On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 2:38 AM, Sam Stewart <sstew...@lclark.edu
<mailto:sstew...@lclark.edu>> wrote:
Hello all,
As a student and mathematician, I am particularly interested in the
complex process of accumulating, understanding, and remembering
difficult information. In regards to the most recent posting by Don,
while I agree that there is initially some "low hanging fruit" in
most areas, these options quickly disappear as we become better.
Breaking the barrier between amateur and expert is particularly
difficult and is rarely achievable through "quick tricks".
There is nothing here I disagree with. The sophistication of the
"tricks" increases but probably calling them "shortcuts" and "tricks"
was not the right terminology. Some of them seem like cheap tricks
but really they are just mental reorganizations and the recognition of
patterns which already have a solution or partial solution. I know
in chess almost any position seems reasonable and suggests moves to my
mind - but when I first learned the game it was just a random
configuration without any clue of what move to play.
The *hard and deliberate* practice I simply called focus - I do not
believe it necessarily has to be unpleasant but it is hard work.
Sometimes you can enjoy hard work but without doubt you have to push
yourself against being lazy.
Instead, we improve in proportion to the amount of /deliberate and
strenuous /practice we invest. As Mark described, he knew the steps
needed to improve drastically, but opted for the easier route. Why?
Because deliberate practice is often grueling, repetitive, and
exhausting; we prefer tasks which are within our purview.
Having programmed since age ten, and then up into my college years,
I can say from personal experience the largest jumps in ability
occurred when I concentrated on my weakest areas. For example, while
initially doing web programming, I decided to learn the iOS SDK. Of
course, this required studying Objective-C (really just C and some
compiler macros) which does not use automatic memory management.
Needless to say, as a fifteen year old coming from Python, Java, and
PHP, this was a hurdle. I spent hours finding obvious memory leaks
before I could even display something onscreen. The process was
laborious but I finally gained competence /over a three year
period/. I emphasize this statement because there was no shortcut.
Although the authors on this list hold no such misconceptions, I
cannot count the number of times people have approached me asking
how to write iPhone apps. I always answer, "you'll need lots of
time, patience, and diligence….then start practicing".
The mental jump from managed languages to manually managed languages
shed light on the "low level" details of programming which I had
missed previously. The /deliberate /practice in an area of weakness
enabled me to "level up" in the end.
On the other hand, I have also played jazz piano for about five
years. Like Mark, I have taken the lazy route, even though I have
played through hundreds of songs. As with most classically trained
musicians, I found sight-reading and memorizing an explicit
transcription of a standard far easier than practicing the numerous
chords and modes required for free-form improvisation. Only now, am
I painfully practicing the many chord voicings I glossed over years
ago. In sight-reading the music, I allowed my skill to plateau by
sticking to the "stuff I knew".
Similarly, I am a better programmer than mathematician. While
varying across individuals, I find programming intuitive, or as Mark
said "Learning to program never felt like work". On the other hand,
many concepts in mathematics require abstract and flexible thought.
Hence, since I find math more challenging than CS, I purposely fill
my schedule with math courses. Pushing myself in a weaker area will
ultimately render me a better computer scientist.
In summary, the /key /difference between amateurs and experts is
/*hard and deliberate* /practice. In order to move from novice to
professional, you must not only practice, but you must focus on
honing your "pain points". While I wish there were other options
available, my own experience has lead me to this conclusion.
However, I'm not the only one who holds this opinion. I'd like to
offer this paper I read a few years ago which speaks to this issue
precisely. I've also pasted some relevant sections below:
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/100/3/363.pdf
Our review has also shown that the maximal level of performance
for individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as
function of extended experience, but the level of performance can
be increased even by highly experienced individuals as a result of
deliberate efforts to improve.
There is a relatively widespread conception that if individuals
are innately talented, they can easily and rapidly achieve an
exceptional level of performance once they have acquired basic
skills and knowledge. Biographical material disproves this notion.
