How To Ask Good Questions: David Stork at TEDxStanleyPark

Sometimes posing a good question is more important than answering a good question. Some unsolved questions—in science, philosophy, mathematics, humanities—are properly judged to be "better" than others, so we should consider how those questions arose and explore how best to guide ourselves to posing such world-class questions. This presentation explores why the act of posing good questions has been, for the most part, neglected by scholars and the general public alike and what we should do about it. There is a range of types of questions, each with optimal strategies for posing and now is the time for a call to arms for educators, researchers, technologists, and business leaders to explore the hows and whys of asking good questions.

Dr. David G. Stork is Distinguished Research Scientist and Research Director at Rambus Labs and has held faculty appointments in eight disciplines and programs: Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, Neuroscience, Psychology and Art and Art History variously at Wellesley College, Swarthmore College, Clark U., Boston U. and Stanford U. He holds at least 40 US patents and has published nearly 200 technical works including five books and three proceedings volumes. He graduated in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Maryland, College Park, and studied art history at Wellesley College. He is a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and SPIE. He was co-creator of the PBS television documentary, "2001: HAL's Legacy," comparing the computer science visions in the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" with actual developments in computer science, all in the namesake year. He's lectured at universities, conferences and museums on computer image analysis of art. He is also an accomplished orchestral musician and is heard on several professional compact disks.

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[theeggylegs]

Want to get better at asking good questions? Start by asking and answering this one:
"What is your favorite question?" (I'd actually love to hear your answers)

Another good question is: "If you could ask any question to any person alive, dead, or fictitious what would it be?"

The speaker is very knowledgeable and passionate about the subject, but he got caught up in his Sudoku analogy resulting in the title being a bit misleading.
In case this is helpful for anyone, here are my takeaways with a few things added.

Good questions will include (at least some of) these features:
-The question is worded clearly, directly, and succinctly.
-The question explores limits/boundaries through extremes (i.e. "What is the MOST/WORST/FASTEST...?" Like playing 20 Questions, this helps refine the picture you are filling in with answer to good questions)
-The question will lead to new/more questions (as an exercise, try to identify what your follow up question will be, but be sure to adapt to the answer)
-When looking to expand a conversation, use "open ended questions" (why, how) rather than "closed ended questions" (yes/no or either/or questions, or questions with potentially single word answers) (PRO TIP: This is very effective in marketing/probing as a way to find what someone needs. It is trained in Apple store orientation.)
-Avoid shaping an answer through the question (Example: "What relationship problems are you having right now?")

[Rozolution]

Thank you! Your talk reminds me of a quote a friend shared with me recently "ACT ALWAYS TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF CHOICES.” (The personal 'code of ethics' by Heinz von Foerster, architect of cybernetics.)

[TheRichSolution]

Asking the right questions is all about finding out what we don't know!

[nathanketsdever]

I got five things from this:
1) the difference that schools vs. business place on asking questions
2) Bell Lab example about questions
3) the 3 cognitive skill overlap was interesting
4) the question posing part was interesting (two pages of his ppt).
5) types of questions (this is over-exhaustive/over-kill, would be helpful to narrow this list)

I would point out I think his method tends to ever so slightly assume solving objects vs. humans. For instance motive seems to be left out of his method.

[ambercy.t]

He was definitely obsessed with asking questions to sudoku maker.
Just like me thinking of my survey research for the thesis

[umermehmood]

One question is missing. Why there is no Zero in suduko puzzle.:p

[Christian_Prepper]

*_TITLE FAIL!!!_*
13:00 _"I can't teach you how to ask good questions..."_

[codylay]

This was incredibly painful, Was it imperative that he ask so many questions in the same subcategories?

[umsalemalmeri]

I have a nine years old boy who asked me once if we can find petrol in the sea how they get it out from its place without we lose it and spread in water and I'd we missed that will be a disaster it might kill living things in the sea and also very dangerous for us as human .. I think he is very clever but I don't know how to take care and raise him as it should be or is it normal?

[oOoironhideoOo]

i think he lost too much time goin through his sudoku questions, and he should have spent more time on the process of questioning ...

[win]

You could.. ask a question that gets us to learn how to ask questions. hmmmm

[blixtenbilling]

Wait a minute you aren't Belle Delphine you fake