Talk:Thinking outside the box/Archives/2013

John Adair

"The origins of the phrase "thinking outside the box" are obscure; but it was popularized in part because of a nine-dot puzzle, which John Adair claims to have introduced in 1969."

Something ain't right.

• Onely, the linked article says John Adair died in 1840.
• Twoly, I have a book from 1960 that mentions the puzzle, with pictures and everything. Children's Encyclopedia, vol. 6, p. 258. Published by the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of RSFSR. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.32.149.92 (talk) 05:37, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

"It has become such a cliche and so abused that when people use the term, it is clear that they cannot think outside the box - they are rooted within it. Thus it now tends to mean the opposite of the original concept. (Dwgrattan (talk) 13:57, 29 August 2011 (UTC))

outside-the-box vs. out-of-the-box

Searching which version is correct, it seems that "thinking out-of-the-box" is more popular (or correct?) than "thinking outside-the-box". Additionally the link at the end to Oxford University Press also defines "out-of-the-box" instead of "outside-the-box". Shouldn't that be mentioned in the article? Or is it maybe an American vs. British problem? (I'm not a native speaker.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.113.121.184 (talk) 08:12, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Yea it still seems to be "thinking outside the square" in Australia.

The 9 dots problems

It deserves its own article, its not the same than the "thinking outside the box" phrase. Undead Herle King 17:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

It is interesting how things translate in various cultures or various times, I am not sure which. When I first encountered this problem in the 1950's (UK, as part of an aptitude test for college) the expression was "thinking beyond the dots". Then in the seventies (New Zealand, IBM management courses) it was "Thinking outside of the square". When it became known as a box I do not know - because it is not one.

Strange phrasing in section on nine-dots puzzle

According to Kihn, consultants of the 1970s and 1980s tried to make their prospective clients feel inadequate by presenting them with the puzzle...

"Feel inadequate?" I'm not sure that's a really great way to get customers, and I'm sure that making prospective customers feel "inadequate" was hardly the point of giving them the puzzle. Is there a better way to phrase this? Thanks, Sillstaw 04:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I changed it to 'inferior' —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.157.106.115 (talk) 09:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC).

Cool! A page about me, oh, wait...no its not :( Think outside the box 12:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent article sourcing for a topic that must be difficult to source.

Great job on this. I have been marking several of the Clichés articles as unreferenced and expected to do the same on this. Boy was I surprised at how good this looks. Kudos to everyone who shapped it up. Slavlin 19:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler

I don't think the solution to the "box problem" should be displayed on the same page as the problem itself.

spoiler, concept, and buzzword?

1. agreed about the spoiler problem. it's not fair to give away the solution unless the reader explicitly requests it.

2. the basic lessons of the puzzle are not explicitly stated and should be:

   A.  don't infer rules that are NOT part of the problem statement.  

   B.  don't ignore rules that ARE part of the problem statement.  

   (that is, you cannot solve the problem by inferring a requirement 
    to stay inside the pereived "box", however, you also cannot solve 
    the problem by lifting your pencil.) 

i think it's fine to discuss the concepts in the abstract in the main article as long as the solution is not given.

3. in a note the word "buzzword" is used incorrectly. "think outsed the box" is a phrase. a buzzword is a word. --ef —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.80.214.27 (talk) 13:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Preserving text removed from main article

As shown in the example in the left, the outside the box problem is part of a trademark connected to Evergreen Team Conceptslogo. Evergreen Team Concepts is a training and consulting company that claims to build teams outside the box.

