Asymmetric Thinking and Your Emerging Issue

This is a creative discussion. You will not be expected to play a specific role unless you want to. You will, however, be expected to read all of the unit materials and listen to the interview about asymmetric thinking to complete this activity.

There are always three ways to think about any issue in public health:

First, there is everything you know about the issue.
Then, there are the things you do not know.
Finally, there are the things you do not know that you do not know.
To get at the things you do not know that you do not know you are going to use set-based thinking, a concept that comes from applied mathematics. Instead of numbers and formulas, you are going to play creatively with words and concepts. This is also known as chunking.

Chunking: Up, Down, Sideways, and Asymmetrically
The purpose of this exercise in chunking is to apply an asymmetric thinking strategy in search of new insights or categories that may hint at a different (asymmetrical) way of addressing your issue. Refer to the Chunking document linked in Resources on how to chunk up, down, sideways, and asymmetrically.

Your goal will to identify and create a variety of sets from the first two categories listed above using words and phrases related to what you know and do not know about your chosen emerging issue.

In your post, summarize the existing categories you have named based on your current data and then talk about what new ideas emerged when you chunked asymmetrically that might be an avenue worthy of further investigation.

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