives clues as to what type of problem it is - divergent or convergent thinking, overall hardness, etc.
The fact that a specific person x was able to find the solution narrows the space to "things that person x would be good at solving".
Finally, the resources which another person put into finding the solution provide a rough upper bound to ho... (read more)
Yes, I noticed this back when I was doing math competitions: it was often much easier for me to find a solution to a problem if someone told me that they had found a solution, especially if they had found it quickly. The obvious corollary is that you should first approach problems as if you knew someone who had found a solution quickly, but I never successfully internalized this.
2Benya
Gurer'f n qverpg dhbgr sebz gur negvpyr va Zberaqvy'f cbfg. (Rot'ed in case someone else feels like trying themselves.)
In what became 5th most-read new post on LessWrong in 2012, Morendil told us about a study widely cited in its field... except that source cited, which isn't online and is really difficult to get, makes a different claim — and turns out to not even be the original research, but a PowerPoint presentation given ten years after the original study was published!
Fortunately, the original study turns out to be freely available online, for all to read; Morendil's post has a link. The post also tells us the author and the year of publication. But that's all: Morendil didn't provide a list of references; he showed how the presentation is usually cited, but didn't give a full citation for the original study.
The link is broken now. The Wayback machine doesn't have a copy. The address doesn't give hints about the study's title. I haven't been able to find anything on Google Scholar with author, year, and likely keywords.
I rest my case.