[HN Gopher] The Heilmeier Catechism
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The Heilmeier Catechism
Author : blopeur
Score : 140 points
Date : 2022-06-24 09:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.darpa.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.darpa.mil)
| cardamomo wrote:
| Honestly, this seems like a great way to articulate one's goals
| with any complex project. As a teacher, I could imagine using
| this framework to describe a new curriculum.
|
| > What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using
| absolutely no jargon.
|
| I'm trying to improve reading skills for all students.
|
| > How is it done today, and what are the limits of current
| practice?
|
| Currently, students are grouped by ability ("reading level") for
| reading instruction. This means that students who are considered
| below grade level are rarely exposed texts at grade-level
| complexity.
|
| > What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be
| successful?
|
| Instead of grouping students by ability, I will create mixed-
| ability student groups to read grade-level texts with all
| students. I will provide differentiated support for students who
| cannot yet read selected texts independently. This approach is
| supported by Young's (2022) research, which detailed greater
| reading level gains for emerging readers.
|
| > Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
|
| Students who are considered below grade level in reading will
| show increased gains compared to the previous approach.
|
| > What are the risks?
|
| This approach requires more reading instruction expertise from
| teachers. Teachers who are unable to adequately support below-
| grade-level readers risk further delaying these readers'
| progress. Because this is a change to widespread and currently
| accepted instructional practices, it is likely that many teachers
| and parents will resist changes to the program, either explicitly
| or by falling back to previous practices.
|
| > How much will it cost?
|
| The only significant cost is in teacher professional development,
| which I estimate to be $X for the first academic year and $Y in
| subsequent years.
|
| > How long will it take?
|
| The new approach will be rolled out within the first 2 months of
| the school year, with ongoing professional development throughout
| the year.
|
| > What are the mid-term and final "exams" to check for success?
|
| We will continue to rely on the same reading assessments we have
| been using. We will also conduct qualitative evaluations of
| teachers' and students' attitudes toward the program in November,
| February, and June.
| red_admiral wrote:
| It also sounds like good questions to ask students who come to
| you with ideas for term projects, if your school does those.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Heilmeier Catechism (1977)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17272801 - June 2018 (19
| comments)
| swayvil wrote:
| It's like a scientific method except with an added minimal step
| of abstraction. It's like a rule for technical writing except the
| writing is a kind of proof. It's a clarifier, or a bullshit-
| filter. This kind of precise language-use really thrills me.
| hdivider wrote:
| Reminds me of how different DARPA was in the early years,
| compared to now.
|
| If you're interested in how the modern Agency functions, I'd
| suggest reading _The DARPA Model for Transformative
| Technologies_.
|
| It describes some of the typical trends in our time: contracts
| too often go to entrenched players and primes, rather than
| startups as primes due to technical merit rather than past
| performance and relationships. DARPA personnel reaching out from
| anonymous mailboxes post-RFI submission, asking if your team has
| TS/Sci clearance. (No answer if it's not a complete 100% yes.)
| And landlordism: extracting value from an existing system rather
| than seeding many new technologies.
|
| However, there is still nothing like DARPA, despite its many
| problems. DIU is more for near-term innovation, and had its
| budget cut 20% just now. AFRL, AFWERX, Army SBIR/STTR, and so on,
| are all critical but not built to prevent technological surprise.
| Thank your lucky stars we have DARPA still up and running after
| so many decades.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| To me the biggest sign that this is from a different era is
| seeing a Director personally generate something of value! It
| seems like leadership are all figureheads or apparatchiks or
| MBAs these days, usually subtracting from the mission rather
| than adding.
|
| The cult of professional administration is the single most
| destructive thing in America today, in my opinion.
| throwoutway wrote:
| What is the cult of professional administration?
| coderintherye wrote:
| Not GP, but for me the phrase is referring to the idea that
| everything needs to be professionally administered like an
| enterprise business (e.g. government, colleges, etc.) with
| organizational structures that reflect that. It typically
| values process and procedure over curiosity and innovation.
