Improving Problem Solving Skills With Riddles

Everyone loves riddles. But what makes a good brain teaser or puzzle? A riddle uses language to puzzle the reader by providing an enigma or conundrum. Good riddles come in various categories like funny, kids, difficult, easy, logic, math, tricky, what am I riddles, and many others.

Funny riddles will definitely make you think and possibly make you laugh as well. These kind of riddles provide a good form of entertainment during family gatherings and outings.

Kids riddles are generally easy and are well-suited to be solved by children. Riddles in the form of puzzles and brain teasers can aid in the development of problem solving skills, especially in young children.

Difficult riddles require a lot of brain power, reasoning and comprehension. These hard riddles can drive you a little crazy at times, but they sure will force you to think out of the box.

Easy riddles require less thought and time to complete and it's a fun way to kill time. Young children will generally like easy riddles. These riddles are a good way to keep kids occupied and have fun at the same time.

Math puzzles are based on math concepts and will provide good entertainment to "left-brained" people who are said to be more logical analytical and objective.

Logic riddles are puzzles derived from the mathematics field of deduction. You will not need to think out of the box for such riddles and they can be solved by using pure logic. Have you heard of Einstein's 5 houses brain teaser? Rumor has it that Einstein made up this impossibly difficult riddle when he was just a kid. You will need to have a lot of patience to think it through.

Tricky riddles can be both crafty and deceptive. They often use a play on words and you can be fooled if you are not careful enough.

What am I riddles require you to identify what is being described by the riddle. These riddles normally trick you with a play on words.

Solving riddles is a wonderful exercise for nearly any age group. For children, it helps to develop their problem solving skills, and improves their ability to do deductive reasoning. For the elderly, it makes them think about things very deeply, and help to keep their minds sharp. For the rest of us, riddles are a great way to kill time, have fun, keep our minds sharp and train ourselves to think out of the box.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Improving-Problem-Solving-Skills-With-Riddles&id=9613929

Four Fun And Quick Brain Teasers To Test Your Cognitive Skills...And Your Cognitive Biases

If you have a few minutes, please try these brain teasers.

First please consider Linda, a 31-year-old woman, single and bright. When she was a student, in high school and in college too, she was deeply involved in social justice issues, and also participated in environmental protests.

Which is more probable about Linda's occupation today?

a) Linda works as a TV reporter;

b) Linda is a bank teller;

c) Linda is a bank teller, and she's very active in the environmental movement.

Quick, what's your answer?

a) or b) or c)?And, in what precise order?.

Here's the solution:

First, ignore how you ranked a), as it is irrelevant to this mind game.

The key is this: If you ranked c) as more probable than b), you are wrong...and in very good company.

That's what most people tend to answer the first time they face this particular brain teaser, and it reflects a very pervasive cognitive bias, technically called a "conjunction fallacy."

Statistically speaking, it is more probable that Linda is a bank teller, which is a whole category, that she is both a bank teller AND also active in the environmental movement, which is a subset of the whole category of all bank tellers.

Correct?

Here you are a few more fun and quick brain teasers to exercise your mind.

Try to GUESS the answers to the questions below based on your own approach.

The goal is not to find out (or Google) the right answer, but to identify the logical approach that will help "guesstimate" an appropriate range, say + or - 30% of the actual answer, and then to complete the calculations (ideally mentally, but you can also take notes) to provide an estimate.

Ready. Set. Go!

Brain teaser questions:

1) How many times heavier than a mouse is an elephant?.

2) How many firefighters are there in San Francisco?.

3) How many trees are there in NYC's Central Park?

Again, the key here is to exercise your brain and cognitive skills, to plan the steps towards the solution, and then to do the mental calculations to find a reasonable range. The goal is not to find the precise correct answer.

Here are the solutions.

1) Around 150,000. An average elephant weighs 4,000 kg on average; an average mouse 25 grams.

2) Around 350 firefighters on duty on any given day, out of a pool of 1700 firefighting overall staff.

3) There are over 26,000 trees (of approximately 175 species) in the Park.

How close did you come?

http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/self-help/four-fun-and-quick-brain-teasers-to-test-your-cognitive-skillsand-your-cognitive-biases.html