Book excerpt: Approach your problems from the right It isn't that they can't see the solution. It end and begin with the answers. Then, is that they can't see the problem. one day, perhaps you will fmd the final question. G. K. Chesterton, The Scandal of Father Brown 'The Point of a Pin'. 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the 'tree' of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geo metry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical progmmming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to fIltering; and prediction and electrical engineering can use Stein spaces.