Analogies that transfer

In a classic set of studies (Gick and Holyoak 1983), people read a story about a general who takes a fortress by splitting his army into small groups that converge from different roads. Then they tried a medical problem with the same shape: destroy a tumour with rays that harm healthy tissue at full strength. The answer is the same idea: many weak rays converging. Few people used the story unless someone told them it was relevant.

What helped was comparing two stories with the same idea in different settings. People who compared them and described what they shared formed a general idea, a schema ("split the force, converge on the target"), and used it far more often on the new problem. Later work (Catrambone and Holyoak 1989) found that asking people focused comparison questions about examples helped the idea carry over, including to problems that looked different on the surface.

How the next three problems work

Each one gives you two or three source examples from outside software and asks comparison questions before showing you the target. Answer the questions for yourself first, ideally in writing: what does each source do, what do they share, and where do they differ? Then state the schema in one sentence, and only then read the target problem.