Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2019 October 1

= October 1 =

Discipline that specializes in classifying problems
Does any scientific discipline specialized in classifying problems, without bothering with the concrete solution directly?

For example, determining what problems have well-defined solutions (like crosswords), what problems have open solutions (like designing a product), what problems are unfeasible for humans, but not for computers (like calculating whether some number is prime). --Yl3arn (talk) 13:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Like Lucy Van Pelt, who once said, "I don't have any solutions - I just point out trouble!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:02, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Root cause analysis ? SinisterLefty (talk) 17:05, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Definitively not. This is an MO for solving problems.Yl3arn (talk) 17:31, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Per the article: "RCA generally serves as input to a remediation process whereby corrective actions are taken to prevent the problem from reoccurring." So, the Root Cause Analysis does not directly address fixing the problem, it's the phase where the problem is identified and classified. Other problems are just unsolvable, like if there are two sets of requirements for a product, which are mutually exclusive, then no one product can meet both sets of requirements (a flying car is a good example of this). SinisterLefty (talk) 17:35, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * RCA tries to solve the problem of answering what was going on that made that thing break. The answer is then used to solve the separate but related problem of how to prevent the same thing from happening again. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 00:05, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * There are mathematical topics like that, including computational complexity theory, but the classifications are of purely mathematical nature. Doing the same thing with wider everyday types of problems would likely be a topic in philosophy rather than science. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 20:33, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Computational complexity theory is a good fit, but it appears to ignore human cognition, or, only deal with it marginally.Yl3arn (talk) 20:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, human cognition would fall under philosophy or to some extent psychology. One sometimes does feasibility studies in engineering, but maybe that's not what you want. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 20:53, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Human factors engineering might also touch on what you are looking for. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 00:01, 2 October 2019 (UTC)