Why it is Important to Know Why
What versus Why: There are two levels of answer to any question. You
can know what the answer is and, at a higher level, you can know why that answer
is true. This chapter explains why and how the why-level answer can be more
useful than the what-level answer.
Examples
- What-Level Answers: At this level you know what to do, what value
to use, when someone will arrive, or where something is located
- Why-Level Answers: At this level you know why you should do this,
why this value is correct, why the the person isn't arriving when you expected,
and why the object has moved.
What versus Why
- What-Level Answers are Specific: If you know a piece of what-level
information, you have the answer to one specific question or a narrowly defined
class of questions. You do not, however, have enough information to generalize
so that you can use this information to answer other questions.
- Why-Level Answers are General: In contrast, a why-level answer provides
the insight needed to judge what other problems can be usefully be addressed
using a particular piece of what-level information. One why-level answer can
replace a multitude of what-level answers.
Using Why Information
- Streamlining the tool set: Use the why-level knowledge to group,
and thus catalog and compress in your memory, the what-level information you've
acquired. What-level information that shares the same why-level explanation
can be grouped together an treated as one neat little fact, saving a lot of
space in your mental closet. Thus, a why-level answer is a multipurpose tool.
- A problem in search of a tool: Use this why-level catalog to help
you locate the right what information for the problem at hand. Once you've
figured out why you're having a problem, you're well on your way to knowing
the what-level answer. The why-level questions almost always focus the search
for a solution, particularly in the early stages of solving a problem. The
resulting what-level information becomes more useful only in the later stages
of problem solving.
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This page was last updated by George Young
on May 30, 2007