Author: Seth Roberts

Foreign Language Learning Tips

Seth Roberts15 Comments

After I said that I was having trouble learning Chinese, my friend Carl Willat made several interesting suggestions:

My ideas are pretty simple, and I don’t know if they’ll work for you but I’m thinking back on what helped me the most when I was learning Italian. Maybe they will strike you as obvious, or what you’re already doing. I’ll spell them out here anyway, and please just ignore anything that seems useless. I apologize in advance.

The big one, reading out loud and having someone correct your pronunciation, probably won’t work as well when you’re dealing with those chinese Characters instead of words in a recognizable alphabet. But the underlying concept, leaning the way a child learns, might have other applications. This was Roberta Niccacci’s approach and it worked incredibly well for me. She said pronunciation comes before comprehension. I read books out loud to her and my pronunciation got to be very good, though I didn’t understand much of what I was reading. After three or four books I could read like an Italian newscaster. “Keep doing this and you will wake up speaking Italian,” she said, and that’s what it felt like. Read more “Foreign Language Learning Tips”

Teaching Academic Writing: My Plan (Part 2 of 2)

Seth Roberts3 Comments

To review, I am teaching Academic Writing this semester. I want to motivate learning using forces other than grades. Here is my plan.

On the first day of class, I’ll say: Don’t take this class unless there is some piece of writing you want to do. This class will be all about me helping you write whatever you want. Most of the students will want help writing a personal statement for graduate school applications. I’ll tell them there needs to be something else they want to write. Without that the class will be a waste of time.

For the first class — the course meets for 1.5 hours once/week — I’ll talk about writing a personal statement.

After that, the general plan will be:

1. I meet with students after class (in the same place) for however long they want, maybe 5-20 minutes. They choose the duration. During these meetings, they show me what they’ve written. I read it and tell them how they can improve it.

2. During the next class, each student who met with me will give a talk lasting the same length of time as our meeting. For example, if we met for 5 minutes, the talk will last 5 minutes. The talk will be about what I said. After each talk I’ll give feedback.

3. In addition, students who meet with me will add my advice to a shared document (e.g., Google Docs).

4. Each week, one student will be assigned to spend a certain length of time (30 minutes) improving the shared document. For example, making it clearer or better organized. The next class they will give a brief talk saying what they did. Again, I will give feedback.

This accomplishes several things: 1. Customization. Each student can write whatever they want. 2. Doing. They actually write “real” material (in contrast to writing assignments). What they choose to write will probably be stuff like a paper for another class but at least it isn’t a writing assignment. 3. Telling. They will tell other students what they have learned.

Attractive elements of the plan for me include the fact that I never lecture and never grade. I never need to guess what the students need help with. I learn what they need help with by looking at what they’ve written. Even though there are no grades or teacher-imposed deadlines, I give lots of feedback — it really is challenging. Attractive elements of the plan for students are that there is flexibility, they can write whatever they want, they never have to take notes (yet there is a written record to refer to), and they are pushed to understand the material in a non-competitive way.

If a student doesn’t pay attention in class — the presentations when other students tell what I told them — he risks having me make the same comment on his writing I made earlier on someone else’s. Then he would have to tell other students that I made that same comment. The other students wouldn’t like that; it wastes their time. So there is pressure to pay attention. If you miss it during class, you can study the shared document.

More English is not my students’ native language, although they are quite good at it. I think that they are more likely to understand another student say X (in English) than when I say X (in English) because the student’s English will be closer to their English ability. I might use words they don’t know. This is a problem in America, too (professor knows a lot more than his or her students) but it is especially clear here. My point is that this is a good feature of having students give class presentations about what I told them, rather than me telling the class directly, which might seem better. If a presenter makes a mistake, I will fix it.

