

19 year-old Stanford Ph.D. dropout Andrew Hsu is Changing Education - jmtame
http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/07/28/19-year-old-stanford-ph-d-dropout-andrew-hsu-is-changing-education/

======
Alex3917
"In college, there’s far less social pressure to maintain popularity, and
you’re actually valued for your intelligence. [...] The major difference to me
in high school vs. college is the work in college–for me at least–is actually
challenging and intellectually interesting."

I think Andrew's view of college is overly shaped by the fact that he went to
an elite college at age 12. Had he matriculated at 18 he probably would have
been bored as fuck. Especially if he was at a real college, i.e. one where the
education and social dynamics were actually representative of the experience
of the vast majority of college students.

Also, does he have any actual knowledge of the research that's been done on
education? If he does, this interview certainly doesn't hint at it. Not to be
overly critical, but I'm really not sold based on this interview.

~~~
shareme
I agree the interview does not get to the gist..

some new theories and applications to learning are coming out of neuroscience
but I am unsure if Andrew specialized in that area at least from the
interview.

The older neuroscience stuff we are already aware of that humans remember in
3s, 5s, and 7s of items, several channels used at once such as visual audio
increases info percentage retained more so when skills re-used, etc.

~~~
Alex3917
Even if he did specialize in that area of neuroscience, it's largely
irrelevant. Sociology and psychology are much more important for understanding
how to do education right, followed by anthropology and cognitive development.
There are definitely a few good insights from neuroscience, but it's not
really a field that's produced many game changers, at least not yet. Even
history is more important than neuroscience at this point.

~~~
wcarss
Hi, I don't feel great about "calling you out", but I want to ask if you hold
a degree, or have pursued extensive study (perhaps to the point of publishing
a peer-reviewed article) in any of the fields of neuroscience, anthropology,
psychology, sociology, cognitive development, or educational research?

Your reply comes off as highly authoritative, but I don't want to just default
to trusting that you are an expert in every (or even any) field mentioned, and
hence, are able to produce an authoritative hierarchy of their usefulness as
applied to a specific unsolved problem.

Sorry to be that guy!

~~~
Alex3917
No problem. I've taken a few classes on education and I've read a bunch of
books on the research.

It would be difficult to defend any sort of hierarchy in a rigorous way, but
there is generally a pretty good consensus on which findings are the most
important. For example, the is a pretty broad agreement that if a kid shows up
at school after having not eaten for three days and their parents have been
beating the shit out of them, then they probably aren't going to learn very
well regardless of what neuroscience theory you're using. And since these
sorts of problems effect 80+% of the kids in many school districts, you
basically have to design schools around these sorts of issues before you can
really start optimizing the content. Albeit all of the research sort of fits
together.

It's a good question though, so I'll throw up a Squidoo page with a bunch of
the best books on education that I've found.

~~~
Alex3917
<http://twitter.com/#!/AlexKrupp/status/97016704860823552>

------
hugh3
OK, this guy sounds very impressive, but his educational experiences were so
_very_ atypical that I'm concerned whether he'd have any real grasp of how
normal people learn.

I get the feeling that going to his classes would be like getting swimming
lessons from a mermaid.

~~~
neoveller
And why shouldn't I want to take swimming lessons from a mermaid? Sounds like
a dream.

~~~
hugh3
I originally wrote "merman", I should have stuck with that. Yes, if you want
to look at boobies then learning swimming from a mermaid is a good idea, but
if you want to learn to swim it's non-ideal.

"OK, now thrash your tail"

"I don't have a tail!"

"Oh... uhhh, so do those leg things move independently or what?"

------
emit_time_n3rgy
Gaming has been addressed for years by others as it pertains to learning and
the future. There are also others working in areas that are proving very
useful.

(one of the best videos I've seen)

[http://www.phibetaiota.net/2010/09/video-visions-of-the-
game...](http://www.phibetaiota.net/2010/09/video-visions-of-the-
gamepocalypse-possible-futures-waking-up-thinking-and-creating-a-better-
world/)

"Serious games"

[http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/imgd404x-c11/playable.ht...](http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/imgd404x-c11/playable.html)

<http://www.gamesforchange.org>

Child-driven education

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

<http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/>

Music + hands-on creative work

[http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_543015...](http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_543015.html)

There's an incredible story (inspiring & practical) of a boy without healthy
legs gaining access to salvaged computers and free software to apply his
graphics skills to pull his way out of the slums....it's less than 3/4 of the
way through this speech by Eben Moglen called "Before and After IP: Ownership
of Ideas in the 21st Century" [http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/audio/DSG-CUNY-
BeforeAndAfter...](http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/audio/DSG-CUNY-
BeforeAndAfterIP.mp3)

I've been collecting a ton of related links and posting them at <http://re-
configure.org/drupal/node/33>

