On Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:00:04 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>> That's actually a really good strategy for learning, as well - if you
>> have to explain what you learned to someone, that helps focus your
>> attention on what you're learning.
> 
> Well, that's true enough. I quite often walk around the place telling my
> imaginary friend about the finer points of logic design, or chaos
> theory, or data compression algorithms. Quite often you discover a new
> way of looking at something just be *pretending* to explain it to
> somebody.

When I was working in IT on a daily basis, I would call my wife and try 
to explain a problem I was seeing to her - not that she could help with 
technical advice, but because if I framed it so she could understand it, 
the answer would frequently appear before me.

> I like to pretend that this is the reason that I do this. Obviously, the
> real reason is that until very recently, I was a sad pathetic loser with
> no *real* humans to talk to...

Well, I know plenty of people who do just that when they're preparing for 
a presentation as well.  I know several instructors who practice in front 
of a mirror, too.

>> The trick is not to identify "Haskell" as the subject you're writing
>> about, but to break it down into smaller pieces.  Then break those
>> smaller pieces down, and so on.
>>
>> Then you get to something manageable.
>>
>> After that, then build a structure.
> 
> Chopping the subject up into pieces is not difficult. It's stringing
> them into a logical structure that's difficult. I think I do this quite
> well for smaller documents. For large documents, it ends up all going
> wrong.

Large documents are just a collection of small documents.  So start by 
doing the "chopping up" and then we'll talk about how to structure it.

>> When I worked on the books I co-authored, that's what we did; Peter (my
>> co-author) and I sat down together (or sent lots of e-mails, since we
>> did a couple books together and he's in Toronto and I'm not) and worked
>> out an outline for our troubleshooting book.
[...]
> 
> I should imagine having professional people review your work helps a
> lot. I did write a short piece for Internet "publication", and the
> editor's comments were helpful. (Not that I suppose he's a professional
> editor; this is only a small hobby publication, after all...)

Having competent people helps a lot.  I worked with some editors who 
weren't very good, and I worked with some who were.  On the language 
review edits, though, I rejected about 90% of the suggestions because it 
changed the meaning of what I was trying to say.

>>> Didn't Mozart write Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the age of 6?
>>
>> Yes, but that doesn't really matter.  My point is that you don't start
>> out with something complex, you start out with something simple and
>> work up to complex.
> 
> Fair enough. Although, like I say, I've written plenty of smaller
> documents, and they've worked out well. It's large documents that end up
> not working.

So it's time to move from small documents to slightly larger documents, 
rather than to a 300 page book.  So, how do you define a "smaller 
document"?

>> When I learned to play the violin, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was one
>> of the first actual pieces of music I learned to play.  So was Three
>> Blind Mice.  I didn't tackle things like Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole,
>> Bach's Sonatas&  Partidas (only some of which I tried to learn on my
>> own), or Howard Hanson's 2nd Symphony (which I actually did get to
>> perform in concert in the USSR with the youth orchestra I was in) until
>> I'd mastered simpler stuff.
> 
> I think Ode to Joy was about the summit of my violin skills. Actually,
> one of the girls at work got given a violin for her birthday (she has no
> idea why), and I was still able to play this. (She brought the violin in
> to work because she couldn't actually get a note out of it. I managed to
> just about fix that too.)

Well, that's included in the 9th Symphony (as I'm sure you know). :)

>> But if you search and come up with nothing and Darren writes an "almost
>> identical search term" and comes up with useful data, compare your
>> search to Darren's.  Don't say "they're almost the same", but note the
>> differences.
> 
> I guess mainly it just comes down to extreme pessimism about whether
> there's any useful documents to be found in the first place. (E.g., what
> are the chances of somebody having written a document about wavelets
> that isn't either a vague summary that tells you nothing, or a dense
> technical report which is incomprehensible?)

Then you need to address that as well - instead of starting out with 
despair and the expectation that there's nothing available on the topic 
(after all, if there were nothing useful available on the topic, then 
nobody would get involved in whatever field it is, but as people are 
involved, they must've learned from somewhere, right?), start out with no 
feeling one way or the other.

In other words, don't go from "nothing exists so why bother" to "of 
course it exists if I just search hard enough", but rather "I'm looking 
for something on 'x', and if I can't find it, someone can perhaps help me 
find it."

>>> Each individual concept isn't too difficult to explain. Trying to
>>> figure out the best order in which to explain all of them is
>>> maddeningly difficult.
>>
>> So let's use that as an exercise and see what we come up with. :-)
> 
> Heh, OK.
> 
> Perhaps not this week though, as (inexplicably) I actually have some
> work to do. Yeah, I know, imagine that...

I know the feeling, I do as well, but I'm willing to make some time to 
help you with this.  You've got the basic skills, you just need some 
practice and some guidance.

Jim

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