 

Teaching Academic Writing: My Plan (Part 1 of 2)

Seth Roberts1 Comment

This semester at Tsinghua — which begins this week — I am going to teach Academic Writing in English. The class is in the Psychology Department. It hasn’t met yet; I suppose all of my students will be psychology majors. In this post I am describe my plan for teaching it; future posts will describe what actually happened.

Last year I taught a class called Frontiers of Psychology. I discovered that I could teach the class without grading. I never gave grades (nor tests), yet the students did lots of work (the assignment completion rate was about 99.9%) and apparently learned a lot. Behind my removal of grading was my belief that long ago people learned everything without grading. Maybe I can use those ancient sources of motivation, rather than fear of a bad grade or desire for a good grade. The details of the course centered on three principles: 1. Customization. As much as possible, I tried to allow each student to learn what they wanted to learn. For example, they had a very wide choice of final project. 2. Doing. “The best way to learn is to do” (Paul Halmos) — so students did as much as possible. For example, they did experiments. 3. Telling. Students told the rest of the class about what they had read or done. I gave plenty of feedback but it was always spoken. For example, after each class presentation I pointed out something I liked and something that could have been better.

It was like the discovery of anesthesia. All of sudden, no pain. No difficult grading decisions. No written comments (explaining the grades), which I wondered if the recipient would understand. The class was a pure pleasure to teach. For the students, no longer did they need to worry about getting a bad (or less than perfect) grade.

Can I repeat this with a much different class? At the same time I taught Frontiers of Psychology, I also taught Academic Writing in English for the first time. It was pass/fail, so I didn’t grade there, either, but I wasn’t happy with how it went. (I didn’t want to teach it again . . . but, a month ago, I learned I am teaching it again.) This time I am going to take what I learned from my Frontiers of Psychology experience and try to create a better class.

In the next post I will describe my overall plan. Throughout the semester I will post about how well my plan is working. Supposedly “ no battle plan survives contact with the enemy” but my Frontiers of Psychology plan worked fine. I didn’t change it at all. Maybe my Academic Writing plan will work, maybe it won’t.

Movie directing and teaching.

 

 

 

Drawing a Line Where No Line Was Needed: GQ Editor Defends Hugo Boss

Seth Roberts12 Comments

The comedian Russell Brand, at a GQ awards show in London, “joked” — according to Brand, it was a joke — that the sponsor of the event, Hugo Boss, clothed the Nazis. Fine. More interesting to me was something that happened later. According to Brand, the following conversation took place:

GQ editor Dylan Jones What you did was very offensive to Hugo Boss.

Brand What Hugo Boss did was very offensive to the Jews.

Sure, Jones was upset. But nothing in his job description requires him to defend Hugo Boss. Especially in the least nuanced possible way. In contrast to Brand’s criticism of Boss, which makes Brand look good, Jones’s criticism of Brand, if it has any effect at all (probably not), makes Jones look foolish. He did not make his remark out of carefully-calibrated self-interest.

Jones’s comment interests me because now and then something in my head pushes me to do two things I know are unwise:

1. Tell someone else what to do when there is no reason to think they want my advice.

2. Simplify a complicated situation.

Jones did both things. I try to resist — try to say nothing — but am not always successful. Maybe Desire #1 is why professors are fond of teaching what they call “critical thinking” — it allows them to indulge Desire #1. On the face of it, appreciative thinking — especially nuanced appreciation — seems at least as important, but I have never heard a professor say he teaches that.

Eric Kandel Sheds Light On Who Wins Nobel Prizes

Seth Roberts8 Comments

The most interesting thing about the Nobel Prize in Medicine is its predictable irrelevance to major health problems. Year after year, the prize-winning work has failed to reduce heart disease, cancer, depression, stroke, diabetes, schizophrenia, and so on. Another interesting thing about the Nobel Prize in Medicine is that Eric Kandel, a Columbia Medical School professor, managed to win one. In 1986, a book called Explorers of the Black Box: The Search for the Cellular Basis of Memory by Susan Allport told how Kandel tried to take credit for other people’s discoveries. Not a pretty picture. Yet in 2000 he won a Nobel Prize for those or very similar discoveries. Did Allport exaggerate? Did her sources deceive her? Did Kandel — contrary to what Allport’s book seems to say — deserve a Nobel Prize?

