What is it about?
This paper has three main contributions. The first one focuses on realizing that complexity may have many colors, i.e. complexity can be assessed in many dimensions. The second one is that a problem already introduces a level of complexity, which may be independent of the complexity of the solution. The third one uses joint entropy as an analytical framework to sum up the different colors or dimensions of the complexity of a system.
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Why is it important?
It is recognized that a proper problem training is necessary to reach a satisficing solution. However, does the problem formulation already impose a given level of complexity into the solution that can be obtained? In other words, what is the complexity of the problem, not of the solution, we are facing? There lays the importance of this paper: we acknowledge that even if properly framed, the way a problem is formulated may result in different levels of complexity.
Perspectives
The are two aspects I find vital in this paper for pushing forward the understanding of system development and the application of systems engineering. The first one is to separate between the complexity of a problem and the complexity of a solution to that problem. They are different and so they should be treated. The second aspect is the acknowledgment of complexity as a multi-dimensional or multispectral attribute, together with an underlying analytical framework based on entropy that matches empirical findings about potential correlations between different colors of complexity.
Dr Alejandro Salado
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Concept of Problem Complexity, Procedia Computer Science, January 2014, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.procs.2014.03.066.
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