
Richard Hamming: Learning to Learn - sinwave
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30
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bradfordarner
I watched through the series a couple of months ago. I will do my best to
provide a couple of the highlights that I really liked. Unfortunately, I
didn't keep a detailed journal of the course as a I watched. I really should
have.

General Concept:

Richard Hamming is a Turing Award winning Computer Scientist and
Mathematician. He spent a long and illustrious career at Bell Labs. As with
many other promising scientists of the day, Hamming took part in the Nuclear
Bomb effort and worked in Los Alamos. He refers to himself throughout the
series as little more than a scientific janitor at Los Alamos. However, he
realized during his time at Los Alamos that he had the rare opportunity to
observe and interact with some of the most famous and brilliant scientists in
the world. He decided that he wanted to join their ranks. However, after the
war, he found that his effort was blocked by the fact that he didn't really
know how to become great. There was no instruction course in become a great
scientist. Thus, he set out to find the principles for himself. This series is
his summary of the decades of investigation and personal experience in
becoming a great scientist.

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Principles:

The following are a list of things that stood out in the series. Hamming had a
number of principles that he constantly harped on. I will try to do my best to
note some of them here and explain the context:

"Luck favors the prepared mind"

The longer you stay with a problem the higher the likelihood that you are
going to find a creative moment somewhere in the mix. This idea reverberates
throughout the entire series. In some sense, Hamming is trying to break apart
the luck part from the preparation part of the equation throughout all of his
talks. Interestingly enough, he declares that he doesn't believe that there is
a formula for creativity (or at least a formula that any of us can use or know
about). Instead, he harps on persistence as a part of this equation. You have
to go after a problem for a long period of time. Once you have spent long
enough with the problem that it has mades its way into your dreams, you know
that you are approaching the point were rare epiphany moments are possible.

"With that which you learn from other you will follow, with that which you
learned for yourself you will lead"

This is another quote that you hear time and time again throughout the series.
By this he means that you actively have to work through practice problems and
concepts yourself. He has found a vast difference in his understanding of
topics that he passively soaked up and those subjects that he active dug into
and made sure that he understood. In some sense, he used the Feynman
technique. He pushed himself to being able to understand the concepts well
enough that he could explain it fully and confidently to others.

"Find the people who are doing important things and help them do those
important things."

The series is full of examples of thus. Hamming made it a habit to go after
interesting problems with other people at Bell labs. He sought out
opportunities to contribute to other people's work. It was clear the Claude
Shannon was a genius, so Hamming made every effort to help Shannon out by
providing computing assistance for Shannon's projects.

One of the fascinating habits that Hamming had was to grab lunch with
different departments at Bell Labs. He would make friends but lose them
quickly as well. He was constantly pursuing people with the question: "What
are the big problems in your space?" He would then follow up with: "Well, why
aren't you working on them?" This made people uncomfortable. However, Hamming
made the decision that he was going to do 'grade-A' work, as he refers to it.
Hence, he knew that he needed to associate with people who were doing grade-A
work. If they weren't then those people were useless to him. He laments that
fact that many brilliant people at Bell Labs went down as making no
significant contribution even though they were far smarter than Hamming
because, for what ever reason, were hesitant to tackle big problems with other
people working on big problems. You don't get the feeling at all in the series
that Hamming was apologetic for aggressively pursuing big problems. He wanted
to do great work...period.

"If things are changing slow, listen to the expert. If things are changing
rapidly, experts are only good for providing historical context."

This is one of the gems from the series. Hamming says that he used this as a
rule of when to listen to established experts and when to ignore them in favor
of the possibility for something else. I wouldn't say that Hamming advocated
rejecting expert opinion in the situation that things are changing rapidly.
Rather, he viewed their opinion as carrying just as much weight as everyone
else's. One of the examples that Hamming brought up numerous times was the
switch from analog to digital. He had a lot of co-workers who got stuck on
analog computing. They were brilliant men who fought the the move to digital
computing. The analog experts had countless reasons why digital computing
would not succeed. So, Hamming tried to judge it by how quickly computing
technology was changing. He realized that things were simply changing too fast
for anyone to claim some sort of supreme expertise on the subject matter.
Hence, he didn't discard the expert opinions, he took them as just another
data point that weighed just as much as all the other data points. He didn't
make any 'decisions' he simply refused to take a hard stand on the subject-
matter until it was resolved through history. In other words, this principle
is more about staying open to possibilities rather than rejecting them
outright and putting all your chips in one basic based on an expert's opinion.

