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I Don't Understand

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Re: I Don't Understand

#81

Post by keithpeter »

brandall10 wrote: post #35
kstenerud wrote: post #7

I first noticed this effect in college, when the prof would be talking about something that didn't make sense to me. If I remained silent, he'd never explain (of course) and I'd remain ignorant. However, whenever I asked him, everyone would start furiously writing down his explanation in their notes. So I got into the habit of saying "I don't understand". Inevitably, there would be quite a number of other people who…

Did you usually just say "I don't understand"... or was it more like "I get how a works with b when c occurs. But you lost me when you were talking about how it happens over z, I don't get the distinction, could you go into that?" It's not about plain ignorance, but conscious incompetence. That can be a great deal of work to attain in a given domain, getting to that "I know what I don't know" place so you can actuall…

Bingo.

I'm a teacher and I like students who ask me to re-explain or re-present a step in an argument. In fact, I use techniques designed to find out how much my students know and 'how they know it'. I teach fairly basic Maths, and different students learn the basics in different ways.

I'd like a student who could articulate which step in a complex argument is the issue even more! I usually ask follow up questions to find out where the issue is without putting the questioner on the spot.

Re: I Don't Understand

#82

Post by shanellem »

I really liked this article, but I think the very best devs are the ones who admit they don't understand and then ask specific, intelligent questions.

Anyway, admitting you don't fully understand something is the first step to fully understanding it. Great article!

Re: I Don't Understand

#83

Post by steferson »

derleth wrote: post #79
almost wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely. Asking questions is how you turn a lecture from a poor substitute for just reading about the subject into something far better. From the other side I find it incredibly useful to get questions while speaking and I wish I was better at encouraging them. When writing a talk you have to write for some imaginary audience who won't ever quite match your actual one. But if you can get them to start asking…

> Any tips from anyone here for making people feel more inclined to ask questions? Become more of an asshole. There are probably more eloquent ways of phrasing that, but I want something that will stick in your mind when you're actually on the spot, and that works. The idea here is to stop caring quite so much about what others want and what others will think of you. If you constantly worry that you're interrupting t…

>and you're in that class for you, not for them.

This! I believe this sums up the way people should behave when in a class.

Re: I Don't Understand

#84

Post by delinka »

I find that people not only have different views of The World, but also different internal definitions and understandings of basic terminology. This guy has the understanding that some assumption is implied in the implementation of an algorithm. That guy has never assumed that was the case. Both have tremendous amounts of experience in writing software systems (for example.) I've seen this exact scenario cause dozens of minutes of superfluous conversation because neither of them bothered to hear a detail that would allow them to realize there was not a full understanding between them. To address this case, my personal habit has become to listen carefully, consider the very words being spoken, identify those little things that aren't clear, have bred assumptions, or just plain don't make sense, and then interrupt ... even if by the time my brain has done all this the speaker has moved on.

It's leagues better than working under the wrong assumptions for days, weeks, months...

Re: I Don't Understand

#85

Post by rmccue »

rsaarelm wrote: post #73

That the most experienced devs say this the most might not be just about status games. You need to have a very solid shared background to be able to jump to understanding something after the sort of short verbal explanation "I don't understand" can be replied with. If I go to an university lecture on advanced math, I won't understand things, and can say so. But it's unlikely the lecturer can say anything in the span…

I've been in maths courses where this has occurred, and the lecturer's response is usually to give a brief overview as a refresher, then point them in the right direction to learn those prerequisite skills if they don't have them. I think the same can be applied to programming, but if you don't ask at all, you may never learn where to start.

Re: I Don't Understand

#86

Post by JadeNB »

keithpeter wrote: post #81
brandall10 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you usually just say "I don't understand"... or was it more like "I get how a works with b when c occurs. But you lost me when you were talking about how it happens over z, I don't get the distinction, could you go into that?" It's not about plain ignorance, but conscious incompetence. That can be a great deal of work to attain in a given domain, getting to that "I know what I don't know" place so you can actuall…

Bingo. I'm a teacher and I like students who ask me to re-explain or re-present a step in an argument. In fact, I use techniques designed to find out how much my students know and 'how they know it'. I teach fairly basic Maths, and different students learn the basics in different ways. I'd like a student who could articulate which step in a complex argument is the issue even more! I usually ask follow up questions to…

> In fact, I use techniques designed to find out how much my students know and 'how they know it'. I teach fairly basic Maths, and different students learn the basics in different ways.

