
Bloom's 2 Sigma Problem - awaxman11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
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ipnon
"I remember Salman Khan (of Khan Academy) talking about this a few years ago.
He believed that the current accepted method of teaching - students attending
lectures and sitting in classrooms getting knowledge from teachers, then later
doing homework alone trying to apply it - needs to be inverted. Lectures,
presentations, textbooks can all be online and automated. Teaching resources,
limited as they are, are much better spent helping students specifically when
they are stuck and need more personalized help. Of course this brings us to
the more fundamental question - are schools more for learning or daycare?"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24257872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24257872)

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OneGuy123
This. Teachers speaking in front of the blackboard is overrated, anyone can do
that.

In fact it is precesily this part that a student can go and find on the
internet explained in 30 different ways if he still doesn't get it.

~~~
pps43
I beg to differ. One of my most vivid educational experiences is of my teacher
calculating approximate square root on the side of the blackboard when he
needed it for something completely unrelated. To me it felt like he was riding
a unicycle or swallowing a sword.

Seeing that the audience was perplexed, he reluctantly took a five minute
detour and explained Newton-Raphson algorithm, at which point the unbelievable
circus trick suddenly became trivial.

~~~
randtrain34
But you can also go down related rabbit holes on Khan Academy if you find an
interesting tangent...

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gre
In high school I would get to school early and practice my instrument or hang
out. My band friend was in remedial algebra and failing and got up enough
courage to ask for help with his homework. On the second problem I noticed
that he couldn't read his own handwriting and asked him to write cleaner. He
started getting the highest grades in the class and saying it was easy.

When I started Algebra, I was trying to save paper by writing everything on
one line ``A = B = C = D = answer`` which makes it hard to do things to "both
sides" of the equation. I could mostly do the problems in my head but showing
my work was impossible and it's easy to make trivial mistakes at any step that
give you the wrong answer. My friend was using a whole sheet of paper per
problem and showed me how to do it and then it got easy.

My point is that if five minutes with a peer can fix trivial, fundamental
issues with a student's approach, imagine what a trained teacher or professor
could do on a short one-on-one session with each student?

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andyljones
Here's a fantastically detailed 2019 review of replications of Bloom's work:

[https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/](https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/)

As is oft the case, the conclusion is 'it's complicated'.

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adaisadais
I loved learning about this phenomenon from Patrick Collision’s blog.

Anecdotally, this makes sense to me. Up until the 3rd grade my mother would
work with me every single day on my homework. I was consistently number 1 or
number 2 in my class.

This changed when my mother began spending more time with my siblings my
homework than with mine. I personally believe simply having someone with you
to walk you through problems makes all the differences in the world.

~~~
pps43
I have opposite experience. My parents did not help me with homework beyond
first or second grade. After that it was my responsibility, like cleaning my
room. I was near the top of my class.

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LanguageGamer
With mastery learning, it's the feedback loop that's making the difference. In
some domains where the subject matter itself can be computationally modeled
(such as math), it seems plausible that the feedback loop as well can be
emulated by software. There have been many attempts and many failures to do
so, but I'm optimistic and believe it's a matter of further investment and
research.

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cheerlessbog
It doesn't say whther the intervention was assigned randomly (and those
assigned all stuck with it). Home environment and parental support has a huge
influence and also those who get tuition (or stick with assignment to the
tuition group) probably have strong parental support.

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godzillabrennus
I’ve never learned anything in a classroom. I’ve always learned by doing or
from a tutor.

Standardized education is a joke.

As others have said, it’s more about daycare than education.

