Beyond Zudilin's conjectured q-analogue of Schmidt's problem

Using the methodology of (rigorous) experimental mathematics, we give a simple and motivated solution to Zudilin's question concerning a q-analogue of a problem posed by Asmus Schmidt about a certain binomial coefficients sum. Our method is based on two simple identities that can be automatically proved using the Zeilberger and q-Zeilberger algorithms. We further illustrate our method by proving two further binomial coefficient sums.