Imagine that you’re standing on the bridge of a ship looking across a gray ocean dotted with thousands of islands of different sizes and shapes. Scanning them with your binoculars, you find that you can recognize some of the largest and nearest ones, and a few others are vaguely familiar, but most you have never heard of. Using a telescope, you can discern on the shores of some of the islands treasure chests, but you can’t tell if they’re brimming with jewels or just empty shells.
Turning to a satellite photograph, you can see that these islands form groups and archipelagos. You steer a course to a nearby island, drop anchor, and go ashore to investigate.
You begin by searching along the shore and soon find a promising-looking treasure chest. Opening it, you’re excited find a large jewel inside! Now you start to explore further inland and find that the terrain of the island is difficult, with hills, valleys, swamps, and steep ravines. There may be more treasure here, but the going is slow and it’s soon apparent that it will take considerable time to search this island thoroughly, so you return to your ship and pick another island nearby.
When you reach its shores, you’re disappointed to find that everything is covered with dust and cobwebs, and that there’s no treasure chest in sight. This island is one that has evidently been abandoned for a long time and likely holds little of interest.
Returning to your ship, you decide to try a third island, where you’re excited to find a treasure chest with a small jewel inside, but daunted when you discover that the entire island is covered by a dense jungle that is completely impenetrable to you as you’re presently equipped, so exploration is out of the question.
Your brief foray has convinced you that there is indeed treasure to be found in these islands, but with so many of them to search, where do you begin?