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 Our
History
The roots of ThinkSharp can be traced to the 1960's when Dr. Bill
Sacco, ThinkSharp's co-founder and chief mathematician and author,
learned powerful applied mathematical concepts as a problem solver
for the Applied Mathematics Division (AMD) of the DOD's Ballistics
Research Laboratories. Dr. Sacco became actively involved in solving
"unsolvable" problems by identifying a useful
technique, and successfully applying it to the problem. Dr.
Sacco went on to an award winning career for the Defense Department
at Aberdeen Proving Ground where, among other awards, he received
the first General Leslie Simon Scientific Award, in leading several
problem solving and research groups. Dr. Sacco observed that most
proposed problems could be solved by a relatively small subset of
techniques. This observation and his subsequent private sector consulting
experiences spawned a 25-year evolution of EmpowerMath75-90
and CriticalThinking75-90.
The development accelerated in the '80s and '90s with three National
Science Foundation Grants. One grant supported a verification of
the curriculum through surveys of applied mathematics journals and
interviews with dozens of applied mathematicians, statisticians,
engineers, and operations researchers.
By the early 1990s, the CriticalThinking75-90
program had been well researched, conceptualized, and case studies
were assembled. The real world problems featured in the case studies
were simulated through multimedia technology in a dynamic environment,
as a result of the growth of multimedia computer technology and
the Internet during the last decade. This was critical for students
to gain effective problem solving experience and for the retention
of skills (i.e. studies show people remember 25% of what they
hear, 40% of what they see and hear, and 75% of what they see, hear
and do). The Internet provided a delivery mechanism for on-demand
learning, and its widespread growth led to the capitalization of
the company in 1998.
The
Curriculum
Critical Thinking 75-90 is a curriculum of the
75 analytical concepts used in solving
90% of problems in the workplace. They represent the
most useful analytical approaches in business today. While these
are the bellwether methods to solve problems of various types, settings
and industries, they are simple, and even the most powerful algorithms
require only arithmetic skills to understand.
The 75 concepts are cross-disciplinary and reflect the top methods
from operations research, and applied mathematics. Critical Thinking
75-90 includes such well known and well studied concepts
as linear programming, Dijkstra' s algorithm, and dynamic programming.
It also covers concepts that are valuable but underutilized such
as search theory and glyphs.
Case
Study Based Learning
In the full curriculum, ThinkSharp students gain the equivalent
of 3 - 5 years of business problem solving experience, as they encounter
problems from various workplace settings. A distinct competitive
advantage of ThinkSharp is a focus on case studies. Students not
only learn techniques to solve problems, but gain the experience
needed to recognize problem-solving opportunities.
Instructional
Philosophy --Delayed Revelation
Having
been placed in the middle of real problems, students are challenged
to create solution strategies unaided. Questioning is then structured
for students to discover weaknesses in their strategies, hopefully
leading them to an "'aha", and enabling them to revise their method.
Ultimately, each problem leads the student to a tutorial on the
preferred method(s) for solving the problem. By the time the tutorial
is invoked, students are vested in the problem, and ready to learn.
As students continue facing new problems, they increase their knowledge
of CriticalThinking75-90 concepts, and ultimately
become adept at choosing the best techniques problems in many contexts,
and become experienced, world class problem solvers!
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The
Mission