5 ms·

When Kids Start Doing Root Cause Analysis

92 points by mkswp 14y ago

K2h 14y ago
His experience of having trouble answering more than '5 why's' is a nice revelation. This is an exercise that nearly every engineer learns about (that started at Toyota[1]) and has become one of the basic tools used in continuous improvement. I often complete the exercise and it is trouble enough to make it to the 5'th why, the thought actually never occurred to me to go farther. As a side note - when you are improving things, that 4'th and 5'th 'why' are often things that are very hard (and costly) to change. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys
- mseebach 14y ago
  If it doesn't hurt, you're doing it wrong. If something is hard and costly to change, yet it's the root cause of problems, it's so much more important to change.
randlet 14y ago
It is pretty amazing how far down the rabbit hole you can go in "5 why's". Louis C.K. does a very funny bit on the topic of the OP (NSFW I think)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE&feature=player_detailpage#t=77s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE&feature=playe...
- malandrew 14y ago
  That video is the first thing I thought of while reading the article. I wasn't sure if it would get up voted or not, but I'm glad it did, since it does highlight how far you can go when determining the root cause of something. "... but Why?" "Because some things are and some things are not!"
- gus_massa 14y ago
  The video is funny, but usually real kids are happy with 2 or 3 chained answers and a "I don't know." Another possible last answer is "Let's look in a book" or the modern version "Let's google that". After 10 minutes of googling : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5OYH2lDNqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5OYH2lDNqU
luke_s 14y ago
I have two kids, and the youngest is just starting on the 'why?' phase. Its great fun! I treat it as a game to try and see how long I can keep on answering. As soon as I don't know the answer, I explain that I don't know (or perhaps that nobody yet knows) and discuss how we could find out. One interesting thing I discovered - a surprisingly large number of things will either lead to physics or human psychology if you keep asking 'why?'. However I don't know if that reflects some deeper truth about the world, or just my bias in how I answer the questions.
- Michiel 14y ago
  > However I don't know if that reflects some deeper truth about the world, or just my bias in how I answer the questions. It's the same reason why you always end up on "Philosophy" if you're browsing Wikipedia and consistently follow the first link in each article. Here's the path for "Airplane": Airplane Fixed wing aircraft Aircraft Vehicle Motion (physics) Natural science Science Knowledge /* we know where this going... */ Fact Proof (truth) Argument Philosophy Try it yourself: http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia
  - sev 14y ago
    I had heard this before and just tried it...awesome! It's also interesting that philosophy links to existence (ontology) and that links back to philosophy.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kronopath 14y ago
    I think that website cheats a little bit. The first link in "Science" is not "Knowledge" but "Latin", where it's describing the root of the word "Science". If you follow it properly, you'll find that even the article for "5 Whys" doesn't go to Philosophy: 5 Whys Technique Technology Tool Goal Animal Eukaryote Organism Biology Natural Science Science Latin Italic Languages Indo-European Languages Language Family Language Human Taxonomy Ancient Greek Greek Language Indo-European Languages // Infinite loop!
keeptrying 14y ago
Dont kids already do this and most annoyed parents eventually answer "because the sky is so high" ....
randomdrake 14y ago
One of my favorite quotes regarding this is from Michael Crichton in one of his more obscure, autobiographical books called Travels: "Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don't ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue." I recommend the book to anyone and everyone looking to explore their own understanding of the world and their place within it.
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  The real 'why' can be a dangerous question to answer, though. :) "Daddy, why do the owls want to make the Sun go away forever?" "Well, Billy, it's because the film is an expression of the cultural tension generated by the threat of nuclear warfare which faced American society in the 1980s when it was made. When they're singing about how the good guys are 'running out of batteries' it's giving you a context to interpret your experiences in a possible future in which you might have to hide out in a fallout shelter in the dark for days at a time." "Huh?"
gdubs 14y ago
Perhaps children intuitively have 'chain of events' thought patterns. It's something many adults seem to lack, which makes proposing solutions to big problems difficult; because one has to be able to see far beyond simple cause & effect to both understand the problem and the proposed solution.
- rhizome 14y ago
  The technical term for this is "empiricism," and you're right that some adults lose this after a time, or at least mental models start resembling Kowloon Walled City.
  - gdubs 14y ago
    I think the problem is that empiricism is often taught, in primary school, in a very 2-dimensional, black & white fashion – enforcing a rigid view of cause & effect. (Edit: often the case, but not always. There are great teachers out there.) Maybe it's test-driven curriculum that's largely to blame: question -> answer. I think in addition to basic empirical reasoning, kids should be exposed to determinism in the vein of chaos theory; where one is forced to accept that while connections exist, they may not be immediately obvious. (Edit 2: I guess this is "Art/Music Class", sadly non-existent in more and more schools)
- jahmed 14y ago
  Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. The beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults. -Neil deGrasse Tyson http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c2zg5uf http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degras...
lss456 14y ago
I'm trying it myself and love it. You can get real far in 5 whys. Speaking or writing it in a stream-of-consciousness fashion (first thing that comes to your mind) is quite insightful.
gosub 14y ago
Why is almost always the wrong question, since it involves an intention. The right question to ask is How. "Why did you do that?" vs "How did that phenomenon happen?".
- ken 14y ago
  I've read somewhere that kids keep asking "why?" because they figure out that it's an easy way to get people to talk a lot, and listening to people talk is how they learn language.
bane 14y ago
"Why" is an interesting hack. Before this children learn how things work through observation of events. "Why" is a force multiplier where the child no longer even has to wait for events to happen but can explore things that haven't happened or that are hard to observe. It's a short hop from there to deep abstraction and philosophy. Cultivating this may be one of the most important things that parents can do in terms of ensuring children keep their curiosity long into adult hood (with appropriate training to develop the endless string of "whys" into a more socially acceptable question answering model).

