Next week, I'll teach the opening WOOT class, which will focus on general problem solving strategies. Along with this class and the next class, which nsato will teach, we at AoPS will each be writing a WOOT article about a particular general strategy we like. My article was "The Stupid Stuff Works", in which I discuss the importance of going after problems with simple, i.e. "stupid", tools, rather than reaching for the fancy stuff first. Since writing the article, I've thought a lot more about the stupid stuff, and I think it's probably one of the most empowering observations in any pursuit -- the stupid stuff really does work.

I was working with my sister today on learning Asymptote to do some diagram building for us at AoPS. The first diagram she did was very well done. She found elegant solutions for everything. But she was stuck on the rest. As we discussed doing these diagrams, she got to see how I went about trying to figure out how to build them, and she saw that I very consistently did stupid stuff that would eventually work. And very quickly she got over the fear that she just didn't know the right command or the right math to do something. I think she realized that she's plenty smart enough to figure out how to get each diagram done -- there isn't some magic trick she doesn't know or can't comprehend, some special insight that only the illuminated mind can comprehend. There's the stupid stuff, and it usually works. And when she sets aside the conviction that there's something out there that's unknowable and insurmountable, she becomes powerful. I think a lot of life is like that.