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Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

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Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#91

Post by placebo »

projektir wrote: post #57

The Sports Gene already reduced my confidence in Ericsson's studies in particular. They were not very extensive and there was effectively no control group. An important thing to remember, though, is that these things are really, really hard to study. The meta-analysis is likely to be negative information in how accurate it is. "deliberate practice" is not a valid term, you can create a whole new field to figure out w…

Very true. Totally hits the nail on the head.

But what happens when you take this all the way? Is there anything you can think of that does not ultimately fall under the "cause and effect" clause? If not, then this makes everything, from sports competitions to "life" competitions, expectations and hopes just a big joke, a reality where "God favours the lucky". The reason you could post your reply is that the conditions (your intelligence, experience, interests, mood etc. etc.) were such that this is what happened, in exactly the same way as how cause and effect resulted in these words being typed back.

It starts with a simple question of whether or not "practice makes perfect", but the followup questions of "nature vs. nurture", "can't vs. won't", "free will vs. determinism", "mind vs. matter", etc. are quick to follow. All of them I believe to be a misguided perspective on reality, but one which I admittedly am part of.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#92

Post by cko »

hal9000xp wrote: post #14

I have my own theory. The idea is that there are lots, lots and lots of tiny unspoken things which could make huge difference in long run. And those who successful doesn't necessary know their own tiny things they got right. Let's say there are two persons A and B who is training in chess. Person A trained for X hours and became chess master. Person B trained for 10X hours and didn't get even close to master level. T…

I like this view, that there are many subtle things that one person got right and another didn't - couldn't you say that person A was just naturally (genetically advantaged) to discovering those things in their field of mastery?

I would also add to that curiosity, which leads to desire, which makes mastery that much easier.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#93

Post by sotojuan »

abecedarius wrote: post #11
CuriouslyC wrote: post #2

This is a case where I really doubt that the studies referenced in the article were rigorous/well controlled. There are WAY too many talent "hot zones" (small training clubs that produce an extremely inordinate number of champions) for me to be swayed without iron-clad evidence to the contrary. The author talks about being motivated, but I don't think she really understands the scale of motivation. Mozart would typic…

I've never heard about Mozart's fingers bleeding -- do you have a source? I just ran a web search and found a suggestion that he suffered from rickets in infancy, accounting for curved fingers.

I've never heard of it either, but it's well known that Mozart both played a ton in his youth and actually worked hard when composing. Most people seem to think he was just sitting there and symphonies came to his head at random.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#94

Post by dredmorbius »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #2

This is a case where I really doubt that the studies referenced in the article were rigorous/well controlled. There are WAY too many talent "hot zones" (small training clubs that produce an extremely inordinate number of champions) for me to be swayed without iron-clad evidence to the contrary. The author talks about being motivated, but I don't think she really understands the scale of motivation. Mozart would typic…

"The author also talks about her teacher being good. Compared to what? How many music teachers did she have?"

pg has a comment on programmers -- you can only tell how good one is by working with them, and there's only so many programmers you can work with.

In the areas of teaching, programming, and training, there's the problem that it takes a very high level of proficiency within an area even to assess the abilities of another. Measures of quality are inherently subjective and limited -- assessement, which is to say information acquisition -- is itself highly expensive.

This is quite related to Dunning-Kruger, though approaching a different element of the problem.

If humans are going to proceed down a track of increased complexity, we're going to have to address how to sensibly make and compare assessments which cannot all be performed by any single entity, but must be reasonably inferred through slightly shared, but very often independent assessments.

I've been around numerous fields in which I hear (very frequently novice) initiates claiming the praises of some particular methodology, teacher, or reference. On my own assessment, all too frequently the case seems to be that the endorser is promoting a concept which is at best useful as a first step, occasionally outright harmful, but is not some holy grail. (And yes, very occasionally there are exceptions.)

It's a thorny problem.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#95

Post by dredmorbius »

hnarn wrote: post #35
mikebenfield wrote: post #23

I read The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, co-edited by K. Anders Ericsson, the psychology professor mentioned in this article. His work inspired Malcolm Gladwell's popular work on deliberate practice. I found Ericsson and co's ideas to be completely counter to their data. A lot of the articles were based on case studies. They studied wrestlers and wrestling coaches, for instance. The wrestlin…

When you say "these guys were in a position to win local and regional powerlifting competitions with basically no training at all", do you have any similar examples for things like chess tournaments? Because if not, you're kind of disproving yourself. Of course genetics can assist you in becoming a good chess player but I have a hard time seeing how a genius who never played chess before just sits down, learns the ga…

There are numerous cases in mathematics. I can't put names on incidents but:

* The schoolboy who realised the algorithm for adding the integers 1 - 100.

