What I’m Reading: ‘The Power of Unsolvable Problems’

I recently read a Wall Street Journal article, “The Power of Unsolvable Problems,” describing a course for freshman engineering majors at Northwestern University. By unsolvable, they really mean problems that may have multiple solutions or may not be solvable within given constraints, and not something the traditional freshman student has experienced. Everyone, however, is going to experience an “unsolvable problem” at some point in their professional and personal lives.

I shared the article with some faculty members, employers, and members of our advisory board, and everyone was in agreement: Attempt to solve the unsolvable with gusto. You can pick up the few missing facts and equations that get left out later, and students will probably forget them anyway. But they will learn how to learn — and learn how to learn from failure. A good failure can open another path to something even better.

Employers look for people who can handle situations when things are not going right. Most faculty members have probably forgotten that much of our Ph.D. work was a failure. We just published the 10 percent that worked.

Fail early and fail often; just don’t fail the course.