I removed this text from the article; it struck me as spammy. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The first appearance of the phrase is not obscure to people that worked in the Disney organization in the 1950s and 1960s. The nine dot puzzle was used in training sessions within the company. Each dot has a meaning and the two points outside of the box were labeled as "The Vision" and "The Method". After Walt Disney's death in 1966, everyone would ask, "How did Walt think?" Mike Vance, then Dean of Disney University would explain the nine dot puzzle and how you had to Think Outside of the Box to solve it, as how Walt Disney's thought process always worked. This term became common in the Disney organization from then on. Upon leaving Disney in the late 1970s, international speaker Mike Vance would talk extensively about the nine dot puzzle and how Walt Disney would "Think Outside The Box" in all of his speeches and seminars. Mike was encouraged to write a book about thinking outside the box, which he did in 1995. There is no doubt that the thousands of speeches that Mike gave in the 1980s and 1990s popularized the term "Thinking Outside the Box". Mike is so lined to that phrase that when he worked with Taco Bell on a new commercial they came up with the slogan "Think Outside the Bun" and it stuck. Mike Vance is considered the Dean of Creative Thinking. http://www.creativethinkingassoc.com

This text might actually shed light on the origins of the catchphrase. The reference cited, though, is to a consultancy business. The website's text does not well substantiate the full claims being made here. I have reworded and substantially shortened the text. Puffery claims like "Mike Vance is considered the Dean of Creative Thinking" don't really belong, nor do conspicuous external links to consulting businesses. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:27, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

9 eggs vs 9 dots

Although I'm impressed by the depth of an article that is effectively about a cliché, it does have one major drawback in the inclusion of the 9 eggs (Christopher Columbus Egg's puzzle) puzzle. Although the graphic definitely does suggest the nine dots puzzle, the text that accompanies the graphic is as follows.

The famous trick-chicken, Americus Vespucius, after whom our great country was named, showed a clever puzzle wherein you are asked to lay nine eggs so as to form the greatest possible number of rows of three-in-line. King Puzzlepate has only succeeded in getting eight rows, as shown in the picture, but Tommy says a smart chicken can do better than that!
Can you?

The solution to the Christopher Columbus egg puzzle

The article as it stands states:
Envisioning the target dots of the puzzle as eggs makes it clear that they have area and are not infinitesimally small points, or that the strokes that connect them have width. Either of these features allows a three-line solution (near-parallel lines that meet far away from the nine points) or even a one-line solution (using a line wide enough to touch all nine points).

Which of course is absurd, as a line is a one dimensional item (has no width) and the concept is to go through the centre of the eggs (the points have no area).

The puzzle can be used to illustrate lateral thought (which there is an excellent article on Uncyclopedia), but only by showing that the solution is on this page. It doesn't really illustrate "out of the box" as the appropriate solution is to bring elements within the "box".

PuppyOnTheRadio (talk) 06:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. So what changes would you suggest to the article? DreamGuy (talk) 13:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

For the following paragraphs -

The nine dots puzzle is much older than the slogan. It appears in Sam Loyd's 1914 Cyclopedia of Puzzles.<ref>Sam Loyd, ''Cyclopedia of Puzzles''. (The Lamb Publishing Company, 1914)</ref> In the 1951 compilation The Puzzle-Mine: Puzzles Collected from the Works of the Late Henry Ernest Dudeney, the puzzle is attributed to Dudeney himself.<ref>J. Travers, ''The Puzzle-Mine: Puzzles Collected from the Works of the Late Henry Ernest Dudeney''. (Thos. Nelson, 1951)</ref>

Sam Loyd's original formulation of the puzzle<ref>[http://www.mathpuzzle.com/loyd/cop300-301.html Facsimile from ''Cyclopedia of Puzzles'' - Columbus's Egg Puzzle is on right-hand page]</ref> called it "Christopher Columbus's egg puzzle." Envisioning the target dots of the puzzle as eggs makes it clear that they have area and are not infinitesimally small points, or that the strokes that connect them have width. Either of these features allows a three-line solution (near-parallel lines that meet far away from the nine points) or even a one-line solution (using a line wide enough to touch all nine points).

I would instead have something of this ilk (and I'm doing this on the fly, so I'm not making it pretty.)

