[HN Gopher] Variability, Not Repetition, Is the Key to Mastery
___________________________________________________________________
Variability, Not Repetition, Is the Key to Mastery
Author : maksimur
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-10-27 07:27 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scotthyoung.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scotthyoung.com)
| abudabi123 wrote:
| Learning and earning to teach is one shortcut.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| > Bruce Lee is reported to have said, "I fear not the man who has
| practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one
| kick 10,000 times." With all due respect to Mr. Lee, he might
| have been wrong about this one.
|
| Yes, Bruce Lee must be wrong, because obviously it has to be one
| end of the spectrum or the other /s. How about the man who has
| practiced 100 kicks 100 times each? Maybe he's the one to fear.
| naet wrote:
| I think a better metaphor for the main point of the article
| might be the man who has practiced one kick in 10,000 different
| ways.
|
| If he practiced it 10,000 times in the exact same spot on a
| punching bag he wouldn't have the same understanding of it that
| he would if he practiced it high, low, with the other leg, in a
| tournament bout, on the sand, eyes closed, after a punch, etc.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| At the risk of being a little tactless, duh.
|
| An easy comparison is take a driver who's had three months of
| experience driving versus somebody with three years, they'll be a
| huge gap in proficiency. Now take the three-year driver and
| compare them against someone who's been driving for three
| decades, you're fine surprisingly there's very little difference
| in ability.
|
| Our brains are ruthlessly efficient and the moment that they can
| optimize away learning, that's when you're no longer acquiring
| skill.
| V__ wrote:
| This sounds very much like differential learning (see Wolfgang
| Schollhorn) to me. In my personal experience it is a very potent
| training method when it comes to learning motor skills, and
| having observed two children learn to crawl and walk it also
| seems to be a "natural way" to learn for us.
|
| I also observed myself learning non-motor skills better when
| applying this method in some form. I think most people here know
| about the yearly Advent of Code challenge. Often people use it to
| try out a new language and have fun. I believe one of the key
| reasons for its success (besides the fun) are the frequently
| similar, but slightly different, problems. Forcing people to
| approach it from slightly different viewpoints and trying out
| small variations, thus resulting in a deep understanding and
| learning effect.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Hmmm ... I'm a fan of differential learning and other techniques
| for variablity of practice. Was just reading through
| https://perceptionaction.com/vp/ earlier today. However I'm not
| convinced motor learning research transfers to all learning,
| which seems to be the basis for the claim made in the blog post.
| My own experience is motor learning is quite different to
| learning symbol manipulation tasks like maths and programming.
| tsumnia wrote:
| I'd actually disagree and my current research in CS Education
| is attempting to incorporate sport pedagogy into the learning
| process! I do plan to read through your link more thoroughly
| later tonight so thanks for that.
|
| In a nutshell, we knock that CS1 courses have a high number of
| drop/fail/withdrawals due to several different factors. These
| include course difficulty, time management skills, and not
| feeling welcomed in the community (lack of representation,
| assuming CS students must love video games, etc). I don't focus
| much in inclusivity (though a number of faculty at NC State
| do), but I'm looking for methods to reduce difficulty. My
| thesis stems from methodologies I've used while teaching
| martial arts - specifically focusing on lower-level "build
| blocks" practice.
|
| We can represent different learning activities by the amount of
| "creation" a student must engage in - Passive (watching
| lectures) require no creation, Active is repeating solution
| steps, Construction is critiquing steps, and Interactive is a
| co-creation process between the student and another student,
| instructor, or system. These form the ICAP framework by Mickie
| Chi. My arguments are that if a student is struggling with an
| Interactive exercise, like a traditional coding problem, then
| they should "downgrade" their practice to something lower level
| like self-explanation or debugging. However, if THOSE
| activities are still difficult, we can downgrade to an even
| lower-level of having them simply repeat (the mindless 'copy
| the dictionary' activities modern education hates).
