by darklighter3 on 3/8/14, 4:05 PM with 61 comments
by suprgeek on 3/8/14, 8:59 PM
- The ability to think creatively
- The ability to substitute initially attractive moves with well thought out log-term effective ones.
However on the other side of the coin is what we hackers face more often - Analysis Paralysis.
Once you fall into the Analytical Mindset, there is such a thing as being too analytical. Sometimes if it feels right you just go ahead and F*ing do it.
Otherwise the fear of making a wrong decision will paralyze you into inaction - which is worse than a screw-up (usually). So it is a balancing act - think enough but not too much. Analyze but not to the point of paralysis.
Edit: Spelling
by lotharbot on 3/8/14, 5:52 PM
When my wife was learning to play the piano, her teacher used to say "if you're going to make a mistake, make it loud so we can hear it and fix it." I make my students do math in pen for the same reason -- instead of silently making the same mistake over and over again, it gets made once, analyzed (by the students), and fixed. This bothered the students at first, but they've come around and become much more thoughtful about what they write.
> “Teaching chess is really about teaching the habits that go along with thinking,” Spiegel explained to me one morning when I visited her classroom. “Like how to understand your mistakes and how to be more aware of your thought processes.” > " I saw Spiegel trying to teach her students grit, curiosity, self-control, and optimism."
Which is really what teaching is about. I think most teachers know this, and we get a fairly healthy dose of it in professional development every week. I'm a math teacher, but the training I get during the school year isn't in math, it's in things like "accountable talk". It sounds like the teacher in this article is particularly gifted and practiced.
This isn't just for classroom teachers. The same concepts matter for parenting and in the workplace.
by pdonis on 3/8/14, 6:10 PM
And I really believe that's why we seem to win girls' nationals sections pretty easily every year: most people won’t tell teenage girls (especially the together, articulate ones) that they are lazy and the quality of their work is unacceptable. And sometimes kids need to hear that, or they have no reason to step up.
This could apply to boys as well as girls, and indeed to anyone at just about any age; sometimes we need to be told that we're not measuring up. I am reminded of Philip Greenspun's story about the venture capitalists who wrecked ArsDigita, the company he had built (from http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/):
[F]or most of this year Chip, Peter, and Allen [the VC Board members and CEO] didn't want to listen to me. They even developed a theory for why they didn't have to listen to me: I'd hurt their feelings by criticizing their performance and capabilities; self-esteem was the most important thing in running a business; ergo, because I was injuring their self-esteem it was better if they just turned a deaf ear. I'm not sure how much time these three guys had ever spent with engineers. Chuck Vest, the president of MIT, in a private communication to some faculty, once described MIT as "a no-praise zone". My first week as an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student I asked a professor for help with a problem. He talked to me for a bit and then said "You're having trouble with this problem because you don't know anything and you're not working very hard."
by thruflo on 3/8/14, 9:07 PM
Assess the position. Identify the variations to consider. Evaluate each variation for a roughly equivalent period of time. Choose the strongest. Sanity check you haven't missed something. Move.
Repeat, exhaustively, without losing focus, for a multiple of hours.
Edit: the parallel with startups is clear. In chess, you can only think so far ahead. This may be one or two moves, or for a strong player it may be five or six. Either way, you have a visibility horizon but you have to move.
by thaumaturgy on 3/8/14, 10:46 PM
It's a less popular, but probably more suitable game than chess. The individual rules are far simpler than chess, but the game play is way more complex, with lots of edge cases.
It also has a built-in handicap system that makes it possible for players of different ranks to play fair games, and the game board size can be scaled down for beginners while they learn the basics.
by Malarkey73 on 3/8/14, 11:25 PM
by KiwiCoder on 3/8/14, 5:50 PM
Coincidentally the BBC ran a series this week 'The Value of Failure.' http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xl7ff
The series is well worth a listen - 5 x 15 minutes.
by radicaledward on 3/8/14, 7:44 PM
I would welcome approaches like this when combined with something like the kind of educational freedom given at a montessori school. In this case, we're looking at a chess team. So maybe the children are participating voluntarily or maybe they aren't.
by cbaker on 3/9/14, 12:14 AM
by prestadige on 3/8/14, 8:47 PM
Yes. If a male teacher, for example, were to 'rampage' around female pupils, he'd be sacked.
by j2kun on 3/8/14, 7:53 PM
by Malarkey73 on 3/8/14, 11:29 PM
by yoha on 3/8/14, 9:58 PM
I know in practice he should have used the available time, but I wanted to underline the one flaw of the article; the rest is pretty good.
by erikpukinskis on 3/9/14, 10:43 PM
I see a lot of teachers/parents/bosses doing one or the other. They demand more of a kid, but fail to properly assess where the kid is, and therefore ask a little bit too much, setting the kid up for failure. Or they acknowledge where the kid is but fail to really push them to take the next step, leading to complacency. Both ultimately lead to fear.
