
Alligator Eggs - raganwald
http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/
======
millerm
The funning this, I decided to do this for fun. I spent hours cutting out all
of these things (I still have them). Again, it was just for fun as I was
probably just listening to an audiobook or something (perhaps a little scotch
thrown in there). But... after I did all that cutting did I actually read the
post. There was no point! There was no game to play. Doh! I wasn't aware it
was only a concept and was unfinished.

~~~
danielweber
I read it wondering about the game dynamics. It felt like a trick to waste my
time when it wasn't a game, just a lesson about something else.

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raganwald
This has been posted before, but HN has grown since then and it deserves a
wider audience.

~~~
ars
Previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600736>

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qwertzlcoatl
Why would anyone go to so much trouble to make lambda calculus difficult?

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
I wonder if we can compare what happens over the long therm with people who
intuitively understand math vs. people who learn to understand it with the
help of metaphors such as above?

Are such un-abstractions helpful for teaching basic math knowledge? Advanced
math skills? Both?

~~~
incision
I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this...

I want think these things are great for a start, to reach that first epiphany
which clicks a concept in place, but I'm thinking they should be applied
selectively and discarded as soon as possible.

I base this pretty much entirely on my own frustrating experience being
"taught" with methods that focused entirely on and metaphors and procedures
for "how" of things, not the "why" which I believe is essential to any real
understanding.

~~~
sopooneo
In my experience teaching science and math, I've found this sort of analogy to
be of limitted utility. It is often possible to get a whole class on board
with the story and understanding the "rules" and able to come to the right
conclusions. They're thrilled. Then you try to bring up the more abstract
version and connect it and you get blank stares. Some kids make the connection
quickly, but they tend to be the ones that wouldn't have needed the story
version in the first place.

I have found that people who understand a topic well often mistake frameworks
of understanding that they come up with _after_ they understand for good ways
to teach the concept to people who don't yet understand. It's like people
think, "Oh I get it! Here's the big picture!" And they explain it that way.
But the big picture they came up with was the result, not the cause, of their
understanding.

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debacle
Add monkeys that throw eggs and you have a brainfuck interpreter.

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dmbaggett
This reminds me of an afternoon I spent with my then-officemate Carl de
Marcken at the MIT AI Lab, recasting Ackermann's function
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function>) as a pyramid scheme for
the weekly "Girl Scout Benefit / Graduate Student Beer" announcement
([http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb-
archive/gs...](http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb-
archive/gsb94-11nov18))

Re-reading it now, I'm struck by the fact that Larry Ellison _actually owns_ a
Hawaiian island (though not Kauai). The system works!

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skylan_q
I thought it felt familiar when I was reading the rules of the game! :p

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primitur
Be right back, off to yoink this into a Tablet app ..

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Evbn
Whoa, that post made the rounds of the functionalerati long before Bret became
famous for his kill math and kill programming stuff.

~~~
agumonkey
I'm speechless. I realize how far I've been reading his articles without
knowing it. Only since his reactive variable binding in js I've known his name
though.

