
Ask HN: How can i become a better explainer - skyisblue
I struggle to clearly explain things like a story i read on the news or a movie i watched recently. What can i do to be more eloquent?
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Jemaclus
Approach it like you're teaching someone who has zero knowledge. For anything
that isn't a common household term, explain it.

Instead of, "Tavis Ormandy broke news about Cloudflare's memory leak that
potentially reveals sensitive data," you explain each of those terms.

"This guy, Tavis Ormandy, is a security researcher at Google, so his job is to
investigate bugs and find ways into otherwise secure systems. Yesterday, he
wrote a blog post about a bug with Cloudflare. Cloudflare is what's called a
CDN or content delivery network. A CDN is a network of servers distributed
across the world, so that when you request data, they can find the closest one
to you and serve you content from that server. The closer it is, the faster
your download. That seems really useful for a lot of websites with lots of
traffic, right? Well, it turns out Cloudflare is one of the largest and most
popular CDNs out there. Anyway, Tavis revealed that Cloudflare had a memory
leak that revealed sensitive memory. A memory leak is... well, imagine an
Excel spreadsheet...."

It's like teaching someone calculus. In order to teach them calculus, the must
first know algebra. In order to know algebra, they need to know basic
arithmetic, and so on. For reach term, you either define it and then define
other terms in that definition, if needed (e.g., "Cloudflare is a CDN; a CDN
is...") or you make an analogy ("if you have a spreadsheet and the cells
represent bytes,...").

Anyway, that's my trick. Another way to practice this would be to subscribe to
/r/explainlikeimfive on Reddit, and try to answer questions as simply as
possible. Study some of the top answers and see how they do it. Like someone
else said, one trick is to actually know what you're talking about!

Good luck.

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ak39
Dude carry on, you were doing a good job! I for one want to understand this
Cloudflare fustercluck all over HN. Unfortunately i don't understand much of
what is written about it!

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ggambetta
I used to teach Computer Graphics for almost 10 years, and I like to believe I
became somewhat good at it. I've written some articles about fairly technical
topics and the reaction I tend to get is "oh wow, that's the clearest
explanation I've read".

I think it boils down to two things: form a mental model of the state of the
other person's mental model, and find a path from something they already know
to the thing you want them to know.

Start from some basic assumptions, state them explicitly if you need to. From
this starting point, build the explanation gradually, step by step, and
perhaps most importantly, in a way that makes sense _to them_.

That's how I structured my CG course. We alternated theory classes (where we'd
explore some concept, say, drawing a filled triangle) and a practical class
(where the students would implement that). So after the "filled triangle"
class, they applied the algorithm to their existing wireframe cube code, and
most of the time it looked completely wrong, because the order of the
triangles was random.

So I'd start the next class with "Last time your cube looked all wrong. Why?".
Students would offer their ideas, and I always tried to find _something_ right
in them to build towards the idea I wanted them to arrive at. Then I asked
"How can we fix this?", and again, depending on their suggestions, guide the
conversation towards the algorithms I wanted to "rediscover" (painter's
algorithm and depth buffering).

The key was that the students were very motivated to understand why their cube
looked wrong even though they had no bugs in their implementation. They
_wanted_ it to look right. And I didn't just walk in and say "open your book
on page 159, this is depth buffering" (I didn't use a book at all, in fact),
but "reinvented" the algorithm with them, based on their suggestions and some
gentle nudging in the right direction.

The worst thing in these circumstances is the opposite: "there's this random
thing you need to learn, it will make sense in 5 weeks, I promise".

Sorry for the long-winded answer... I hope it applies to explaining stories
and movies, and hey, this is HN ;)

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AbenezerMamo
Thank you so much for writing this! This is awesome <3 Kudos to you for being
a great teacher!

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bsvalley
It's like coding, when you fully understand OOP, you can easily switch
languages. Same goes for story telling. You need to learn the structure once,
then practice with different stories. People never take time to work on the
foundation... they jump straight to the story. Great story tellers are people
who use the same approach over and over. They ultimately get better at it.
They re-apply the same patterns for new stories. Each individual has its own
style. I'd suggest you to work on your own structure. How do you approach a
story? Do you start with a punch line that tells people you're about to tell a
story? Do you hypnotize people until they realize you're in the middle of a
long story and they've been listening for hours? There are different ways of
telling a story and you should start by asking yourself, what did I do
yesterday? Try to come up with an answer if someone asks you the question.
Write the structure down on paper and iterate until you come up with great
sentences. Do that during your commute to work. Get ready just in case... How
do you tell a great story? You need to highlight the emotions. Did you do
something cool yesterday? What was cook about it? Why was it cool? What was
your reaction? That's what people want, they're looking for emotional things
(things that makes them react). Usually great story tellers make me feel like
I was the subject in the story.

I mean... There are a lot of things you can do...

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yellowboxtenant
I was always impressed with one of my past IT managers at how he could "wing
it" when explaining the latest services his teams offered in front of a
hundred people. He also happened to be a pastor so I figured he had learned
something I didn't. I asked him if he had any secrets of the trade, and I'll
never forget his answer. He said "Yeah, I know what I'm talking about." So
simple, but don't forget to really know what it is you're explaining.

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nnn1234
This is a great question. Is there an algorithmic way to offer the best
explanation of an idea to an audience?

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err4nt
Do you mean filtering explanations by reading level, or displaying the answers
that best match an audiences comprehension level of certain things?

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nnn1234
Yes and more.

Is there an algorithmic way to get an explanation ? Then

What is the filtering mechanism to make sure the audience get maximal
understanding based on their comprehension level

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urahara
What is the particular problem behind it? Getting the main point, structuring
the answer, using the right words? These aspects should be addressed
differently, but they seem to be clear and easy to improve on. Like, learn to
quickly capture the core points of a book or film, train this ability by doing
it after each movie orbook. Look at some good book/film reviews to learn how
they are structured, what words are used. Train to write or talk aboun them
the same exciting way.

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hanksy
Think it through. Ask a question before beginning the topic. Provide some
history. Be more direct with the important parts. Summarize and keep it
simple.

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telebone_man
I remember reading about how politicians deliver information and learned a lot
about both effective 'explaining', story telling and just good conversation
structure.

Also, don't over think it!

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probinso
teaching is a good start

practice answering questions out loud (even when on your own)

practice communicating while restricting your resources (read picture-book
with it facing your audience, when discussing a bug with someone don't touch
their keyboard)

when listening to your favorite examples, pause the feed to consider why they
selected a particular path