In practice doing it right requires immense knowledge of both the subject and the student, which is what makes it hard. But when done right, people respond by growing very fast. And the experience, while sometimes exhausting, feels humane and healthy.
by startupstella on 3/8/14, 10:01 PM
by NAFV_P on 3/8/14, 11:20 PM
At my school in the UK, we didn't have a chess teacher. I'm presuming that not every school in the US has a chess teacher.
Coincidentally, Ms Spiegel reminds me of an old English teacher of mine.
> Before she was a a full-time chess teacher, Spiegel taught an eighth-grade honors English class. She taught them the same way she taught Sebastian: ruthlessly analyzing everything.
I would consider it a shame if she had actually stopped teaching English (especially the comprehension). I often notice how my sentences are elaborated by others, even occasionally on HN.
by dynamic99 on 3/8/14, 7:54 PM
by chippy on 3/9/14, 3:54 PM
By taking each component separately, by developing and iterating each little bit at the time, like a chess move, a good program can be made.
Perhaps those genius programmers who don't need to write tests do this process automatically.
by Elizer0x0309 on 3/9/14, 9:21 AM
by frade33 on 3/9/14, 11:01 PM
by bluecalm on 3/9/14, 12:39 PM
>>Spiegel’s face tensed. “We did not bring you here so that you could spend two seconds on a move,” she said with an edge in her voice
>>“This is pathetic. If you continue to play like this, I’m going to withdraw you from the tournament,
>> I’m very, very, very upset to be seeing such a careless and thoughtless game.
I call it bullying. Why not just focus on the thought process and try to detach emotions from it, that's what the kid needs to learn in the first place:
-"How much time did you spend here?"
-"Two seconds"
-"You see, spending two seconds here led to a blunder which you suffered from for rest of the game, we need to work on your thinking habits. There is not much time for that now and as I screw up as your teacher not teaching it to you before for now I only suggest that once you decide on a move, look away from the board, try to reset your mind, sit on your hands and look at the board as freshly as possible for 15 seconds to see if you are not blundering anything".
Then you add: "Thinking habits in chess are everything, a lot of brilliant players never make progress because occasional slips and a lot of not-so-brilliant ones enjoy success because they avoid simple mistake thanks to good habits". "We are going to work on this after the tournament, there are many ways. Rest assured it's main problem chess players have, you are not alone. How well people improve in that area is going to be a difference between winning and losing so it's exciting area to focus on". Then you discuss ego, how not willing to admit your own mistakes is major road block and how it's perfectly ok to discuss mistakes but it's not ok to be happy about them or comfortable with them! You need healthy dose of ambition you need to be disappointed... but optimistic and believing you can get better. Feeling guilty won't lead there. Feeling like you are disappointing other people won't lead there (even if it won't be long term, it's dependence on external motivator - disappointing someone. At one time this someone won't be there). If you act like the woman from the article people will avoid you - nobody wants to feel guilty after all. They want to improve, work on their thinking, compete and have fun.
Her way shows characteristics of bad teachers and bad parent. I've encountered both and I think it's the best way to kill natural joy and passion quickly even if you get some quick results - it won't be long term and it won't be to maximum potential.
by whatevsbro on 3/9/14, 10:26 AM
Feel like an abusive jerk? -She is one. She's behaving like one of those Chinese "Tiger Moms".
>> But then in round four everyone took more than an hour and started playing well.
But then, her bullying started getting results, and she let out a sigh of relief. She wouldn't "need" to tone it down and fake niceness after all.
Fear is an efficient motivator. The kids work hard to avoid the psychological pain she'll inflict on them for not performing up to her expectations.
by mantrax on 3/10/14, 5:46 AM
As the name suggest, it's just as important to strongly praise to correct moves as it is important to strongly scorn the bad moves.
We don't have emotions as some quirk of our evolutionary paths. Emotions are a tool. Like any tool, when used correctly, it produces amazing results.