Let's begin the section of the course focusing on root cause analysis, which is an incredibly popular and useful problem-solving method used across many industries. As you might guess from the name, root cause analysis is the process of finding what the root cause is.

Example: Medical Diagnosis

Let's say you're a doctor and a patient comes to you and says, "My hand hurts." Do you start treating the hand? No, that's the symptom. But what is the root cause? Is it the nerves getting pinched somewhere? Is it something else in the body that's wrong? The doctor has to do all the work to dig into the root cause. What's the original issue from which all the other problems are stemming? Fixing that more fundamental and foundational issue is going to resolve everything later. It's not about putting a band-aid on the problem, but finding the root cause.

Applications in Various Industries

• Engineering
• Construction
• Mathematics
• Many other industries

This method is incredibly important to cover in this course because it is very applicable, even in life. For example, when considering the problems in your life, you don't look at your current day. Instead, you look at the fundamental things that have been causing problems for a long time. Fixing those will lead to long-term improvements.

It doesn't have to be that dire; we can stick to professional topics. However, root cause analysis is just so, so, so applicable.

So with that, let's begin our section on root cause analysis.