This sounds interesting. Could you talk more about it?

Re: I Don't Understand

#87

Post by Millennium »

Evbn wrote: post #20
zaidf wrote: post #11

Making a clear statement such as "I don't understand" also is a great signal to your coworkers. It kills confusion and builds trust: I know that if you don't understand, you will let me know. That is much better than having someone who I have to poke to admit that they don't understand something. Another personal favorite is stating unequivocally, loud and clear that " This was my mistake ". It is tempting to just fi…

Why does it matter who is responsible for a mistake? Whence this antiquated notion that failures are to be blamed on a scapegoat?

Because the person who made the mistake is in the best position to understand how and why it happened. Responsibility and blame are entirely different things.

Re: I Don't Understand

#88

Post by wnewman »

MrVitaliy wrote: post #19

My analysis professor used to say, if you state that some part of the proof is trivial then it should be easy to just write it out. And when you have a hard time writing it out or it takes too long, perhaps it's not trivial after all.

There are subfields of programming that generate more than their share of subtle gotchas, so that one should be particularly careful even when doing many routine (aka "trivial") things. E.g., security, or multithreaded stuff. From my single real analysis course way back when, I remember an impression that real analysis was a subfield of math with a similar error-prone character --- particularly easy to conclude something incorrect by stumbling over a technicality (e.g. integrating before taking a limit instead of vice versa), where the technicality is likely to be tricky to keep track of because the cases where the technicality matters are so weird (e.g., carefully constructed horrendously discontinuous functions).

Not all fields of programming or mathematics are as productive of fiddly gotchas: often an experienced specialist can judge rather reliably that a piece of work will be entirely routine, though time-consuming. I can only appeal to my informal anecdotal impressions for this in programming, but in mathematics I have some harder evidence: setting up machine-checkable proofs in HOL Light. The prover won't let me get away with any hand-waving or ambiguity: I really do have to dot every single i and cross every single t. In the end, doing that is routine (though often very tedious and messy --- people talk about spending a week to formalize a page of mathematics), and I am very seldom surprised by a part of a proof that I expected to be tedious instead turning out to require new insight.

Re: I Don't Understand

#90

Post by sophacles »

brandall10 wrote: post #35
kstenerud wrote: post #7

I first noticed this effect in college, when the prof would be talking about something that didn't make sense to me. If I remained silent, he'd never explain (of course) and I'd remain ignorant. However, whenever I asked him, everyone would start furiously writing down his explanation in their notes. So I got into the habit of saying "I don't understand". Inevitably, there would be quite a number of other people who…

Did you usually just say "I don't understand"... or was it more like "I get how a works with b when c occurs. But you lost me when you were talking about how it happens over z, I don't get the distinction, could you go into that?" It's not about plain ignorance, but conscious incompetence. That can be a great deal of work to attain in a given domain, getting to that "I know what I don't know" place so you can actuall…

Right, I really dislike when people say generally "I don't get it". I have no idea where I need to re-explain something, and I end up starting over from the beginning a different way. Sometimes, after a couple rounds of this, I just have to stop and say, "I'm not sure what you're confused about, why don't you help me a little in clarifying what you need info on?". I quickly lose patience (and respect) for someone who doesn't take an active role in understanding. Conversely I have no problem going over something N times with someone if they can help me map out their (not)understanding of something, because then progress can be made.

Even if you aren't sure what you don't understand, narrowing your questions or explaining your reasoning on things you do understand (or think you understand, sometimes we all are wrong on some key assumption that changes everything) can help your tutor fill in the bits that help explanation. Further, this sort of exercise is an example of metacognition, which teaching theory suggests is a very vital part of directed learning.

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