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Patterns in Confusing Explanations

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Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#51

Post by lyaa »

mynameismon wrote: post #46
MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You remind me of something a Physics professor once told me. He said (I'm paraphrasing) "when you get to really learning the Physics, it's not an incremental logically consistent picture rooted in mathematics like in the textbooks. It's mostly a bunch of little tricks that you learn when to apply, and sometimes you get somewhere." He wasn't making a pedagogical point, but I wonder if being compelled by the "learn by…

To be fair, 'Learn by invention' can be detrimental if one is trying to derive a result which requires significant prior knowledge that the learner lacks. However, quoting a simple physics example of what I mean: One can prove the Work-Energy theorem with simple manipulations of the basic definitions of displacement, velocity and acceleration without having to learn it like a law. One cannot derive Newton's three law…

Most of physics is not a great counter-example to learning by invention. There are several ways to derive Newton's three laws. It's a fun exercise in Lagrangian mechanics.

Perhaps quantization or the curvature of space would be better examples as they require prior knowledge of experimental data (assuming we ignore proposed philosophical arguments that stray a bit too far from physics imho.)

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#52

Post by Niksko »

wasyl wrote: post #48

One tip I picked up a while back is to be aware of the number of `it`s and other pronouns used. I realized that when my explanation were getting lengthy, I was tempted to avoid duplication by referring to previously mentioned nouns as `it`s, `they`s etc. This practice led to some very confusing sentences, where each `it` meant a different thing. My explanations got noticeably clearer once I started replacing the pron…

Not only do you have the problem of different 'it's referring to different things, I think there's also an element of adding unnecessary cognitive load at a time where cognitive load is already high. Even if there's only one pronoun and one possible thing that the pronoun could refer to, your brain still needs to do the cognitive lookbehind to interpret the sentence.

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#53

Post by TravisLS »

wasyl wrote: post #48

One tip I picked up a while back is to be aware of the number of `it`s and other pronouns used. I realized that when my explanation were getting lengthy, I was tempted to avoid duplication by referring to previously mentioned nouns as `it`s, `they`s etc. This practice led to some very confusing sentences, where each `it` meant a different thing. My explanations got noticeably clearer once I started replacing the pron…

This (ironically). I often start enforcing a "no pronouns" rule for myself and others when conversations and concepts get more complicated. It (the rule) is awkward at first but makes a big difference in mutual understanding.

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#54

Post by AussieWog93 »

mynameismon wrote: post #34
danybittel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love, "Learning by invention". Basically, you start with a problem, than the teacher "helps" to come up with a solution, (by hints / guides), which casually ends up at the solution implemented. I think it's one of the reasons people love to reinvent the wheel. When they invent something themselves they truly know it inside out. You can somewhat do it yourself, if say, you want to learn a new library, by first tryin…

Learning by invention is also my favourite way to learn. However, I find it rather unappreciated among both teachers and textbook writers. What is usually done is the result is presented on a silver platter to regurgitate and reproduce, and important details are glossed over in favour of 'simplicity', creating a (dangerous) knowledge gap.

First thing I thought of when you said that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI

Done properly, it's an amazingly powerful way of explaining things.

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#56

Post by z3t4 »

wasyl wrote: post #48

One tip I picked up a while back is to be aware of the number of `it`s and other pronouns used. I realized that when my explanation were getting lengthy, I was tempted to avoid duplication by referring to previously mentioned nouns as `it`s, `they`s etc. This practice led to some very confusing sentences, where each `it` meant a different thing. My explanations got noticeably clearer once I started replacing the pron…

It can also be used to make text easier to understand, for example:

    The client connected to the server, then it crashed
vs

    The client connected to the server, then the server crashed.

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#57

Post by doorhammer »

"test your explanations! ...running an explanation by a few people who don’t already know the concept helps to catch incorrect assumptions I’ve made."

I love this.

As I get more skilled with a thing I think I can have more confidence that I'm doing it well and according to best practices up front but that my highest level of confidence comes from employing the thing in practice and observing the results.

That could be deploying code to prod with monitoring, having another dev review my code to see if it's readable, having users interact with my system while I observe, or in this case seeing if someone can read my explanations and understand the ideas I'm trying to communicate.

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#58

Post by tomxor »

> having inconsistent expectations of the reader’s knowledge

I come across this one the most and suspect it's the most common reason people suddenly stop following an explanation. Whether it's in a book or a Wikipedia article. I guess when the author already knows something, it's a difficult skill to maintain the full perspective of the audience - some things they obviously don't know and are easy to explain, so they nail it, then for others they are difficult to explain and it may not even be clear to the author how they came to understand it in relation to the primary subject - which is when they tend to drop the ball and do some hand waving.

Multidisciplinary subjects probably make it harder still, since there is relevant knowledge that the target audience may or may not know due to their different backgrounds.

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#59

Post by jasode »

A lot of this is caused by The Curse of Knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

That cognitive blind spot causes people to unwittingly write confusing explanations in all domains of life.

It's frequently ironic when somebody writes a sentence following the rhetorical template: "Not really sure what the confusion is with . It's really simple. [blah blah blah...] And that's it."

Whether it's attempting to explain "monads are like a burrito", or neural networks, Git, or how Federal Reserve works, people unintentionally write circular definitions.

E.g. "Not sure what the issue is... Git is just a DAG directed-acyclic-graph." The only way to avoid the issue is to test your tutorials and explanations on a variety of readers.

Re: Patterns in Confusing Explanations

#60

Post by sidlls »

jasode wrote: post #59

A lot of this is caused by The Curse of Knowledge : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge That cognitive blind spot causes people to unwittingly write confusing explanations in all domains of life. It's frequently ironic when somebody writes a sentence following the rhetorical template: "Not really sure what the confusion is with . It's really simple. [blah blah blah...] And that's it." Whether it's attemp…

Sometimes people are just arrogant and want to make sure their audience really knows they (the speaker/writer) really know more.
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