92 points by mkswp 14y ago

K2h 14y ago

His experience of having trouble answering more than '5 why's' is a nice revelation. This is an exercise that nearly every engineer learns about (that started at Toyota[1]) and has become one of the basic tools used in continuous improvement. I often complete the exercise and it is trouble enough to make it to the 5'th why, the thought actually never occurred to me to go farther. As a side note - when you are improving things, that 4'th and 5'th 'why' are often things that are very hard (and costly) to change. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

mseebach 14y ago
If it doesn't hurt, you're doing it wrong. If something is hard and costly to change, yet it's the root cause of problems, it's so much more important to change.

randlet 14y ago

It is pretty amazing how far down the rabbit hole you can go in "5 why's". Louis C.K. does a very funny bit on the topic of the OP (NSFW I think)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE&feature=player_detailpage#t=77s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE&feature=playe...

malandrew 14y ago
That video is the first thing I thought of while reading the article. I wasn't sure if it would get up voted or not, but I'm glad it did, since it does highlight how far you can go when determining the root cause of something. "... but Why?" "Because some things are and some things are not!"
gus_massa 14y ago
The video is funny, but usually real kids are happy with 2 or 3 chained answers and a "I don't know." Another possible last answer is "Let's look in a book" or the modern version "Let's google that". After 10 minutes of googling : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5OYH2lDNqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5OYH2lDNqU

luke_s 14y ago

I have two kids, and the youngest is just starting on the 'why?' phase. Its great fun! I treat it as a game to try and see how long I can keep on answering. As soon as I don't know the answer, I explain that I don't know (or perhaps that nobody yet knows) and discuss how we could find out. One interesting thing I discovered - a surprisingly large number of things will either lead to physics or human psychology if you keep asking 'why?'. However I don't know if that reflects some deeper truth about the world, or just my bias in how I answer the questions.

