Chapter 7, Problem 1E

Program Description Answer

“Ask questions” is the first strategy to be used when a problem was given.

Hence, the correct option is “A”.

Explanation of Solution

Problem-solving strategy:

• It is an idea for solving a problem.
• Different type of strategies is used to solve the different type of problems.
• User can use a one or more strategy to solve a single problem.
• If the user uses many ways to solving problems, then user will determine which strategies they choose and which work good in many conditions.

Types of strategies in problem-solving:

There are three strategies are present in the problem solving:

• Ask questions:
  • This strategy usually asks questions about the problem or task, and identify the clear information and facts about the problem.
  • This strategy asks the questions such as “when”, “why”, and “where” until the problem or task is clearly and entirely understood.
  • Specify the parts of the task, which are unable to understanding the problems.
• Looks for familiar things:
  • Some problems have repeatedly happened in computing so it is useful for user identifying the familiar steps that will useful to solve the problem.
  • If the solutions are already existing for the given or same problem, then just repeat the given steps to solve the problem.
    • User needs not to determine the new steps to solve the given problem.
• Divide and conquer:
  • User can easily handle the problem by dividing the larger problems into smaller ones.
    • It means tasks are split into subtasks. Each subtask is split into sub-subtask if needed.
    • This strategy can be applied repeatedly until each subtask is determined.
      • Example for this strategy is quick sort and binary search algorithm.