

Reinventing Explanation - bentoner
http://michaelnielsen.org/reinventing_explanation/

======
ivan_ah
This is an excellent essay which all EdTech people should read. We're all down
with more Tech in the Ed, but more interesting is getting the Ed into Tech,
i.e., not stupid arithmetic math and puzzles in computer games, but real math
reasoning.

> _Over the long run, humanity will no doubt build more powerful new patterns
> of explanation into our media platforms, permanently changing and expanding
> what we mean by explanation. We 're only just beginning to explore these
> possibilities, but it will be exciting to see what happens in the decades
> ahead as we reinvent explanation._

this

> _A second problem with educational games lies in the word "educational". The
> most important fact about compulsory schooling is that students do not --
> indeed, cannot -- choose to attend. Instead, they are required to attend,
> for what society deems "their own good". This is true even in the most
> enlightened schools. A student in such a coercive environment does not have
> full responsibility for their own learning. And, in my opinion, it is not
> possible to do serious intellectual work without full responsibility for
> your own learning. Put another way, I believe that compulsory schools, by
> their nature, are places where serious intellectual work cannot occur._

True. For many students, schools are prisons. Given this context, the quality
of the teaching material is more important. If I were in prison, I'd wish for
good books...

> _what would happen if we put the resources and talent of a major video game
> or movie studio toward creating great explanations, rather than pure
> entertainment products?_

It's called the Khan Academy ;)

______

My take on this is that we should aim for lowest common denominator: a system
based around HTML (like standalone .html files or .epub) with JavaScript
enabled (for MathJax and scripting canvas/svg interactives). Content written
in this system will be renderable on most pixel-based devices (for interactive
exploratory learning) and with a toLaTeX() method should also be printable
(for analytical learning).

____

Here's my attempt at the kidney studies' Simpson paradox in text. For large
kidney stones Treatment A helped 55 people out of 80, while Treatment B helped
192 out of 263, in two separate studies. For small kidney stones treatment A
helped 234 people out of 270, while Treatment B helped 81 out of 87, in the
same two studies.

We shouldn't really compare the statistics from the two trials since they were
performed on different patients. Nevertheless, since both studies had 350
patients in total, we can say that Treatment A is better since it helped a
total of 289 patients on that trial which is > than the 273 saved by Treatment
B.

    
    
                            Treatment A       Treatment B
       Large kidney stones	69% (55 / 80)	  73% (192 / 263)
       Small kidney stones	87% (234 / 270)	  93% (81 / 87)
       All patients	        83% (289 / 350)	  78% (273 / 350)

~~~
bkirwi
I know this is mostly orthogonal, but I think that's the wrong takeaway from
Simpson's paradox. As an illustration, let's translate into a situation we
have better intuitions for:

    
    
    			Glass of Water    Tylenol
       Migraine		69% (55 / 80)	  73% (192 / 263)
       Headache		87% (234 / 270)	  93% (81 / 87)
       All patients	        83% (289 / 350)	  78% (273 / 350)
    

By the same reasoning above, 'glass of water' would be the better cure for all
headaches, which is doesn't seem right. And yet all of the individual numbers
seem plausible... Tylenol helps more in general, and the difference is bigger
when the headache isn't that serious to begin with.

I think the handwavey explanation here is that the studies failed to run over
a representative sample of the population, which is what makes the results
difficult to compare between them. All other things being equal, Treatment B
_really is_ better; but not all other things were equal between the two
aggregates, so the overall percentage is misleading. When statisticians
'control' for some variable, it's this kind of wierdness that they're trying
to squeeze out.

------
duncanawoods
An interesting read. I don't think I agree with the argument that emotional
involvement is the foundation for understanding. I see the author conflating
memory and understanding where the emotional connection he discusses are just
associative memory triggers. We can use associative memory tricks to recall
many things we do not understand.

IMHO what unlocks understanding is use not emotion. I can "kind of" understand
a mathematical or programming concept by reading or demonstration but only
through active use in dozens of exercises or practical experience do I really
come to understand it. This is what matters about the Brett Victor example he
shows - it proposes environments for people to use and play with concepts
which IMHO is much more significant factor in understanding.

Maybe the author is only talking about the motivation to understand. To take
his example of topics with the depth of QM then such an investment of time and
effort is just so vast that there has to be something self-motivating about
the topic itself for someone to excel.

Its the reward of the topic in-itself that has sustained abstract topics like
math and I find "ways to make the topic more appealing" almost always doomed
to failure. If people are not inclined to substantial abstract thought then
putting it in a frilly dress isn't going to change much. What makes these
topics special to me is the loss of self as your mind becomes infused with
abstract concepts. Its the elegance that becomes exciting and takes you deeper
from curiosity and wonder. I don't need a game to understand a programming
concept, programming itself is already my preferred game.

Finally, I would say that emotional connections are a distraction from
achieving such flow mental states of understanding. If I feel I have something
to lose by not understanding, if I might be shamed or under some other
emotional pressure, it will interfere, not encourage my understanding.

~~~
pirateking
I read Mindstorms after Bret Victor recommended a couple years ago, and find
myself going back to it quite often as I research learning systems. In it,
Seymour Papert mentions emotion and feeling as important concepts in mental
model building[0]. You might find it an interesting viewpoint.

 _" What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models
he has available. This raises, recursively, the question of how he learned
these models. Thus the “laws of learning” must be about how intellectual
structures grow out of one another and about how, in the process, they acquire
both logical and emotional form."_

It is also worth reading Papert's colleague Marvin Minsky's book, The Emotion
Machine. It makes quite a more interesting study of emotion as the foundation
of understanding[1].

[0]
[http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf](http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine)

~~~
duncanawoods
Thank you. I have read the gears.pdf. I'd be interested to see some of your
research if you have any links?

I can clarify that I don't doubt emotion is integral to cognition and I think
its commonly understood the role of a good teacher is to help a student find a
sense of wonder, fascination and excitement about a topic.

What I do doubt is that adding an unrelated emotional context like a gamified
incentive or a movie plot around the explanation of an abstract topic will
fundamentally improve understanding. I think its superficial and can even
dilute the relationship one needs to build with the topic itself.

To interpret the author more generously, it would be a worthy goal for
learning tools to build the right sort of emotional connections like the old
St. Exupery quote:

> If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide
> the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and
> endless sea

~~~
pirateking
I don't have any of my work related to this topic online yet, but I will post
something, someday, maybe.

I agree that game-ification and tangential devices will not directly improve
understanding of a topic, if at all.

I grew up playing many edutainment games which were nothing but boring
classroom textbooks, with animated characters and sound effects. Strangely
though, the fond memories of some of those characters has, I like to think,
gave me positive associations with the actual subject matter, and has led to
study of it later in life. More importantly, as you say, it could have diluted
my interest or caused a negative association just as well.

------
frevd
Wikipedia's picture is way more instantly intuitive (for non-americans who
don't care much about parties, seinfeld or baseball)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Simpson%27s_paradox_contin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Simpson%27s_paradox_continuous.svg)

------
auggierose
I didn't know what Simpson's Paradox was, but I didn't find it surprising at
all. After all, the numbers showed that these were two different experiments
with two different distributions of large and small kidney stones.

Stopped reading the article afterwards, because if it already overhypes
greatly at this early point in the article, what am I to expect at later
points?

~~~
justinpombrio
Most people (smart people included) find Simpson's paradox very surprising
when they first hear of it, so it's possible you missed something. It might be
worth taking another look.

~~~
auggierose
Well. Probably most people are not that smart.

