ABSTRACT
Problem solving and learning have long been among Herb Simon's intellectual interests. The major argument of this chapter is that people learn problem solving skills in domains like mathematics and computer programming by analogy. Specifically, when solving a current problem they analogize to the solutions of previous problems (done by them or others). The idea of learning by doing has long been an idea of Simon's (e.g., Anzai & Simon, 1979) and recently Herb has been looking in detail at learning from examples (Zhu & Simon, 1987). This chapter looks at systematic pattern errors that occur in students’ interactions with intelligent tutors and argues that these errors arise through the analogy process. The implication is that not only errors but successful learning occurs by analogy. In fact, most analogies appear to be successful as witnessed by the fact that such systematic errors are relatively rare.