Michiel 14y ago
> However I don't know if that reflects some deeper truth about the world, or just my bias in how I answer the questions. It's the same reason why you always end up on "Philosophy" if you're browsing Wikipedia and consistently follow the first link in each article. Here's the path for "Airplane": Airplane Fixed wing aircraft Aircraft Vehicle Motion (physics) Natural science Science Knowledge /* we know where this going... */ Fact Proof (truth) Argument Philosophy Try it yourself: http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia
- sev 14y ago
  I had heard this before and just tried it...awesome! It's also interesting that philosophy links to existence (ontology) and that links back to philosophy.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Kronopath 14y ago
  I think that website cheats a little bit. The first link in "Science" is not "Knowledge" but "Latin", where it's describing the root of the word "Science". If you follow it properly, you'll find that even the article for "5 Whys" doesn't go to Philosophy: 5 Whys Technique Technology Tool Goal Animal Eukaryote Organism Biology Natural Science Science Latin Italic Languages Indo-European Languages Language Family Language Human Taxonomy Ancient Greek Greek Language Indo-European Languages // Infinite loop!

keeptrying 14y ago

Dont kids already do this and most annoyed parents eventually answer "because the sky is so high" ....

randomdrake 14y ago

One of my favorite quotes regarding this is from Michael Crichton in one of his more obscure, autobiographical books called Travels: "Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don't ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue." I recommend the book to anyone and everyone looking to explore their own understanding of the world and their place within it.

fennecfoxen 14y ago
The real 'why' can be a dangerous question to answer, though. :) "Daddy, why do the owls want to make the Sun go away forever?" "Well, Billy, it's because the film is an expression of the cultural tension generated by the threat of nuclear warfare which faced American society in the 1980s when it was made. When they're singing about how the good guys are 'running out of batteries' it's giving you a context to interpret your experiences in a possible future in which you might have to hide out in a fallout shelter in the dark for days at a time." "Huh?"

gdubs 14y ago

Perhaps children intuitively have 'chain of events' thought patterns. It's something many adults seem to lack, which makes proposing solutions to big problems difficult; because one has to be able to see far beyond simple cause & effect to both understand the problem and the proposed solution.

rhizome 14y ago
The technical term for this is "empiricism," and you're right that some adults lose this after a time, or at least mental models start resembling Kowloon Walled City.
- gdubs 14y ago
  I think the problem is that empiricism is often taught, in primary school, in a very 2-dimensional, black & white fashion – enforcing a rigid view of cause & effect. (Edit: often the case, but not always. There are great teachers out there.) Maybe it's test-driven curriculum that's largely to blame: question -> answer. I think in addition to basic empirical reasoning, kids should be exposed to determinism in the vein of chaos theory; where one is forced to accept that while connections exist, they may not be immediately obvious. (Edit 2: I guess this is "Art/Music Class", sadly non-existent in more and more schools)
jahmed 14y ago
Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. The beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults. -Neil deGrasse Tyson http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c2zg5uf http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degras...

lss456 14y ago

I'm trying it myself and love it. You can get real far in 5 whys. Speaking or writing it in a stream-of-consciousness fashion (first thing that comes to your mind) is quite insightful.

gosub 14y ago

Why is almost always the wrong question, since it involves an intention. The right question to ask is How. "Why did you do that?" vs "How did that phenomenon happen?".

ken 14y ago
I've read somewhere that kids keep asking "why?" because they figure out that it's an easy way to get people to talk a lot, and listening to people talk is how they learn language.

bane 14y ago

"Why" is an interesting hack. Before this children learn how things work through observation of events. "Why" is a force multiplier where the child no longer even has to wait for events to happen but can explore things that haven't happened or that are hard to observe. It's a short hop from there to deep abstraction and philosophy. Cultivating this may be one of the most important things that parents can do in terms of ensuring children keep their curiosity long into adult hood (with appropriate training to develop the endless string of "whys" into a more socially acceptable question answering model).