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Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking means thinking correctly about a problem, even if you have to temporarily ignore rote learning and misconceptions. For example :
It took two hours for two men to dig a hole five feet deep. How deep would it have been if ten men had dug the hole for two hours ?

Simplistically, the answer appears to be 25 feet deep. This is based on a few incorrect assumptions : The correct answer—whatever it is—goes against standard mathematical training. This does not make it incorrect; standard mathematical training does not teach how to apply math to the real world very well, except with finances. Lateral thinking gets answers that are correct (or closer to the truth) because it takes into account more factors and the meanings of the words.

Example problems

Further reading