* The UC Berkeley Graduate student who solved 2-3 "extra credit" final exam questions ... only to discover they were previously unsolved proofs.

Chess isn't an area I'm closely familiar with, but there absolutely have been prodigies there as well. Many in music.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#96

Post by eveningcoffee »

jacobolus wrote: post #54
bagacrap wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a small, elite training club only take in a relatively small number of athletes that have already shown innate talent? Likewise, top universities will turn out a large number of top scientists. They've already selected for potential at the point of admission.

What about the Polgár sisters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár

It appears, after reading this article, that the sisters actually had a very talented father and therefore possibly very good prerequisites to become what they did.

He should have accepted the proposed experiment of raising adoptees the same way he did with his children.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#97

Post by e40 »

djaychela wrote: post #20
hal9000xp wrote: post #14

I have my own theory. The idea is that there are lots, lots and lots of tiny unspoken things which could make huge difference in long run. And those who successful doesn't necessary know their own tiny things they got right. Let's say there are two persons A and B who is training in chess. Person A trained for X hours and became chess master. Person B trained for 10X hours and didn't get even close to master level. T…

Absolutely. I'm a guitarist, and have been for over 30 years. I'm good, but not REALLY good, and I hit a wall in terms of technical ability / speed a long time ago - after about 5 years of playing. Nothing I did improved my speed and I didn't have the accuracy of a Malmsteen or MacAlpine, despite practicing religiously for hours at a time. I thought I had a speed limit and that was that - everyone I consulted felt th…

I'm curious what the new technique did to your speed. Can you quantify?

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#98

Post by yourapostasy »

ht_th wrote: post #76
agumonkey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. I have a thick skull, even with the best teacher I probably wouldn't "understood" the advices until my own intuition about things was matching them. I took years to learn some stuff, that I could have found in a one afternoon if I asked the right questions. But I couldn't. Now I know that I am capable of finding them, and that I can also communicate to share point of views and ideas. Also, teachers could…

That is the thing about (good) teachers: they have a lot of pedagogical content knowledge (Fachdidaktik). They know what questions to ask to what student at what time in her learning process. They know what examples, metaphors, strategies, and so on, might work for certain students or situations. They understand the individual nature of a student's learning process and are able to fit their teaching to best guide a s…

This is what I worry about the MOOC's: a lot of the best teachers I've had personally, and observed (with children), drew a vast tree of pedagogical techniques, but used their evaluation of a student's individual personality/psychology to inform them of which node/branch to select next. The most sophisticated MOOC's ever get is to brute-force try one node after another, if they support presenting the same material in a different way at all. And there isn't a classification system that I'm aware of to organize all the branches, especially around annotations that say "this branch appropriate if personality/psychology tends towards " (yet another ontological terra incognita, I'm not aware of any classification system to describe students' pedagogical personality/psychology, which can change even depending upon context like subject matter, mood, etc.).

MOOC's are a step in the right direction, but far, far from a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer idealized vision that I would like to see.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#99

Post by uola »

hal9000xp wrote: post #14

I have my own theory. The idea is that there are lots, lots and lots of tiny unspoken things which could make huge difference in long run. And those who successful doesn't necessary know their own tiny things they got right. Let's say there are two persons A and B who is training in chess. Person A trained for X hours and became chess master. Person B trained for 10X hours and didn't get even close to master level. T…

While I agree with your overall point, that's not the way I would express it. Mistakes that make a big difference are by definition not tiny. It's just that a less sophisticated practitioners don't realize that it matters. Being better at something is often realizing what does and what doesn't matter.

Re: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

#100

Post by CuriouslyC »

abecedarius wrote: post #11
CuriouslyC wrote: post #2

This is a case where I really doubt that the studies referenced in the article were rigorous/well controlled. There are WAY too many talent "hot zones" (small training clubs that produce an extremely inordinate number of champions) for me to be swayed without iron-clad evidence to the contrary. The author talks about being motivated, but I don't think she really understands the scale of motivation. Mozart would typic…

I've never heard about Mozart's fingers bleeding -- do you have a source? I just ran a web search and found a suggestion that he suffered from rickets in infancy, accounting for curved fingers.

It was mentioned in a book I read about talent, which I believe sourced it from an old Mozart biography. Like many stories about legends, it could certainly be apocryphal.
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