
Why college students who do historical research become analytical thinkers - diodorus
https://theamericanscholar.org/habits-of-mind/#.VJG9KYrF8zE
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eastbayjake
History major turned software engineer here. I think history gives its
students two key skills:

(1) You have to wade through a lot of complexity and nuance, try to find the
signal in the noise, and then marshall some of that complexity to support your
argument. After you've speedwalked through thousands of pages of archival
documents and other scholars' arguments, it's comparatively easy to be thrown
~50 pages of framework or API documentation and quickly find what you need.
(That's also why I'm excited that Common Core puts greater emphasis on reading
non-fiction to learn skills, instead of every English class being about
reading fiction for pleasure. It builds the same skills.)

(2) You get used to the feeling that you know only a tiny fraction of what
there is to know about the world. That intellectual humility leads you to ask
good questions, try empathizing with perspectives and ideas that may seem
strange at first glance, and only make careful assertions that are supported
by strong evidence.

And by no means do I think history is the only academic discipline teaching
students these things. I just wish it got more respect!

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minthd
>> I'm excited that Common Core puts greater emphasis on reading non-fiction
to learn skills

I agree.

I wonder, what other kinds of skills should be taught in k-12 that aren't
taught today?

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analog31
I attended a liberal arts college, and enjoyed the courses that I took in most
subjects. I got good grades. I'm still interested in many of the topics
gathered under the umbrella of "humanities."

But it strikes me that "humanities students become analytical thinkers" is as
much of a meme as "humanities students become baristas," at least in the
absence of supporting evidence.

It could be true, and to some extent is anecdotally supported by those among
my acquaintances who studied in the humanities, but that could be just a
matter of survivor bias. We don't hear from the ones who didn't become
analytical thinkers, or we associate them with their terminal degrees, such as
MBAs.

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ctdavies
I'm writing this just to comment on your use of the word "meme"; it's not
intended to be a criticism* but the expression of an observation.

In your fourth sentence, it seems that are using "meme" to specifically denote
an idea or statement that is unsupported or unverified. This is not wrong, but
I have not seen this particular usage of the word before. It does differ from
Dick Dawkins' original meaning: he used "meme" to denote the component in
cultural evolution whose role is analogous to that of genes in biological
evolution. But I find your use to be an interesting development in the
development of "meme" and the memes it signifies†.

\-----

* However, I do believe the conversation has been framed improperly: e.g., the groups "baristas" and "analytical thinkers" do not have mutually exclusive membership, but instead intersect significantly. There exists many an analyst barista who brews Brazilian whilst brooding about Bruegel at Bruegger's Bagels, plenty espresso-synthesists with scholastic emphases on existentialists' expressions of Parisian café culture (dissertation: "Bean & Nothin'ess"), and please don't get me started on those poor doctoral students who must lecture on Melville in the morn then manage a late shift at the mall latte-mill aptly named after Ahab's first mate.

† Indeed, for me, I find to be the memetics of "meme" a remarkably meta
matter, and that fact is itself alone the motivation to make my remarks (I
must mention, if I may).

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griffinmahon
Are you familiar with Rap Genius? If not, they use "meme" as catch-all-word-
for-units-of-culture pretty often, too. Interesting phenomenon for sure

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BorgHunter
The way this article uses the word "humanist" had me quite confused for a few
paragraphs. It doesn't match the use of the word that I'm familiar with.[0] I
think it's using the word as in "academics involved in the humanities";
hopefully my note will help some other people who had a similar initial
reaction.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism)

~~~
therealdrag0
Oh interesting. I was thrown also by the use. Just looked it up and found:
"3a. A classical scholar. b. A student of the humanities. 4\. Humanist A
Renaissance scholar devoted to Humanism." [0] So I guess it's a pretty major
use of the word.

[0][http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanist](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanist)

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saretired
"Kolmogorov also started as a nonmathematician--he was studying history. His
first paper, written when he was seventeen, was reported at a seminar given by
Bakhrushin at Moscow University. Kolmogorov came to some conclusion based on
an analysis of medieval tax records in Novgorod. After his talk, Kolmogorov
asked Bakhrushin whether he agreed with the conclusions. 'Young man,' the
professor said, 'in history, we need at least five proofs for any conclusion.'
Next day, Kolmogorov switched to mathematics. The paper was rediscovered in
his archive after his death and is now published and approved by historians."

\--V.I. Arnold, "An Interview with V.I. Arnold," Notices of the AMS, 44(4).

~~~
MyHypatia
"In this work, he used mathematical arguments to answer the following
question: was it (i) a village that was taxed in the first place, and then the
tax as divided between households, or (ii) the other way around, where it was
a household that was originally taxed, and then the sum represented the total
to be paid by the village?... Because the total received were always an
integer number of (changing) monetary units, Kolmogorov proved that it was
rule (ii) that was adopted" -Probability and Statistics by Example, Volume 1.

I guess the households that paid their tax either always paid it in full, or
if they paid a portion it was always an integer value?

While you're definitely more likely to get integer values in the end if
everyone is taxed $1,000 rather than $999.30. It still makes me wonder how
they always ended up with integers in the end.

