C’est un livre relativement rapide à lire, et qui donne de bons conseils. Le livre n’étant pas encore traduit en français, je me suis permis de laisser quelques passages non traduits car cela me semblait plus adapté dans certains cas. C’est assez rafraichissant, jugez par vous même : Selon l’auteur, voici l’ensemble des étapes par lesquelles on passe pour concrétiser un projet comme le ferait un « rocket scientist ».
1) Imagination : Albert Einstein disait que l’imagination était plus importante que le savoir. Les romans, nouvelles et films de science-fiction sont toujours une grande source d’inspiration. Il faut quelque fois savoir « éteindre » sa logique, tout d
u moins dans un premier temps, et rêver.
2) Trouver une grande vision : « Find your big picture and it will give your task perspective and joy. The big picture focuses your mind and subconscious on a larger purpose. It gives meaning to all the little tasks you must tend to in order to achieve your goal. » Viser haut (aim high)
3) Faites appel au BS (BrainStorming) : Le premier pas vers la connaissance, pour trouver une solution, est d’éliminer ce qui ne va pas. Sherlock Holmes : “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Le BS consiste à établir une grande liste de possibilités. Rien ne doit être écarté, même si cela parait fou ou stupide.
4) Raconter une histoire : Stories capture our imaginations, create our myths, and mold our beliefs and values. Stories give our lives meaning; they integrate our brains […]storytelling is a necessary part of thinking and the development of the human brain. Story creates order out of chaos.
5) Sleep on it : Bertrand Russell, the great mathematician and philosopher, made a personal discovery worth noting. He found that he could rack his brain for months on a problem—and fi nally solve it. Then he discovered that he could get away with racking his brain for a much shorter initial period—then stop thinking about it—and, after an incubation period, return to fi nd that his subconscious mind had solved the problem in the same total time […] Confusion is often a necessary part of learning and problem solving. If you are never confused, you probably aren’t working on problems that are difficult enough for you. Work on the problem tonight. Force yourself to carefully read the assignment and struggle hard to really understand what the problem is and what the answer might entail. Then go to bed. When you wake up, start on your problem again. You should be amazed how much easier it seems, and in many cases you will know the answer or at least what to do next.
6) Jouer à des jeux, simuler : One way to get real is to create a game out of your problem. To simulate means to imitate the real thing. So rocket scientists do what we see children do all the time: they pretend. The cheapest simulation you can do is to run a “thought experiment.”
7) Connaitre ses limites : quelles sont les limitations, les contraintes ? “Think outside of the box,” and there is a time for that kind of thinking. But when you want to get real, you have to stay inside the constraint box—that’s where the challenge is.
8) Peser les idées : The weighing of ideas, the selection of better over good, is the balancing process that must follow brainstorming. John Kennedy said of himself, “I’m an optimist without illusions.”
9) Oser poser des questions absurdes et poser les toutes : When he worked on the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, Richard Feynman was asked by a general to review the safety of the new designs for the Oak Ridge plant. The plant was to separate isotopes of uranium—the nuclear fuel for the bomb. Two engineers rolled out a complicated blueprint with many symbols that Feynman could not decipher. The engineers had boasted that they had redundant valves everywhere so that if any one of them failed, a secondary valve would prevent an accumulation of uranium—a potentially explosive situation. Completely fl ummoxed and unsure whether the “X” he was looking at was a valve or a window, Feynman stabbed his finger at the blueprint and asked, “What if this valve fails?” The engineers looked at each other and thought for a moment. Worried looks appeared on their faces and one of them said, “You’re absolutely right, sir!” Then they excused themselves to examine the problem further—dire consequences were indicated. Then the general, who had invited Feynman to study the plant design said, “I knew you were a genius when you spotted that valve problem!” The fun in watching Columbo is to see how he struggles with a series of questions that pile up in his brain and foment confusion. Why is he confused? Because he is a very logical man. He requires consistency in his universe. Inconsistencies bother him. Little things that no one else would notice disturb him. “
10) Et si jamais ? Envisager les problèmes, les évènements, etc. c’est définir un certain nombre de scenarii et envisager les solutions.