~~~
emit_time_n3rgy
Russian president calls for World of Warcraft-like game for Russian history -
<http://dvice.com/archives/2011/07/russias-prez-wa.php>

------
ap22213
I worked in 'educational technology' for years trying to solve 'issues' in
education, training, and general Human learning. We called the field advancing
Human Potential.

During this time, we tried out all sorts of concepts, worked with world
leaders and world class theorists and researchers. We built all sorts of
systems, and products, simulators, interactive games, expert systems,
individual tutors, and other things of blended nature. These products were
built for governments, research institutes, and commercial companies. Some of
the 'products' had empirical results that surprisingly showed that they were
'useful', too. However, there weren't ever any revolutions in education or
learning or educational theory, while I was there.

I eventually dropped out from this field from burnout. Why? Because of the
people. This area of interest seems to attract people with very similar
personality traits. Reading this article and the subject reminds me of the
type of people who want to 'solve' education. It is not at all unusual to work
with people in this field who complete advance degrees while still in puberty.
I worked with a guy who ended up the chair of mathematics at world-class
university before he was 20. These are all 'geniuses', as they have been
taught and trained to think. And, interestingly they all seem to clamor around
this tall flag of solving education.

I believe the failure of this field is actually that most of these people
running it are very 'left brain' analytical thinkers. They think that they can
solve these very dynamic, chaotic educational systems by decomposition and
reductionism. It's kind of funny actually. Smart people get addicted to being
smart, and they want to encourage the use of the systems that gave them the
personal 'high' to begin with.

------
glimcat
TIL grad students who have second thoughts about their PhD program are the new
college dropouts.

~~~
dstein
It's probably a marketing thing, since people with PhD's aren't usually the
entrepreneur-type.

~~~
hugh3
You'd be amazed by how many entrepreneurs have PhDs.

~~~
xal
I would be. Is this really common? My own story is the common one of highshool
dropout who dropped about because he was bored in school and this is something
I hear about in many of my peers.

~~~
glimcat
The attributes of good entrepreneurs and good research students are highly
correlated. It's quite common in engineering, but less so in other fields
where research isn't as likely to have direct commercial applications.

~~~
dstein
You guys are going to have to come up with some evidence. I don't see how
someone who could go through the entire University process all the way to a
research PhD if what they really wanted was to start their own business.

~~~
glimcat
Examples are abundant. Stephen Wolfram would be a prominent example.

The "I need X, but existing X is nonexistent or crappy, so I'm going to make
my own X" thinking seems to be a common motivator. Technically-competent
entrepreneurs often fall into this case.

Meet some more grad students and you'll get a clearer picture of this fairly
quickly. This is at least a consideration for many engineering grads.

~~~
hugh3
Wolfram's one example. Most of the founders of Intel. Genentech. The vast
majority of biotech or nanotech startups.

You won't find too many PhDs starting companies that make web apps and iPhone
games, though. They're starting companies in the _really_ high tech areas,
areas at the forefront of technology that folks without PhDs don't understand
just yet.

------
dweekly
This dude is my mentee as part of 20 under 20. He is super sweet, super
humble, and super curious about the world in a way that is refreshing to see
for someone so accomplished at his age. This "Zen mind is beginner's mind"
mentality is a harbinger of success IMHO. <3

------
grandalf
I think most people on HN could have completed high school academics by age 12
or 13 with sufficient discipline and focus. This is not all that remarkable
intellectually, but it's rare that a child that age has the will (or
opportunity) to make it happen.

