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Yes, Bruce Lee must be wrong, because obviously it has to be one end of the spectrum or the other /s. How about the man who has practiced 100 kicks 100 times each? Maybe he’s the one to fear.
> Bruce Lee is reported to have said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” With all due respect to Mr. Lee, he might have been wrong about this one. Yes, Bruce Lee must be wrong, because obviously it has to be one end of the spectrum or the other /s. How about the man who has practiced 100 kicks 100 times each? Maybe he’s the one to fear.
If he practiced it 10,000 times in the exact same spot on a punching bag he wouldn't have the same understanding of it that he would if he practiced it high, low, with the other leg, in a tournament bout, on the sand, eyes closed, after a punch, etc.
Hmmm ... I'm a fan of differential learning and other techniques for variablity of practice. Was just reading through https://perceptionaction.com/vp/ earlier today. However I'm not convinced motor learning research transfers to all learning, which seems to be the basis for the claim made in the blog post. My own experience is motor learning is quite different to learning symbol manipulation tasks like maths and prog…
In a nutshell, we knock that CS1 courses have a high number of drop/fail/withdrawals due to several different factors. These include course difficulty, time management skills, and not feeling welcomed in the community (lack of representation, assuming CS students must love video games, etc). I don't focus much in inclusivity (though a number of faculty at NC State do), but I'm looking for methods to reduce difficulty. My thesis stems from methodologies I've used while teaching martial arts - specifically focusing on lower-level "build blocks" practice.
We can represent different learning activities by the amount of "creation" a student must engage in - Passive (watching lectures) require no creation, Active is repeating solution steps, Construction is critiquing steps, and Interactive is a co-creation process between the student and another student, instructor, or system. These form the ICAP framework by Mickie Chi. My arguments are that if a student is struggling with an Interactive exercise, like a traditional coding problem, then they should "downgrade" their practice to something lower level like self-explanation or debugging. However, if THOSE activities are still difficult, we can downgrade to an even lower-level of having them simply repeat (the mindless 'copy the dictionary' activities modern education hates).
My rationale again looks at how technical skills, like martial arts, are learned. Typically we start with warm ups, a brief demonstration on a few movements from the instructor, and then students are asked to pair up and drill the moves. Then the instructor builds on the moves with another demonstration, and then students repeat their process. Eventually, students spar (or apply the technique in a live problem). I argue that traditional coding problems are analogous to live sparring because students need to incorporate writing code, problem solving, debugging, code tracing, etc. If they struggle with some of those skills, they struggle in the activity. Rather than having them learn all the skills "in situ" while coding, maybe lower level deliberate practice targeting a single skill can help strengthen their overall foundation.
Seems to be an argument more for spaced repetition and incremental reading. "If your collection combines knowledge pertaining to different subject domains, the stream of new ideas and unexpected associations coming to your mind may surprise you" https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_learning
Spaced repetition and incremental reading don't have to be a conscious effort or implemented with flashcard systems, in fact it might be better not to, depending on your goals. After extensive practice with such systems (talking years between physical flaschards, supermemo and anki), I found it leads to shallow understanding and bad linking between knowledge bits, even though I make sure I understand before committin…
A common tactic in practicing music is to play a passage slowed down, sped up, with varying rhythms, up/down an octave, etc, with the idea that if you have complete mastery you can also play it the way it's written.
An easy comparison is take a driver who's had three months of experience driving versus somebody with three years, they'll be a huge gap in proficiency. Now take the three-year driver and compare them against someone who's been driving for three decades, you're fine surprisingly there's very little difference in ability.
Our brains are ruthlessly efficient and the moment that they can optimize away learning, that's when you're no longer acquiring skill.
A common tactic in practicing music is to play a passage slowed down, sped up, with varying rhythms, up/down an octave, etc, with the idea that if you have complete mastery you can also play it the way it's written.
Interesting that this works on piano but is not practiced in singing.
I also observed myself learning non-motor skills better when applying this method in some form. I think most people here know about the yearly Advent of Code challenge. Often people use it to try out a new language and have fun. I believe one of the key reasons for its success (besides the fun) are the frequently similar, but slightly different, problems. Forcing people to approach it from slightly different viewpoints and trying out small variations, thus resulting in a deep understanding and learning effect.
A common tactic in practicing music is to play a passage slowed down, sped up, with varying rhythms, up/down an octave, etc, with the idea that if you have complete mastery you can also play it the way it's written.
> Bruce Lee is reported to have said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” With all due respect to Mr. Lee, he might have been wrong about this one. Yes, Bruce Lee must be wrong, because obviously it has to be one end of the spectrum or the other /s. How about the man who has practiced 100 kicks 100 times each? Maybe he’s the one to fear.
I think a better metaphor for the main point of the article might be the man who has practiced one kick in 10,000 different ways. If he practiced it 10,000 times in the exact same spot on a punching bag he wouldn't have the same understanding of it that he would if he practiced it high, low, with the other leg, in a tournament bout, on the sand, eyes closed, after a punch, etc.
Of all people, Lee would never say to practice 10,000 times in exactly the same way ... and definitely wouldn't suggest doing so 10,000 times on a punching bag, seeing as Bags Don't Hit Back [0].
Lee obviously meant "the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times" in varying conditions, with varying timing, energy, and motion ... not in a single dead pattern.