Re: Understanding and Teaching: Who may teach Ada?

["John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>]

"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message
news:bd6jq6$kr0$2@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
> Robert I. Eachus <rieachus@attbi.com> wrote:
> : John R. Strohm wrote:
> :
>
> :> The fundamental test of whether one really understands
> :> the topic is whether one CAN prepare a "freshman lecture" (or a "man in
the
> :> street" book or article) on it.
>
> In a better world, this phrase should be put in a frame,
> and teachers should not be employed if they fail.
> Maybe the test should be more flexible, offering a choice
> of audience, but only for the test.

No.  That is the whole point of the test.  If you can explain it to someone
who has the prerequisite N many years of specialized knowledge and
experience, you may understand it thoroughly, or you may not.  If you can
explain it to a layman, who DOESN'T have the specialized knowledge, who
needs YOU to walk him through possibly YEARS of work in the course of
minutes, you DO understand it thoroughly.

Read the section in Clifford Stoll's "Cuckoo's Egg", about his Ph.D. oral
examination, where the department chairman asked the final question: "Why is
the sky blue?", and then, to EVERYTHING Stoll said, responded "Can you be
more specific?" and made him go ALL THE WAY THROUGH several years of
multiple disciplines, to answer the question IN DETAIL and show that he knew
it, all the way down.

Incidentally, I've been through that experience.  Many years ago, a
mathematician co-worker walked me through four years or so of mathematical
development, in outline form, touching all the key points, although not
rigorously, over beers at Happy Hour one evening, to explain to me precisely
why the standard deviation formula used (N-1) instead of N in the
denominator.  I think it took him about an hour, and I came away with, while
not a complete understanding, at least a grasp of what was involved.

> Do you think that Feynman might have succeeded in teaching
> "real" average Freshman, had he been under more pressure?

Georg, Feynman also did a series of four lectures, for laymen, on quantum
electrodynamics.  Those four lectures were, MUCH later, collected into a
small, thin book entitled "QED".

I've read that book.

Based primarily on that book and secondarily on the freshman lectures (which
I also have, somewhere packed away in the course of a VERY disorganized
move), yes, I believe he could have been quite successful in teaching "real"
average freshmen.

I will grant that some of the subtleties were lost on the freshmen, and
could only be appreciated by the fellow Ph.D.s, but I also believe that the
freshmen who went on in physics would later review those lectures during
their later education, and working careers, and realize what they'd missed
at the time that was also in there.

> : Your point is well taken, but the Feyman lectures are a bad example.
> : Yes, they are readable and understandable, and anyone with a PhD in
> : Physics who hasn't read them should remedy that mistake.
> :
> : But when Feynman originally gave the course, the Freshman were soon
> : outnumbered ...

Yeah, and it is a damned shame that the physics department chairman did not
understand that Feynman's job in that classroom at that time was to teach
the FRESHMEN, and HIS job was to keep the tourists OUT OF THE WAY so Feynman
COULD teach the freshmen.