~~~
jackpirate
I think the same thing. The question is, should we?

I wonder how many people who go on to do Nobel-quality work were in college at
the age of 12? My intuition is very few. I think something very important is
lost when bored 12-year-olds don't learn how to experiment on their own.
Essentially 100% of the pioneer hackers cut their teeth this way.

Of course, I'm probably just jealous that I didn't matriculate early and have
3 BS's by 19.

~~~
grandalf
I agree. In an ideal world people with these capabilities would be able to
spend their childhoods in an environment tailored to very bright children
their own age, with materials and curriculum tailored to their strengths and
with attention paid to cultivating passion and minimizing overspecialization.

~~~
dan-k
I really like that you included minimizing overspecialization. Academics is
getting so hyper-compartmentalized that overspecialization is not only ignored
in most disciplines, but it's even encouraged in many (computer science
included). That's one of the reasons I'm starting to rethink my longstanding
plans of going to grad school after finishing college next year. People who
focus all of their waking lives on one thing will tend to get more attention
for how quickly they progress in it than the rest of us, but that's not really
good for that much beyond press coverage or your name in a record book. Truly
revolutionary accomplishments require much more than an uncanny dedication to
memorizing algorithms or chemical names, but those are precisely the sort of
traits that will move you quickly through formal education (or get you that
coveted expert status from the 10,000-hour rule). Though I certainly won't
bash someone with three college degrees by 16, especially without knowing more
about them personally, even Andrew Hsu shows evidence of that, with all of the
degrees being in biochem-related fields. I strongly suspect that the next
discovery that completely alters our paradigms of thought and/or creates a new
field of study will come from someone with a broader background, who can
synthesize expertise from many fields into insights that everyone else
overlooks.

~~~
jackpirate
Don't let overspecialization discourage you from grad school!

Grad school is all about what you can do for yourself, not following other
people's vision. You set your priorities, determine which classes you take
(you could combine a history of Shakespearian tragedy and quantum mechanics
with a CS degree, for example).

Here's some reading that might encourage you to rethink grad school. The
memoir of James Watson (Watson and Crick, discoverers of DNA double helix)
_Avoid Boring People_. Also, Hamming's speech "You and Your Research."
(<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>) Both talk about
why overspecialization is bad, and what you can do as a young researcher to
broaden your understanding.

------
MisterMerkin
I was wondering how he had 3 B.S.'s and was a drop out. And then I saw the
next line. He dropped out of the _Ph.D. program_. At _19_.

...

Hats off.

------
johnrob
This person is very smart, but (as far as I can tell) he's never instructed
everyday students before - is that a problem?

------
SkyMarshal
What I wouldn't give for a TLDR. All I want to know is how his strategy for
improving education diffs from Khan Academy, who I think is the frontrunner
right now in that endeavor, without wading through the author's rant and a
discussion on some kid's gaming habits.

------
sireat
On one hand, I admire the guy for tackling such a worthwhile problem and also
having accomplished so much so young.

On the other hand, I wonder if this may be the case of being extremely book
smart and not so streetwise.

Why not wait till you finish your PhD at the young age of 22? You will be more
mature by then and know quite a bit more.

If you already had built a working prototype(doesn't even have to be MVP) and
experienced some sort of positive feedback, sure drop out.

Otherwise, continue working on your ideas in your spare time. Bill, Larry and
Sergey only dropped out when they had something happening.

For those already in the workplace example of patio11 is very admirable.

The interview mentions that they are just getting started and are at least 6
months from a prototype. Unless Andrew has some sort of edge from his studies,
this venture doesn't have any inherent advantages.

Disclaimer: I dropped out at 19 partially because I heard the PhD guys I was
writing software for complaining so much about their progress. It took me 15
years to get back into school.

------
seagaia
I'm sure (if he hasn't already) he could definitely go to a few public schools
(some of the rather worse ones, say in urban L.A. or something) to see how
they work out. Might give him good ideas. It's a vital step to experience that
stuff first hand.

------
mvzink
You know he's looking toward the future when he calls the Khan Academy videos
"archaic" :P

------
eeperson
Weird, I think I went to college with him.