"In order to do the work that you want to do, you have to do it on your own
time at the beginning. Only then will others give you time to do it."

This principle is quite possibly the one that arises more than any other
through out the series. Hamming found it frustrating in his early years that
they wouldn't let him research what he really wanted to research. It was a
catch-22 situation. In order to show the importance of the work that he wanted
to do, he would have already had to have done the research. Otherwise, his
directors wouldn't give him the time to do so. One night he was reading a
random magazine and realized that he was wasting his time that he could have
otherwise been using to conduct the research that he wanted to conduct. Thus,
from that moment, he decided to not waste any more time. No one was going to
give him permission to start his desired research. He had to give himself
permission and take the lead. He had to start by doing it in his free time. He
cut magazines and TV out of his life. He spent less time with friends and on
leisurely activities. Instead, he devoted his spare time to doing the research
that he really wanted to be doing. In the end, he was able to do enough in his
spare time that he took it to his directors at Bell Labs and they then gave
him the time to continue pursuing the research on the company dime. However,
he didn't stop there. He took that opportunity to fill his newly spared time
with other projects. He kept it up for decades.

"Stay abreast of new things"

There were so many new things arising everyday in computing that it felt
overwhelming for Hamming. However, he knew that he needed to stay aware of
what was happening. He didn't take that to mean that he needed to become an
expert in everything but he needed to be aware of it. Hence, a lot of his
spare moments in the day were filled reading about new developments and
talking with people who were working on interesting projects.

"Friday afternoons were for big ideas"

Hamming had the habit of setting aside friday afternoons for thinking about
big ideas. He was religious about this time. He would avoid everything else
that he could so that he would have friday afternoons free to think about
where the future might lead.

I wish I had the time to pick out more principles that I gleaned from watching
the series. There are countless nuggets throughout the series. He spends a lot
of time talking about the details of the different projects that he worked on.
However, those are nothing but stories to frame the principles that he is
trying to communicate. The above principles that I have listed at only a few
examples. His stories certainly help give more context and make it easier to
remember the principles. It would be easy to write a full commentary on his
lectures.

EDIT: I've added a couple more principles that I remembered. However, nothing
replaces actually hearing Hamming tell it in his lectures. I watched them at
2x speed on YouTube. It is easy to follow even at that speed. Hamming speaks
relatively slowly at normal speed. So, 2x speed just feels like a quick
conversational pace.

~~~
gajomi
Hamming did not win a Nobel Prize. Perhaps you meant the Turing Award?

~~~
bradfordarner
Yes, I did. Sorry about the mistake.

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a_bonobo
In case anyone is interested in a tl;dr, PLOS Computational Biology just
published a "Ten Rules" article on Hamming's talk: "Ten Simple Rules for
Lifelong Learning, According to Hamming"

[http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1004020)

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rckrd
I think that genius takes extraordinary intellect but also a penchant for
timing. Solve interesting problems, but also at the right time.

A way to overcome this is the Erdos approach: have a backlog of problems in
your mind and allowed them to be solved naturally as you learn and new
discoveries are made. Maybe that is why he was such a prolific mathematician.

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andhof-mt
One of my motivations in building videos for:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/devfactor](https://www.youtube.com/user/devfactor)

Was just this. In school you can listen, and be taught. But learning how to
learn is an entirely different skill. Foundational knowledge is really
important, but eventually you need to know how to pick up things on your own.

Understanding the learning process, and the process of seeking out relevant
information is almost more important than being able to memorize text and
lectures. If you can only be taught, that you rely on schooling. If you can
learn, than your limits are only based on time :)

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Jolijn
Can someone who already watched this comment? Anything particularly great
about it?

~~~
dalke
I haven't watched it either, and would like the same answer.

The book on the topic is at [http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-
TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn...](http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-
TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEngineering.pdf) .

I read Hamming's "You and Your Research" some years back, and recall that it
was quite appropriate. See
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html)
for the text. It's the penultimate lecture in the video series.

~~~
Jolijn
Thank you! And I can't help but notice a couple more interesting titles in
that directory: [http://worrydream.com/refs/](http://worrydream.com/refs/)

~~~
dalke
Ooo! That's quite the collection of classic works.

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countryqt30
I would really appreciate a short summary to get a few more of the basic ideas
taught in this class or book.

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charleshmorse
Fantastic! Thank you for this.