|
| My rationale again looks at how technical skills, like martial
| arts, are learned. Typically we start with warm ups, a brief
| demonstration on a few movements from the instructor, and then
| students are asked to pair up and drill the moves. Then the
| instructor builds on the moves with another demonstration, and
| then students repeat their process. Eventually, students spar
| (or apply the technique in a live problem). I argue that
| traditional coding problems are analogous to live sparring
| because students need to incorporate writing code, problem
| solving, debugging, code tracing, etc. If they struggle with
| some of those skills, they struggle in the activity. Rather
| than having them learn all the skills "in situ" while coding,
| maybe lower level deliberate practice targeting a single skill
| can help strengthen their overall foundation.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| freemrkt8 wrote:
| Such an idea has been discussed for centuries. Adam Smith warned
| division of labor would lead people to become "...as stupid and
| ignorant as it is for a human creature to become." by repeating
| the same career behaviors for too long.
|
| IMO this explains a great deal about current society stuck on the
| idea re-training is a waste, the habit of re-electing politicians
| for decades being one outcome of living life "on the career
| escalator."
|
| Such an inner monologue becomes a default state of being.
|
| Accepting simple memes like "will work for money" become the norm
| and "will work to acquire knowledge" becomes vulgar language.
| gre wrote:
| A common tactic in practicing music is to play a passage slowed
| down, sped up, with varying rhythms, up/down an octave, etc, with
| the idea that if you have complete mastery you can also play it
| the way it's written.
| hammock wrote:
| Interesting that this works on piano but is not practiced in
| singing.
| lloeki wrote:
| Not my experience. I'm learning to sing, my spouse is a pro
| singer, she told me "pick a song, preferably one you don't
| know well so as not to be biased, sing it a thousand ways
| over and over, try it right, try it wrong, try whacky stuff,
| try nonsense stuff, talk it, rap it, twist it, warp it
| around, then do it all over again a thousand times, and
| finally, sing it your way."
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| Seems to be an argument more for spaced repetition and
| incremental reading.
|
| "If your collection combines knowledge pertaining to different
| subject domains, the stream of new ideas and unexpected
| associations coming to your mind may surprise you"
| https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_learning
| maksimur wrote:
| Spaced repetition and incremental reading don't have to be a
| conscious effort or implemented with flashcard systems, in fact
| it might be better not to, depending on your goals.
|
| After extensive practice with such systems (talking years
| between physical flaschards, supermemo and anki), I found it
| leads to shallow understanding and bad linking between
| knowledge bits, even though I make sure I understand before
| committing something to spaced repetition. The valuable part
| looks like to be in the effort of understanding, thinking
| deeply and widely and summarizing. If you frequently read,
| practice and revise your knowledge and see how it interlinks,
| you will approximate spaced repetition at the very least.
|
| All in all flashcard systems taught me how to study effectively
| by being forced to understand and "atomize" knowledge, so it
| wasn't useless.
| lhuser123 wrote:
| To me is more about the balancing act. Memorization +
| understanding. Find the right combination that works for you.
| throwamon wrote:
| > Spaced repetition and incremental reading don't have to be
| a conscious effort
|
| > The valuable part looks like to be in the effort of
| understanding, thinking deeply and widely and summarizing.
|
| Which part of this is not conscious effort? You just made a
| stronger case for such automated systems, especially for
| people who don't have good memory or abnormal levels of
| discipline and motivation.
| tsumnia wrote:
| > After extensive practice with such systems (talking years
| between physical flaschards, supermemo and anki), I found it
| leads to shallow understanding and bad linking between
| knowledge bits
|
| The issue with flashcard style practice is that it doesn't
| offer much in "application"-learning, which may help explain
| the shallow understanding. Spaced repetition needs to be
| repetition of applying the concept, not reviewing it. I know
| that its not easy to do for all domains, but if you look at
| musicians (as another poster described), actors, artists,
| athletes, and martial artists (to borrow the article's
| reference), their spaced repetition is more about applying
| their craft to build muscle memory as well as create "a-ha"
| moments of insight.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-29 23:00 UTC)