Agatha

A heuristic device is an educated guess based on prior experience that helps to narrow down the possible solutions to a problem. Agatha has the idea to use newspaper articles to defend her proposition about guns but just using information from newspapers is not a good idea. Journalism can be slanted in opinion and her use of heuristic representative grouping about guns can give rise to bias. Agatha needs to get information from many different sources. A better idea would be to use an algorithm which is a step by step procedure to solve a problem. She needs to start by stating what the issue is. She then needs to make observations about gun use. She needs to do research by using information from books, the internet, and newspapers. She could gather more information about guns by sending out surveys to people about the issue. She than would need to develop a hypothesis that is realistic. She would need to test her stated hypothesis and then after all of these steps she can come to a conclusion. The more information she has the better chances she may have to test her claim against guns. She will have more support in her argument if she had more than just one source. She can’t expect to go and try and ban guns if she doesn’t have a very good problem solving technique to reach a conclusion about her claim. After she has followed all the steps in algorithm style of problem solving she possibly could have people sign a petition for the banishment of guns, or she can write a letter to her governor explaining her ideas.