11) Vérifier erreurs et hypothèses autant de fois que possible : La loi de murphy : « si quelque chose peut ne pas fonctionner, cela ne fonctionnera pas. » Eventually, our rocket scientists learned that nearly every system had to have a backup system, that all calculations had to be checked and double checked, and that nothing could be taken for granted—except human error. Jetez un œil, cela permet quelques fois de gagner beaucoup de temps et d’argent. Vérifiez vos calculs. Einstein wrote hundreds of pages of calculations in tensor calculus. He was twenty-six years old when he started his quest. When he fi nished the theory at the age of thirty-six, his health was shot and his hair was gray. The effort nearly killed him. But if he had been more careful, Einstein would have saved himself a lot of pain. When he reviewed the calculations he had done in 1913, he found he had made an error, which when corrected gave him the final theory!
12) Avoir toujours un plan de secours
13) Evaluer les risques : When statistics are used correctly, they can bring us closer to the truth. Aerospace engineers have understood and applied risk assessment for many decades. The reason that airline travel is so safe is because they really know the risk and have done something about it.
14) Simplifier au maximum : Les choses les plus simples sont souvent les meilleures. Le meilleur programme, ce n’est pas quand on ne peut plus ajouter d’instructions, c’est quand on ne peut plus en retirer ! Une façon de simplifier un schéma est de dessiner un schéma ou de réaliser une maquette (mock-up).
15) Nommer : Donner un nom aux choses, aux problèmes, aux solutions qu’on développe, cela permet de diminuer le chaos.
16) Divise and conquere – Henri Ford
17) Transformer vos problèmes en équations mathématiques, développer des modèles car il existe tant d’outils mathématiques permettant de nous aider en chemin.
18) Optimiser les coûts (temps, argent, ressources) : Quelques fois, plus gros, c’est mieux (économie d’échelle), mais pas toujours
19) Embaucher les meilleurs (on pourrait ajouter les meilleurs matériaux, les meilleurs outils, etc.)
20) Make some improvements : As World Chess Champion Dr. Emmanuel Lasker said, “When you fi nd a good move, look for a better one.” The great success of the Volkswagen Beetle was based on this concept. Every year small changes were made—only those that improved the vehicle. For decades, “the people’s car” was the most popular in the world.
21) Aiguiser vos outils : Quelques fois, il vaut mieux s’arrêter quelques instants pour améliorer nos outils, nos méthodes, et reprendre la course de plus belle (image du bucheron qui aiguise sa hache durant ses poses).
22) Vérifier en cours de route qu’on est sur la bonne voie : By knowing you live in a world of errors, you can plan to take corrective action. Don’t be afraid to make trajectory corrections in your life. If you expect they will be necessary, then making a correction will not be an admission of failure but a refl ection of wisdom and foresight.
23) Mieux vaut faire quelque chose, quite à faire des erreurs, que de rester assis, le cul posé sur sa chaise.
24) Ne pas ignorer les petites choses car elles peuvent devenir de lourds problèmes.
25) Apprendre de ses erreurs
Sur la NASA
« I found it necessary to distinguish between “two NASAs”: the NASA that put men on the moon and the NASA that built the space shuttle. From the original NASA, we can learn how to think like rocket scientists. Unfortunately, the latter NASA provides examples of how not to think like rocket scientists » [P2]
« Rocket scientists understood the risks—knew the numbers—and made sure that the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts had viable escape systems to save their lives in case of a launch failure. And as we have discussed earlier (but it bears repeating), these lessons were forgotten or ignored when the shuttle was built. » [P78]
« In July 1976, Viking 1 landed on Mars and operated fl awlessly. Viking 2 followed suit in August. The only failure was the failure to detect life. (But it’s not the spacecraft’s fault if there isn’t any life there.) Both spacecraft performed all the biological experiments. They survived on Mars for years, far beyond their mission plans, and were eventually turned off due to lack of funding to continue monitoring them. » [P79]
« When a shuttle astronaut drinks a sixteen-ounce bottle of water it costs about $10,000. » [P105]
« Meanwhile, the Russians realized that bigger was better. Their launch vehicles were built out of steel, assembled by factory workers. They didn’t use exotic materials, and the vehicles were ineffi cient—they went for size, which more than made up for the ineffi ciencies. The Soviets were able to launch huge spacecraft into orbit—soon they were launching crews of two and three men. » [P118]
Bubble
Snake
Pacman
Jeu de briques
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