| gumby wrote:
| This is a cultural plague in pretty much all activity
| these days. Even in the age of memes, influencers, and
| user-generated content, everything has been
| professionalized,
|
| Professional sports has overwhelmed real amateur leagues.
| The Music Industry has displaced a lot of just getting
| together and singing badly. Wedding planners, summer gap
| year planners, even professional Christmas tree
| decorators. There are few roadside restaurants that don't
| basically reheat something delivered frozen by CISCO.
| Random roadside motels and amateurish amusement park
| attractions have vanished in the face of chains. Even
| tinkering happens at a high level.
|
| Sure, all the non-professional things still _exist_ , but
| are a miniscule fraction of how they used to be.
| trhway wrote:
| I think Grand/Urban Challenge was the last great project and
| success. The openness for participation was unprecedented
| resulting in lot of different startups taking part (from a
| "serious" point of view for example that Lewandowski autonomous
| bike was in the GC 2004 basically an utter laughing stock of a
| failure unimaginable in any "serious" setting, yet it was there
| too, and happened to be one of the key starting points of the
| modern autonomous industry). I think that success kind of
| scared the "serious" system so that even for Urban Challenge
| they already had a parallel "crony" track, and seems there
| haven't been such an open project since then.
|
| Wrt. original post - interesting how the catechism is different
| from the today's dominating approach of "we don't really know
| what we want, just have a very vague set of desires, lets try
| to achieve that small goal for that sprint which hopefully will
| move us in some desired direction, and we'll see after the
| sprint where it would lead us, and where we can make the next
| step from there."
| nextos wrote:
| DARPA PPAML (probabilistic programming for ML) was pretty
| good.
|
| It helped Stan reach maturity, and also led to things like
| Pyro.
|
| But we need to wait a bit more to see where this goes. The
| program only finished 5 years ago.
| nextos wrote:
| I have worked with ERC and many other funders, as well as in
| DARPA-funded projects. Talked to principal investigators,
| attended panel reviews, seen how projects are evaluated, etc.
|
| My impression is that, despite some problems, DARPA is
| outstanding compared to what we have across the pond.
| Obviously, that is not a reason to ignore issues or try to fix
| them.
|
| In fact, new initiatives are often trying to mimic DARPA. For
| example, Wellcome LEAP: https://wellcomeleap.org/leap-
| innovation-model/
| domoritz wrote:
| I learned about these from my PhD advisor and I've used them for
| every research project ever since. It's been very useful and I
| refer to it every month or so.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using
| absolutely no jargon._
|
| I think this is _very_ important, but I have seldom seen it in
| action. I tend to run into jargonauts, everywhere.
| iniekaas wrote:
| I've been using the catechism in everything I write throughout my
| PhD. It's real a catechism for academia, it's all about answering
| these questions in one way or another.
|
| I just start with it and start adding bullet points to answer
| these questions, then I put more bullet points and expand in
| them, and so on until I have enough material. Then I map it to
| each section of w/e document I am writing.
|
| It's been one of the most useful things in I've ever learnt
| about. Came to learn about it from an IEEE webinar by a professor
| of power systems (Siddharth Suryanarayanan) that I stumbled upon
| via vEvents when COVID-19 lockdowns started. I presented a copy
| of it to my lab in my PhD, helped my lab-mates clarify things to
| their supervisor and write. It was super effective.
| rangersanger wrote:
| I hadn't seen this before and I'm 100% going to steal it and use
| it for my next product/feature/business case pitch. At least as a
| start to prove value to myself.
|
| I'm fully aware of the utility of jargon in writing a business
| case, it lets me skip over the difficult, the warts, and the
| questionable. I wonder if there's a correlation between failed
| projects and how jargon heavy the initiation is?
|
| I also really like thinking about milestones as exam points.
| Calling them exams for success more directly gets at the point-
| to check in and course correct.
| josh2600 wrote:
| We use this internally at mobilecoin as the base framework for
| new PRDs. Very clarifying.
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