I can’t answer these questions. However, a recent article by Kandel (“A New Science of Mind”) in the New York Times sheds light on how well he understands medicine and neuroscience. Not well, it turns out. He writes:

We are nowhere near understanding [psychiatric disorders] as well as we understand disorders of the liver or the heart.

Actually, our understanding of liver and heart disorders is close to zero, matching our understanding of psychiatric disorders. If we had some understanding of heart disease, for example, we would know why heart disease is much rarer in Japan than in the United States. Read more “Eric Kandel Sheds Light On Who Wins Nobel Prizes”

Hobbyist Science vs. Professional Science vs. Personal Science

Seth Roberts5 Comments

In a TED talk, Paula Scher, a graphic designer, told how a hobby of painting maps turned into something like a job.

I was up in my country house, and for some reason, I began painting these very big, very involved, laborious, complicated maps . . . They would take me about six months initially, but then I started getting faster at it. Here’s the United States. Every single city of the United States is on here. . . . One of my favorites was this painting I did of Florida after the 2000 election that has the election results rolling around in the water. . . . Somebody . . . saw the paintings and recommended them to a gallery, and I had a first show about two-and-a-half years ago, and I showed these paintings that I’m showing you now. . . . They sold quickly, and became rather popular. . . . The gallery wanted me to have another show in two years, which meant that I really had to paint these paintings much faster than I had ever done them. . . . I was no longer at play. I was actually in this solemn landscape of fulfilling an expectation for a show, which is not where I started.

A hobby turned into a job. This has happened countless times — I believe all jobs started as hobbies.

One hobby that turned into a job is science. The first scientists were hobbyists — for example, Darwin and Mendel. The success of hobbyist scientists led to the creation of full-time jobs that included doing science — professors of science at universities. When science became a job, something was gained (professionals had more time per day, money, training, institutional support, collegial support, and prestige than hobbyists) and something was lost (professionals had less freedom than hobbyists). Professionals could do many things hobbyists could not, but the reverse was also true: hobbyists could do many things professionals could not. For example, they could work on a question for ten years without publishing anything (Mendel, Darwin) and entertain highly heretical ideas (Darwin). Professionals needed steady output and dared not offend, for fear of losing their job.

My personal science (personal science = using science to help yourself) is another step in this history. I combined the freedom of hobbyists with the knowledge, skills and resources of professionals. I can do whatever self-experiments I want and test whatever ideas I want. Yet I also have professional levels of training, knowledge, skill, and (to some extent) equipment provided by my job as a psychology professor, Berkeley library access, the Internet, free software, and cheap computers. To these two elements — the freedom of hobbyists, the resources of professionals — my personal science added a third element not found in hobbyist or professional science: the motivation of a person with a problem. I wanted better health. My personal science helped me get it. In the beginning, I wanted to sleep better, lose weight, have less acne, and be in a better mood. Later, I discovered new ways to improve my brain function and blood sugar. Just combining the freedom of hobbyists with the resources of professionals, personal science would probably be a big improvement. Adding better motivation suggests that personal science is even more likely to improve our lives by learning what professional scientists haven’t learned. The combination of professional science and personal science will be far more powerful (= more useful) than professional science alone.

I’ve seen this in my own life, over and over, and I predict it will eventually be true for everyone. Learning how to control one’s own health — how to sleep well, for example — is non-trivial knowledge.

Dragon vs. Dragon: Same Name, Different Genus?

Seth Roberts12 Comments

In a discussion of dragonfruit (common in China), a Chinese friend pointed out that Chinese dragons and Western dragons are quite different. I was surprised, I hadn’t noticed this. My friend was right:

There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries.

says Wikipedia. Why two different imaginary animals would be quite similar isn’t obvious.

