Alan Schaaf Quotes

Every problem can be solved as long as they use common sense and apply the right research and techniques.

I get so engaged when I have a problem you cannot solve that I just cannot break away from what I am doing - I keep thinking and thinking and cannot stop.

I think both running and science reflect certain character traits. I have endurance, patience, and ambition. I'm willing to work hard toward a goal, to push myself and overcome limits. Running and science both let me express these traits.

For the future, I would suggest avoiding subjects of too vast a scale. It would be useful to make out a list of fundamental questions on the matter to be dealt with, and discuss only those.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

I do a project, and then I move on.

Thinking - in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature - helps us learn that we can become problem solvers.

No matter how complicated a problem is, it usually can be reduced to a simple, comprehensible form which is often the best solution.

Engineers love to optimize problems. Now I optimize logistical problems. I ask: 'What's the goal? What are our constraints? What is the optimal, elegant way to get to that goal within those constraints?' I break it down in terms of a data funnel: 'Where in the funnel are we inefficient?' That analytical background really helps.

The advice I tell students is to think about the big problems. I mean, work on anything you can work on where you can make progress. But always keep in mind the big problems.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

Well, some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve.

I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

If you don’t understand how problems came to be, how are you going to know how to fix them?

The future of education is individualized education.

I can solve every problem a year later.

I completely agree with feeling the need for or the benefits of being pushed and of being directed on a project and collaborating.

I'm a problem solver. I love people. The more complicated they are, the more I get into them, and I just want to understand what makes them tick.

The degree of intelligence that a man or a machine can show depends on many qualities of the ways that knowledge, goals, and problem-solving techniques are represented and put together, and not so much on the fine details.

I am a practical human being. I use everything I know on every job I do.

Think small. Don't pretend you know the answers. Experiment; get feedback. These are all the premises of 'Think Like a Freak,' really.

Personally, I'd like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

I would say my strengths are vision and strategy.

I'm an engineer by trade, and what engineers do is they go and build, and they don't think a lot about storytelling.

For a highly motivated learner, it's not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you're a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.