The Biggest Myth In Education

While we now know a lot about teaching, a lot of misconceptions have been found recently regarding “truths” about teaching, its a fascinating subject really, and the main problem seems to be lack of rigorous repeatable double blind testing for all of those things. Veritasium did a very interesting video on the subject: ▶ this video

in “Long-term NAEP scores for 13-year-olds drop for first time since testing began” · View on HN

Glad to hear you were able to find a mechanism that clicked and stuck with it after that! The concept of learning styles for individuals though is a common myth [link] ▶ this video There isn't any evidence that individuals learn best to a single style and generally approaching learning from multiple facets is the best way for everyone to learn!

in “Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests” · View on HN

Typically the researchers pay the subjects. It's a very active area of research though, and many reward schemes have been used and studied. Derek goes into some of the research here: ▶ this video

in “Things software developers should learn about learning” · View on HN

Veritasium on this topic : ▶ this video The most important thing in learning is to actively engage one's Imagination in various ways. Algebraic/Geometric mappings, Multi-level abstractions, Shifting between Abstraction and Concrete Reality, Relationship networks etc. are all needed.

in “The myth of the myth of learning styles” · View on HN

> Find a good textbook or online course that is tailored to your level and learning style. Learning styles is a myth. Here's a popular video talking about it [0]. [0] The Biggest Myth In Education. ▶ this video

in “OpenAI ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue” · View on HN

> But aside from the flat statement do you have anything to back it up? Well, here's a comment from elsewhere in the thread: > If you can do one thing now, watch this Veritasium video to disprove the myth that you’re a visual learner: ▶ this video . ( [link] ) I haven't watched the video, but, like your parent comment, I was already aware that "learning styles" was a research area supported almost exclusively by fraud. If you want more links, you can find them pretty easily through [link] .

in “Ask HN: Best beginner friendly linear algebra book?” · View on HN

This video about "learning styles" and the idea that there's no such thing as a "visual learner" is all over the thread: ▶ this video It's worth calling out that the video itself doesn't support some of the blunt arguments being made here. The point of the video is that it's likely that everyone does better with a multimodal approach. It thus remains reasonable to seek out books that do a good job with visual representations! No visual components, or, worse, bad diagrams are, according to the video, an impediment to everyone, not just people who have used a disfavored term in their Ask HN question. :) I like 3Blue1Brown as much as everyone else, it's an achievement and kind of a joy to watch, but my experience was that, after many go-rounds over the years, the thing that made any of this actually stick was doing exercises. I tend to bang the less abstract ones out in Sage: [link] (you have to do a little bit of extra work to make sure Sage isn't doing too much of the work for you. I'm a fan of Strang's approach. But I'm bad at linear algebra, so, grain of salt.

in “Ask HN: Best beginner friendly linear algebra book?” · View on HN

I think that the fact that there are special types of learners have been debunked thoroughly. Veritasium recently made a video, too [0]. 3b1b is a fantastic supplementary resource. But you can't start with it, or use it as your primary resource. That would be a mistake. [0]: ▶ this video

in “Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?” · View on HN

I've seen somewhere that "everyone learns differently" might not actually be true. I found this video from Veritasium that explains it: ▶ this video

in “What does it mean to listen on a port?” · View on HN

Two counter-points: First, the point of a study is to be generalizeable - that is, to apply to as many people as possible, usually other than oneself. If a particular technique applies to you, that's great! However, most people aren't you. Starting with a known general principle/technique (most people can't multitask) will, on average, put you in a better position than randomly picking someone's anecdotal evidence. Second, there are many documented cases where self-assessment of one's own traits or capabilities is inaccurate. Performance while cognitively impaired (alcohol & sleep deprivation), assessment of skill as a novice (Dunning-Kruger), and the ability to multitask are all well-known cases of it, with many more lesser known (e.g. whether one is a "visual" or "verbal" learner[1]) - so, you should be wary about having too much self-confidence in your own capabilities, especially for something as poorly-understood as software engineering. [1] ▶ this video

in “Multitasking Doesn't Work” · View on HN

Very insightful paper, thanks for sharing. Firstly, I'm surprised that having no garbage collection did not make to the list of the seven deadly sins. Secondly, someone here also mentioned about the very useful Turbo Pascal IDE and having an excellent IDE can really help in the visual learning approach that's required by all learners [1]. If any programming languages has the intuitive capability for real-time visual interactions as described by Brett Victor it will be great [2]. Thirdly, the paper failed to mention that beginner friendly programming language has a very high chance to be adopted by the industry and becoming extremely popular. This is self evident by the recent exponential popularity of Python. When the paper was written back in 1996, Python was just another scripting programming language with "Jack of all trades, master at none" language. At the time it's playing second fiddle to popular programming languages including Perl, PHP and TCL! The same can be said to D language now but as they've always said, time will certainly tell. Personally I think D language did not tick most of the seven dealy sins boxes and have made the most of the seven significant steps towards more teachable language mentioned in the paper. It has the most Pythonic feel to it compared to other compiled languages. It also the has default garbage collection that will make it an excellent introduction for programming. Of course you can exercise bit manipulation like a madman with D (also ca

in “Seven Deadly Sins of Introductory Programming Language Design (1996) [pdf]” · View on HN

I learn any way I can. Having a purpose to learn helps (I need this knowledge, I want this knowledge because I think it's cool, etc). I will try books, videos, whatever works. Like folded steel and alloys, I find that I learn things from lots of different angles, and appreciate the amalgamation. Veritasium did a whole video [ ▶ this video ] recently pointing out that it's really hard for us to self ascribe our best learning methods. I'll take whatever works and try as many as I can to keep the experience as rich as possible. If there's any unifying theme for me, it's "I learn by embracing Humility, and avoiding Lazy".

in “Ask HN: How Do You Learn?” · View on HN

What do you think about a recent Veritassium video that discusses the idea that ‘there is no such thing as a visual learner’ ( ▶ this video ) Just curious.

in “Visually stunning math concepts which are easy to explain” · View on HN

I would say it's worth debating because it is an inexact and unsound principle on which recent education is built on. More than that, in the Romanian Master's cycle, if you want to continue your pedagogical studies such that you become a high school teacher, there is an entire course dedicated to learning styles and there is one more dedicated on the other infamous inexact-semantics concept, the multiple intelligences theory. So I would argue that it has a similarly bad effect on the education domain to any other arbitrary first-principles that lead to sub-optimal research and lack of clarity of what is really going on in some domain, which lead again to sub-optimal methods. Regarding your observation about how some kids simply learn better after seeing some visual representation of the concepts, there could be many reasons for this (they start paying attention when you draw, they fall somewhere on the Bell curve such that they need that extra representation to get it, as the Veritasium video also presents with the memory experiment), but I would doubt that persistent learning styles of your students would be the differentiator, which is what the video discredits ( ▶ this video ).

in “Visually stunning math concepts which are easy to explain” · View on HN