 

“The Cause of Ulcers is Bacteria” Makes as Much Sense as “The Cause of Car Accidents is Cars”

Seth Roberts10 Comments

If I were to look at you, and say, in a serious tone of voice, “The cause of car accidents is cars”, you’d think I’m nuts. It’s not a useful statement. Yet many medical and science experts — including the people who award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — believe it is helpful to say “the cause of ulcers is bacteria”. The two statements are similar because only a small percentage of cars get in accidents and only a small percentage of people infected with H. pylori, the bacterium that supposedly “causes ulcers”, get ulcers. A helpful investigation of what causes ulcers would figure out the crucial difference(s) between those infected with H. pylori who don’t get ulcers (almost all) and those who do (very few).

I recently encountered the “the cause of ulcers is bacteria” twice in one day. Once in a book review by John Timpane:

Barry Marshall, who discovered what causes stomach ulcers, played fast, loose, and messy with his methods and data. He was right, and got the right answer, and now we know.

(Timpane is right about the “fast, loose, and messy” part. Marshall ingested a large number of H. pylori. He failed get an ulcer — and claimed the outcome supported his view that H. pylori causes ulcers.) And once in The New Yorker, in a long article about the benefits of microbes, especially H. pylori, by Michael Specter:

In 1982, to the astonishment of the medical world, two scientists, Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren, discovered that H. pylori is the principal cause of gastritis and peptic ulcers.

Should I expect science journalists to understand causality? Maybe not. But it is interesting that the people who award the Nobel Prize in Medicine and “the medical world” do not understand it.

The Blindness of Scientists: The Problem isn’t False Positives, It’s Undetected Positives

Seth Roberts6 Comments

Suppose you have a car that can only turn right. Someone says, Your car turns right too much. You might wonder why they don’t see the bigger problem (can’t turn left).

This happens in science today. People complain about how well the car turns right, failing to notice (or at least say) it can’t turn left. Just as a car should turn both right and left, scientists should be able to (a) test ideas and (b) generate ideas worth testing. Tests are expensive. To be worth the cost of testing, an idea needs a certain plausibility. In my experience, few scientists have clear ideas about how to generate ideas plausible enough to test. The topic is not covered in any statistics text I have seen — the same books that spend many pages on to how to test ideas.

Apparently not noticing the bigger problem, scientists sometimes complain that this or that finding “fails to replicate”. My former colleague Danny Kahneman is an example. He complained that priming effects were not replicating. Implicit in a complaint that Finding X fails to replicate is a complaint about testing. If you complain that X fails to replicate, you are saying that something was wrong with the tests that established X. There is a connection between replication failure and failure to generate ideas worth testing. If you cannot generate new ideas, you are forced to test old ideas. You cannot test an old idea exactly — that would be boring/repetitive. So you give an old idea a slight tweak and test the variation. For example, someone has shown that X is true in North America. You ask if X is true in South America. You hope you haven’t tweaked X too much. No idea is true everywhere, except maybe in physics, so as this process continues — it goes on for decades — the tested ideas gradually become less true and the experimental effects get weaker. This is what happened in the priming experiments that Kahneman complained about. At the core of priming — the priming effects studied 30 years ago — is a true phenomenon. After reading “doctor” it becomes easier to decide that “nurse” is a word, for example. This was followed by 30 years of drift away from word recognition. Not knowing how to generate new ideas worth testing, social psychologists have ended up studying weak effects (recent priming effects) that are random walks away from strong effects (old priming effects). The weak effects cannot bear the professional weight (people’s careers rest on them) they are asked to carry and sometimes collapse (“failure to replicate”). Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia Business School professor and social psychologist, got a major award (best dissertation) for and wrote a book about a new effect that has turned out to be very close to non-existent. Inability to generate ideas — to understand how to do so — means that what appear to be new ideas (not just variations of old ideas) are more likely to be mistakes. I have no idea whether Iyengar’s original effect was true or not. I am sure, however, that it was weak and made little sense.

