TYPE | DIFFICULT OR IM- POSSIBLE | TRANSFOR- MATION | PERFOR- MANCE | INVERSE TRANSFOR- MATION | ||
"Stone Soup" Folk Tale | Tramp bypasses peasant woman for handout | Gets boiling pot of water with stone for stone soup | Gets vegetable and meat bits, salt pinch, "to make stone soup tasty" | Removes stone, sups soup | * | |
Folk Tale | Farmer complains to his priest about scolding wife, noisy children, small hut | Priest says, first, to take a goat into the hut, then chickens, then farmer's mother-in-law | Farmer does so but reaches "breaking point" | Then priest says get rid of all of them, and happy farmer says he'd never realized how roomy his hut was | ||
Prehistoric | Water for suppliant | Water in jug | Transport jug | Hold for drinking | * | |
Tribal Laws | Violate taboos | Mythic drama or story | Perform or tell | Catharsis | * | |
Theology | Christian view of man's "fall" and the "post-fall" conditions | Original sin and "fall from grace" | Temporal existence in world | Redemption through Christ | ||
Communi- cation | Thoughts to minds | Articulated thought | Speak or write language | Hear or read and receive thoughts | * | |
Business | Goods or Services Exchange | Sell goods or services | Store money | Buy goods or services | * (mid) | |
Arithmetic | Repeated counting | Recursive definition | Addition | State count | * | |
Arithmetic | Repeated adding | Recursive definition | Multiplication | State sum | * | |
Arithmetic | Repeated multplication | Recursive definition | Exponentiation | State product | * | |
Construction | Reach height | Set up ladder | Climb and work | Descend, move ladder | * | |
Consumption | Food for future | Collect foodstuffs | Store | Distribute later | * | |
Criminology | Cope with criminals | Sentence to prison | Incarcerate | Release | * | |
Decoration | Dye part of egg | Wax masking | Dip in dye | Remove wax | * | |
Electric Engineering | Power transmission | Electric generator | Transmission line | Electric motor | * (mid) | |
"The Great Escape" movie | Escape prison camp | Tunnel down | Escape underground | Tunnel up to surface and escape | * | |
Means (averages) | Harmonic mean h | Reciprocate data | Arithmetic mean of reciprocals | Invert as harmonic mean h | * (mid) | |
Means (averages) | Geometric mean g | Logarithms of data | Arithmetic mean of logs | Anti-log as g | * (mid) | |
Orthopedics | Heal broken limb | Splint break | Splinted healing | Remove splint | * | |
Telephony | Voice across space | Transduced to electricity | Current along line | Transduced to sound | * | |
Transpor- tation | Move scattered belongings | Pack belongings | Move package | Unpack, scatter | * | |
Counting | Count sets | Russell's cardinal definition | Cardinate | Obtain set count | * | |
Geometry | Circle to square | Circle to ellipse | homologize | Square to rectangle | * | |
Geometry | Geometric construction | Coordinatize | Construct | Remove coordinates | * | |
Gödel's undecidability proof | Test proposition p | Gödel number of p | Diagonalize | Undecidable form | * | |
Group theory | Partition group G | Subgroup g of G | (norml subgroup) H:Hg | (inv) gHg=H | * | |
Information | Conserve information | Magnetic mapping | Store | Degauss information | * | |
Kenning | Sea-stallion:ship | Ship:sea | Homologize (::) | Stallion:land | * | |
Metabolism | Small body "pipes" | Solid to liquid | Liquid transport | Liquid to solid | * | |
Military | Tank crossing ditch | Pontoon over ditch | Cross pontoon | Remove pontoon | * | |
Mining | Transport problems | Ore to slurry | Transport slurry | Drain slurry | * | |
Respiratory or circulatory | Transport problems | Gas to liquid | Liquid transport | Liquid to solid | * | |
Satire | Lampoon the powerful | Aesopian format: Humans replaced by animals | Lampoon animals | Understood as satirizing powerful humans | * | |
Scot Clans | Represent a Scot | Clan name | Name to clan | "The Mac- Donald" as representative | * | |
Solid state physics | Paramagnetic cooling | Impose magnetic field | Thermal insulation | Remove magnetic field | * | |
Tarski modeling | Truth-value of proposition | Language to metalanguage | Truth predication | Evaluate proposition | * | |
Transpor- tation | New destination | Place A: map A | Map A to B | Map B:Place B | * | |
Elimination algorithm | Eliminate equation from equations-set | Dualize equations | Subtract like-terms | Reduce equation set | * | |
Logical law of excluded middle (tertium non datur) | Direct proof of theorem | Treat statement to be proven as false | Show this assumption leads to a contradiction | (by "double negative is positive") claim indirect proof of statement |
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Mathematical problem | Solving a difficult functional equation for an unknown function f | Take an integral transform of function f | Solve the easy functional equation satisfied by transform of f | Take in inverse of the integral transform, returning to the functional domain |
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Electronic Production | Producing IBM PC clone without violating patent rights | Analyze properties of ROM chip, only component unique to IBM PC | Translate properties into specifications | "Reverse engineering": engineers (who don't know ROM properties) satisfy spe- cifications with new chip, making clone legal |
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Double Blind Testing | Possible bias from doctors evaluating their own work | Doctors administer drug or method to some of sample, "placebo" to others | List of sample passed to doctors who know nothing of treatment distribution | Independent doctors examine all of sample, reporting possible improvements or declines, providing for evaluation of drug or method |