In their classic study of expertise in chess, Simon and
Chase (1973) observed that nobody had attained the level of an
international chess master (grandmaster) "with less than about
a decade's intense preparation with the game" (p. 402).
This discussion has been quite entertaining and I look forward to
any comments or further thoughts,
Sam Stewart
Lewis & Clark College
On Friday, August 10, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Don Dailey wrote:
On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Mark Boon
<tesujisoftw...@gmail.com <mailto:tesujisoftw...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Don Dailey <dailey....@gmail.com
<mailto:dailey....@gmail.com>> wrote:
> I'm not real big on natural talent either. I know it exists but
it is
> somewhat over-rated. The people who are really good at
anything invariably
> worked pretty hard to get there - and the natural talent aspect
may simply
> be internal drive - the ability to focus on what needs to be
done. So I
> do believe that some people have more talent than others but
maybe it's a
> bit over-hyped. Bobby Fischer is said to have been
absolutely obsessed
> with chess as a boy - an obsession you don't usually see in an
old man or
> woman. Was he talented? I'm sure he was, but this insane
obsession
> was probably more important to his success than his natural talent.
Erik Puyt (Dutch 5-dan) once summed it up nicely: "when people say
you've got talent, what they mean is you're (still) young".
I do think talent exists. The same way some people are more
intelligent than others. But starting young and working hard at it is
needed by everyone to become good at anything. Nobody gets it for
free.
> And even just putting in a lot of time is not the same as
working hard at it.
I'm a bit of a lazy type. As a teenager I spent a lot of time
studying
Go. But I found that some types of study felt harder on my brain than
others. Replaying professional games, while certainly helpful, was a
lot 'easier' than doing life-and-death problems, which I hated doing.
Later I heard some successful professional players claim that the
only
way of studying really worth anything was life-and-death. All the
rest
comes relatively easy through just playing. I would characterize
replaying pro games as 'putting in time' while life-and-death was
'working at it'.
I started computer programming when I was 18-19 years old. I knew
straight away this was my future as all the studying felt easy
compared to studying Go, even though I was a little afraid I had
started too late. But it turned out child prodigies in
programming, or
whizz-kids as they were called, only existed in movies at that
day and
age. Learning to program never felt like work.
Being lazy could be a good thing - it is in programming! How
many times have I started to code something up, realized how much
work it was going to be, then stopped myself and said, "there must
be an easier way!" And lo and behold, there usually is.
I think this works with everything. In Chess my master friend
was big into organizing your thinking and making things easier -
usually with clever rules. Very often just one tiny piece of
knowledge can save you years of figuring it out for yourself.
In one opening I played he said, "it's all about the black
squares - if you control them you win." An aha moment for me
as I was busy computing variations and doing things the hard way.
So I believe than in many ways being "lazy" can be an asset - if
you are always trying to figure out an "easier way" to do it you
will do much better.
Have you ever heard of "square of the pawn?" Or when being
checked by the knight in the endings when there is very little
time on the clock there are certain squares you can move the king
to which guarantee you cannot be checked for 2, 3 or 4 moves -
depending on where you move and these are trivial patterns.
Also, the say really intelligent people are internally taking
shortcuts, they get way more accomplished with very little effort.
And I did a simple thing when I was improving in tournament chess.
I just happened to notice that 90% of my losses were due to
trivial blunders. I went up something like 400 ELO just
realizing that. It was a lazy way to get 400 ELO without
studying hard or anything else, I just made it my determination
and goal not to blunder and before every move I did a quick
superficial check, nothing fancy and yet 400 ELO! Everyone
thought that I had been studying and learning and getting much
better.
This is actually a general principle of almost any endeavor: "stop
screwing up!" If you play tennis you know that at the club
level you don't win games, you lose them. Get the ball back
with any consistency and you are suddenly a half way decent club
player - even if you don't do it with much style or grace.
So I don't think study has to be painful and hard - in fact true
"hard work" can be very pleasurable. But it does have to be
productive and focused.
Don
Mark
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