I guess if I have to write a check to pay off a portion of an amount I'm more
likely to pay $400 than 399.90. But maybe it also had something to do with how
their monetary system was set up.

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ddingus
What else does one do with history, besides just experiencing it like one does
a good story?

I didn't understand that when history seemed boring. After all, it had already
happened. The excitement is in what could happen.

Once a person actually does start exploring history of any kind, they reach a
point where mere experience isn't enough, and as they get there, they realize
the value of history is in the data associated with that history.

Another analytical thinker is born.

This isn't limited to college students. Anybody actually interested in a
better understanding can and should be looking at history as a means to that
end.

And it can be as simple as actually paying attention to life experiences at a
minimum.

~~~
agumonkey
The scarcity of data makes history very subtle and interesting. Something we
rarely get in schools since we're fed facts and dates (and only partial
reasons). When you learn how an historian finally discover by cross
referencing antique texts, remains of artwork, geology, etc, it's hard not to
be thrilled.

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gyardley
It's not the scarcity of the data that makes history subtle or interesting -
after all, most periods and areas of study have a surfeit of data. Even when I
was studying 17th century Russia, there were more primary source documents in
the (terribly, horribly catalogued and organized) archives than I could
possibly read in a lifetime.

The truly subtle bits come from the need to thoroughly understand the _Sitz im
Leben_ \- as best you can, the surrounding context in which the source was
produced and the purpose _for_ which the source was produced. Without that,
you just end up with anachronistic presentism.

In my opinion, the need to place oneself as deeply as possible in a completely
foreign period and mindset before the interpretation of a new source can even
begin is what makes historians excellent analytical thinkers - as well as
extremely useful product managers and marketers.

~~~
agumonkey
Well, the surrounding context is also part of the data, even though I
understand that it's easy to forget embedding yourself in it to interpret the
data already at hand.

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pm90
History is an amazing field to do research in, but its incredibly complex as
well. It can be especially enlightening to delve into and imagine the true
conditions under which our ancestors had operated in. There is a tendency of a
lot of people to 'explain' history without much research and sometimes this
view of history becomes very popular. The advent of the internet has allowed a
lot of published material to be more easily available to either validate or
debunk historical facts.

I hope a more rigorous and scientifically accurate view of history emerges in
the future, where children will question the biased views of their parents and
discover "the truth" for themselves. Maybe their children will then get a
better opportunity to understand history.

~~~
mason240
It's my hope there is a backlash in the next generation against pop-history
like The Oatmeals of ours.

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im3w1l
The conclusion: Doing reasearch by attacking a problem that matters to the
student, identifying and mastering the sources, posing a big question and
answering it in a clear and cogent way, in the company of a trained
professional who cares about the problem and the student, makes the student an
analytical thinker.

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jmathes
This is possibly a good article; I can't tell, not being up to date on current
academic culture around humanites, which is what the article is about.

I don't think this belongs on Hacker News, though

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geebee
True historical research isn't something many undergraduates do, and I can see
how it would be exceptionally valuable.

Unfortunately, many undergrad courses simply have you read existing analysis,
or at best present you with "primary sources" that are served up to you with
no real digging around. It's not that the books you read are of low quality -
often, they're really high quality. I remember reading a very elaborate
history about the naval arms race between Britain and Germany prior to WWI,
and I got a lot out of it. But what I never did was truly dig into the data. I
believe it, but did I ever actually go to the the documents (without someone
spoon feeding them to me in a way that leads to only one conclusion)? Nope.

Here's the thing - this can actually lead to big errors later in life. One
amusing story I had - I worked on supply chain issues for a big manufacturing
company once, and during an interview, I was talking excitedly about various
mathematical approaches. The interviewer (a math PhD who eventually did hire
me) stopped me and reminded me of how detailed the work really is. He said
that one young engineer who worked there had spent six months digging through
documents, and had discovered the source of an inefficiency. The QA tests for
some components was different in Asia and Europe, so the pieces were passing
in one location, getting shipped, failing in the other, getting shipped,
passing… in this loop. It had nothing to do with math, it had everything to do
with actually getting truly ground level with documents, tests, bits of paper,
factory floors, and figuring out what exactly was actually going on in the
world.

On a grimmer note, a huge factor in the banking crisis was that people used
mathematical models without actually looking at the reality behind them. Yes,
a package of very high quality mortgages has a low probability of collapsing,
and if you take that low probability number and stick it into your model, all
is well. But if you actually dig into the reality, find the documents, realize
many of the documents don't exist, and realize that the ones that do are not
at all the high quality loans that would typically get a strong rating, and
ask why, realize that the package was rated with stronger loans that were
taken out replaced with bad loans, the new ones being used to create a new
package with a new high rating, over and over, and that the company that did
this is now taking out insurance policies against the loan packages that they
prepared because they know they have a vastly higher rate of default than the
insurers think (based on the faulty rating)…

well, then you're thinking like a history major who actually dealt with true
historical research. And the few people who did this were aware of what was
coming long before everyone else.

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enupten
Aha, so that's why Ed Witten won the Fields medal :)