Statistics textbooks ignore the problem. They say nothing about how to generate ideas worth testing. I haven’t asked statisticians about this, but they might respond in one of two ways: 1. That’s someone else’s problem. Statistics is about what to do with data after you gather it. That makes as much sense as teaching someone how to land a plane but not how to take off. 2. That’s what exploratory data analysis is for. If I said “E xploratory data analysis can only identify effects of factors that the researcher decided to vary or track. Which is expensive. What about other factors?” they’d be baffled, I believe. In my experience, exploratory data analysis = full analysis of your data. (Many people do only a small fraction, such as 10%, of all reasonable analyses of their data.) Full analysis is better than partial analysis, but calling it a way to find new ideas fails to understand that professional scientists study the same factors over and over.

I suppose many scientists feel the gap acutely. I did. I became interested in self-experimentation most of all because it generated new ideas at a much higher rate (per year) than my professional experiments with rats. I had no idea why, at first, but as it kept happening — my self-experimentation generated one new idea after another. I came to believe that by accident I was doing something “right”. I was doing something that fit a general rule of how to generate ideas, even though I didn’t know what the general rule was.

T he sciences I know about (psychology and nutrition) have great trouble coming up with new ideas. The paleo movement is a response to stagnation in the field of nutrition. The Shangri-La Diet shows what a new idea looks like in the area of weight control. The failure of nutritionists to study fermented foods is ongoing. Stagnation in psychology can be seen in the fact that antidepressants remain heavily prescribed, many years after the introduction of Prozac (my work on morning faces and mood suggests a much different approach), lack of change in treatments for bipolar disorder over the last 50 years (again, my morning-faces work suggests another approach), and in the failure of social psychologists to discover any big new effects in the last ten years.

 

Here is the secret to idea generation: Cheaper tests. To find ideas plausible enough to be worth testing with Test X, you need a way of testing ideas that is cheaper than Test X. The cheaper your test, the larger the region of cause-effect space you can explore. Let’s say Test Y is cheaper than Test X. With Test Y, you can explore more of cause-effect space than you can explore with Test X. In the region unexplored by Test X, you can find points (cause-effect relationships) that pass Test Y. They are worth testing with Test X. My self-experimentation generated new ideas worth testing with more expensive tests because it was much cheaper than existing tests. Via self-experimentation, I could test many ideas too implausible or too expensive to be tested conventionally. Even cheaper than a self-experiment was simply monitoring myself — tracking my sleep, for example. Again and again, this generated ideas worth testing via self-experimentation. I did what all scientists should do: use cheaper tests to generate ideas worth testing with more expensive tests.

More About Magic Dots

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Govind M., the Stanford grad student who recommended brown noise, has good things to say about magic dots:

I have been using magic dots for about two months now and they work. I have no idea why they work — maybe it’s the reinforcement — but they do. I enjoy making them and for me, I have to finish them. I use 9 min/mark for 90 min intervals, which also provides a very easy way to track time. A four box day is enormously productive, though the fourth box typically gets torpedoed by a meeting or something.

One of the advantages of magic dots is that instead of setting down an intimidating 90-minute chunk of time, my mental horizon is shortened to the next 9 minutes. After that, the box takes over. So in situations in which (1) it is difficult to get started and (2) I want to add structure to the day, I use magic dots.

I asked, “When you are using the magic dots, do you work for longer periods of time before taking a break?” Govind said:

Yes. However, it is possible that goal gets shifted from “be focused and attentive and not goofing off on facebook” to “work long enough make 10 marks on a piece of paper.” It makes it easier to start and to continue on working.

I too find that magic dots make it easier to start work. I think this happens because the task in front of me (getting work done) seems more doable.