There may be some correlation between the nine dots puzzle and the "Christopher Columbus's egg puzzle." as it appears in Sam Loyd's 1914 Cyclopedia of Puzzles.<ref>Sam Loyd, ''Cyclopedia of Puzzles''. (The Lamb Publishing Company, 1914)</ref> In the 1951 compilation The Puzzle-Mine: Puzzles Collected from the Works of the Late Henry Ernest Dudeney, the puzzle is attributed to Dudeney himself.<ref>J. Travers, ''The Puzzle-Mine: Puzzles Collected from the Works of the Late Henry Ernest Dudeney''. (Thos. Nelson, 1951)</ref> However the nature of the two puzzles differ dramatically, and the only similarity may be the initial set-up. <ref>[http://www.mathpuzzle.com/loyd/cop300-301.html Facsimile from ''Cyclopedia of Puzzles'' - Columbus's Egg Puzzle is on right-hand page]</ref>

It would remove the bulk of that second paragraph, and still give a nod to what may potentially be the pre-cursor to the final nine dot puzzle. To be honest I'd like to find out what is actually shown in the Dudeney book in regard this puzzle, as that's the only part of this which may show a link between the two. —Preceding unsigned comment added by PuppyOnTheRadio (talk • contribs)

Hold on a sec. There were actually two puzzles in the 1914 book in that same section. The first was, as you mentioned, the "lay nine eggs so as to form the greatest possible number of rows of three-in-line" puzzle. Later on in that section, however, it says: "The funny old King is now trying to work out a second puzzle, which is to draw a continuous line through the center of all the eggs so as to mark them all off in the fewest number of strokes." And on the answer page you can see that it was solved as the standard "thinking outside the box puzzle".

Of course the lines "Envisioning the target dots of the puzzle as eggs makes it clear that they have area and are not infinitesimally small points, or that the strokes that connect them have width. Either of these features allows a three-line solution (near-parallel lines that meet far away from the nine points) or even a one-line solution (using a line wide enough to touch all nine points)" seem like original research (not to mention just plain wrong, a you say, as it's the centers and not just any aprt of the eggs) and should be removed. DreamGuy (talk) 18:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Argh! That's what happens when you don't finish reading the entirety of the page. I missed the second puzzle altogether. Although that's gives us a fairly solid derivation for the puzzle - which means that Dudeney's work is simply a unattributed copy (what were the copyright laws like in 1951) of the original, but may be what has sparked this being used by Disney in the 50s and 60s (which I've also come across that in my research in the past, but I couldn't cite the sources unfortunately), and then led to the cliché taking on life of it's own in the late 60s.

Given that maybe this should read as -

Sam Loyd's original formulation of the puzzle<ref> called it "Christopher Columbus's egg puzzle." as an allusion to the Egg of Columbus.

And finishing the paragraph there, but the remainder of the article stay the same? PuppyOnTheRadio (talk) 02:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Variants

A. The following sentences are part of Atlanta Symphony Center:

Architect Santiago Calatrava was selected to design the facility and delivered a monumental design that would serve as a "postcard" for the city. With the input from the Task Forces, Calatrava was given free rein for everything outside the "box", and the interior performance space was under the primary control of acoustician Larry Kirkegaard and his firm Kirkegaard Associates, with the intent to provide a superior, state-of-the-art acoustical environment.

A.1. Should the phrase outside the box should be linked to "Atlantic Symphony Center"?

A.2. Would adding this variant enhance "Thinking outside the box"? --Tenmei 9 June 2010

B. The following sentences are part of Insurgency:

Kilcullen gives a useful visual overview of the actors in the models, which generally agrees with a model represents home as a box defined by geographic, ethnic, economic, social, cultural, and religious characteristics. Inside the box are governments, counterinsurgent forces, insurgent leaders, insurgent forces, and the general population, which is made up of three groups:

1. those committed to the insurgents
2. those committed to the counterinsurgents
3. those who simply wish to get on with their lives.

Often, but not always, states or groups which aid one side or the other are construed as being "outside" the box.

Outside-the-box implies intervention creates dynamics of its own.

B.1. Should the phrase outside the box should be linked to "Insurgency"?