~~~
crocowhile
You don't remember if a 12 yo was in college with you?

------
rkon
\- Labeled as a “genius” from IQ testing at 6 years old

"I think genetics play a small role. I’m naturally smart and I have the
ability to absorb information pretty quickly just by reading. But that only
counts for a small part." - Andrew Hsu

I guess all the brainpower in the world can't magically cure arrogance or
grant humility. I don't doubt that he'll be very successful in _something_ ,
but he's so comically out of touch with the reality of public education that I
doubt he'll ever have an impact there.

~~~
jmtame
It didn't feel like I was talking to an alien who had no understanding of the
problem with education today when I interviewed him. He started having
attention problems in 4th grade (which is the age he's targeting), and all of
the problems he described to me lined up with my own beliefs.

I know it reads as blatantly bragging, but from my interactions with Andrew
(having met him at his office personally and then having done the interview
over Skype), he didn't come across that way. It sounded to me like he had
explained it many times before and was trying his best to succinctly give a
straight answer. He seemed pretty normal by social standards, and I have some
engineering friends who are sincere assholes with an ego much larger than
Andrew's, if that's how you perceive him. I think most hackers and especially
programmers have some amount of that cockiness though, that's not something
we're all immune to. Even the CS professors admit that CS students walk around
feeling more entitled than liberal arts students (and it's scribbled on the
bathroom stalls: "Liberal arts degree dispenser below" right above the toilet
paper roll in an engineering building on the campus I went to). Anyway, that
wasn't the vibe I got from him, although I can see how you could read it that
way.

It's an interesting point brought up: has he had enough painful experience
with education to build a solution to it all? I don't know. I don't think it
takes much to fix education; it's so broken that any young person today with
an appreciation for gaming could probably figure out something better than
what exists now. But I'm really interested in seeing what his team comes up
with, and if someone wants to work on education, I'm more than supportive of
those efforts because that whole process sucks right now.

~~~
Hyena
"I don't think it takes much to fix education; it's so broken that any young
person today with an appreciation for gaming could probably figure out
something better than what exists now."

Why so?

~~~
pjscott
The world of gaming has put a lot of work into discovering how to motivate
people to keep going, even if what they're doing isn't actually that fun.
Think of grinding in an MMORPG, or whatever the hell people do on Farmville:
it's not that fun, probably significantly less fun than playing Super Mario
Brothers 3, and yet people spend hours and hours on it.

And yet teachers have trouble getting students to learn anything.

~~~
Hyena
I think this is inaccurate both in its presumed comparison and in the premise
which underlies it.

First, grinding (really farming, no one outside of Korea grinds anymore, which
I'll get to) in an MMO or playing Farmville is pretty low intensity mentally,
it does not require that much of your attention. Multi-tasking is easy, for
example. I'm not so sure that you would be able to grind away at mentally
taxing activities. It generates fatigue.

Second, though, is that video games have not figured out a way to effectively
reward boring activities. Let's use MMORPGs. When I played Final Fantasy XI,
grinding was so tedious I quit before level 20. EverQuest 2 was better, but
not too much more. WoW was fairly easy. RIFT was a breeze. Each new release is
easier than the last, indicating that grinding is something game developers
have learned to avoid rather than create ways of rewarding it. As an empirical
test, it seems like a resounding rejection of thesis.

I'm not sure gamification is going to get much done on the education front. I
think this idea resounds with techies because they like video games, they
often like to show their accomplishments and they like the ego-stroke the
concept of displacing education with games brings.

------
zackattack
Education is mostly about emotional communication. If you can communicate
Emotional Space and Respect to someone and you can give them a compelling
Emotional desire for why to learn something, and you consistently exemplify
the skill, learning is very automatic. It happens in the animal kingdom all
the time.

