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Trial and error is a pro-active strategy: you can't get anywhere if you don't do anything.
Trial and error instructs you to explicitly offer a potential answer to the problem, and then learn from the mistake. You need to consider what an answer to the problem Looks like and, when your attempt fails, try to improve your mistake.Â
This process will enable you to gain a perspective on how the problem works.
The strategy does have its limitations for real-life problem solving. Since we have not exposed the logical entrails of the problem in our working, the solution is unsupported, and fragile. Its fragility is obvious when we ask ourselves whether it is the only correct solution.
On the other hand, the strategy does allow aspects of the problem's logical entrails to be inspected. In this way trial and error can be used as a tool for understanding the nature of the problem, as well as just solving it.
The trial and error strategy is designed for cases when the logic of the question is not easy to see or diagram. It succeeds by prodding the question, and then studying the response. One can learn from the process only by trying one case, and then another in which one of the variables is changed.
Unlike those cases that succumb to systematic listing, the strategy works when there are infinite possible options.
The trial and error strategy depends on laying out which examples you are using clearly, for formal inspection. The reason for this is twofold: first to enable you to inspect your investigation easily; second to give someone assessing your solution a chance of understanding what you are doing. You may well be trying answers which are far from the goal, and not following the path that the problem setter, or the assessor, has in mind. And without some guidance, you will lose your audience.
Ensure that you precisely control what you change when you choose a new case to study. It is always tempting to seek shortcuts, especially when problem solving in high-pressure situations, such as exam conditions, but if you alter two variables from Take 1 to Take 2, you may well confuse the effect of one with the effect of the other. In this lies the art of efficient trial and error.
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