B.2. Would adding this variant enhance "Thinking outside the box"? --Tenmei 9 June 2010

C. The following sentences are part of Semiotics of the Kitchen:

The work was intended, like all early video, to be shown on a television monitor, and thus it is no accident that some of the gestures represent a tossing or throwing of the imaginary contents of certain implements "outside the box" of television programming. It is not the production of food in and of itself that is Rosler's target but the taken-for-granted role of happy housewife and selfless producer that the tape intends to spotlight.

C.1. Should the phrase outside the box should be linked to "Insurgency"?

C.2. Would adding this variant enhance "Thinking outside the box"? --Tenmei 9 June 2010

D. The following sentences are part of Antiobjects:

From the abstract of “Collaborative Diffusion: Programming Antiobjects”:

The metaphor of objects can go too far by making us try to create objects that are too much inspired by the real world. This is a serious problem, as a resulting system may be significantly more complex than it would have to be, or worse, will not work at all. We postulate the notion of an antiobject as a kind of object that appears to essentially do the opposite of what we generally think the object should be doing. As a Gedankenexperiment antiobjects allow us to literally think outside the proverbial box or, in this case outside the object.

D.1. Should the phrase outside the box should be linked to "Antibojects"?

D.2. Would adding this variant enhance "Thinking outside the box"? --Tenmei (talk) 18:03, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• Uncertain about Robert Polet? Lewis Round Barn? Canada's Worst Handyman 3? --Tenmei (talk) 18:50, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Metaphor

The material in this section is not whimsy, not POV. A Google search using the article title as a search topic produced "hits" including those which are cited in this section -- compare Talk:Thinking outside the box/Archives/2013#Variants above. This talk page section identifies other "hits" which were deemed to need discussion and further development.

The "Metaphor" section was twice deleted with a clear edit summary in each instance:

• diff 16:57, 19 September 2010 DreamGuy (5,447 bytes) (→Metaphor of a "box” is real: what the heck is this whole section? just weird soap boxing with refernences that don't prove anything... it's like someone came up with a bizarre personal essay that)
• diff 19:04, 19 September 2010 DreamGuy (5,447 bytes) (Reverted to revision 385749513 by DreamGuy; this is an encyclopedia, not some crazy jargon-laden philosophical soap box. (TW))

I don't really understand the "soap box" complaint; but I welcome editing help which improves the text.

A rhetorical usage section is justifiable in our Wikipedia context. These few sentences are relevant and helpful in conjunction with the other sections of this article. In other words, the article's usefulness to a prospective reader is diminished without this section.

This flexible English phrase is a rhetorical trope. As a context for evaluating this "Metaphor" section, compare metonymy in Chrysanthemum Throne#Rhetorical usage or Treaty#Conflated meanings.

Perhaps it would have been better if the section heading were "Rhetorical trope"? --Tenmei (talk) 20:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

How Many Solutions

There are several solutions to this problem with 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 lines. If you can't think of any then give the problem to your kids!

If you ask the question "Do you think outside of the box?" the critical thinker will answer "Yes" but the creative thinker will answer "What Box?". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.43.13.100 (talk) 15:15, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

The one key sentence that makes it clear how to think outside the box:

I had to specifically highlight this, because of its key importance to this very often asked question:

Creative thinking acknowledges and rejects the accepted paradigm(s) to come up with new ideas.

— Thinking outside the box, Analogy section, emphasis mine

Because more often than not, we’re surprised by how wrong our accepted paradigms are, when we actually start to think about them.
(And: No. What we thought of as “actually thinking about it” until now, wasn’t even close to actually really thinking about it. That’s another common unexpected surprise. [BTW: You can recognize a wise person by him/her loving such enlightening surprises.])

— 88.77.182.179 (talk) 14:23, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

k-dimensional Points Problem general solution

Here you can find my general solution for the n_1 X n_2 X ... X n_3 points problem:

Part 1: http://vixra.org/pdf/1307.0021v2.pdf Part 2: http://vixra.org/pdf/1307.0095v1.pdf

The solution is mathematically correct. Stop.

Marcokrt (talk) 20:18, 20 July 2013 (UTC)