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There was an interesting study I remember reading along these lines. They took two equivalent classes of pottery students. Group A was told that they'd be grad

There was an interesting study I remember reading along these lines. They took two equivalent classes of pottery students. Group A was told that they'd be graded based on the number of pieces made, while group B was based off the quality of a single submitted piece. Following the given incentives involved, group A made a bunch of pottery, while group B tried really hard at making good pottery. What's interesting is at the end of the class, group A's pottery was better than group B's. Making a lot of pottery without caring about the quality of any individual piece is better at making high quality pottery. The key takeaway I got is that you're generally able to magically become better at things you do a lot of. So if you want to get good at something, just do it more, and results will generally follow.

ghubbard 9y ago
While a nice story, I have been unable to find any citations that would indicate that this was ever an actual study.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  I may be mis-remembering the level of rigor, it may have just been a thing a professor tried because they were curious.
- TheBiv 9y ago
  it looks like it was a class https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality...
- draw_down 9y ago
  It appears in the book "Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking" by David Bayles and Ted Orland. PROTIP: Google will often tell you these things!
  - ghubbard 9y ago
    And where in that book are the references to an actual study? PROTIP: Books are often filled with creative writing.
    - draw_down 9y ago
      Fine, OK. I checked it out and there are no citations in the book at all (1993 edition), so yes it's a just-so story.
MikeTheGreat 9y ago
I'd be interested to know if this is true generally, or just for people learning a new skill. I.e., Making a lot of pottery without caring about the individual quality leads to more learning (possibly because you can try lots of new stuff without fear of failure, possibly because when you find something that works you can keep practicing it, etc, etc). Once you know what you're doing I can't imagine that blasting through something in a half-assed fashion produces better results than carefully doing a thoughtful job.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Definitely the latter, sorry if the story wasn't clear about that. Spending more time on an individual piece means that within the band of results your current skill is capable of delivering, you get a better result. Repetition, on the other hand, does a much better job of improving your skill.
bluGill 9y ago
I'm curious what would happen if they took Group A just before they started their last piece and said there was a change and the quality of this piece would count. They have now learned a lot about making pottery and one would presume just need a little more effort to perfect it.
pvaldes 9y ago
It seems that the test was 'average' value in 1 x B against 'maximum' value in 50 x A. Different measures (and not totally fair game). There is a bigger probability of doing something well just by chance if you repeat the test more times.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  Not exactly comparable; the 1xB group had (took) a lot more time for their pot, and consciously spent more effort on making it look good. They actively went for max, while the 50x group didn't even go for it.
  - pvaldes 9y ago
    Making it look good is not the time that counts really here. Extra time is useful only in some parts of the process. Cooking time would be similar in both cases for each piece and this is the critical part. "went for max" would mean here more ornamentation and bigger pieces. Is easy to cook perfectly a small pot, but the challenge is hugely increased if you are expected to produce bigger, more fragile pieces, with more parts that can fall off, and a structure that needs to carry more weight. 'A' can afford to play safe and small in this game, 'B' can't. You would need to be 'good' to be sucessful playing the A game, but would have to be 'a master' to be successful in B group. No only they are different levels of challenge. Is a different level of learning. Even if A can do small and simple pieces, we can't say that are better than B in this sense (nobody had evaluated B doing small pieces). The opposite is also true. There is not guarantee that A are ready for the bigger pieces at the end of the course and wouldn't fall for the same errors than B.
6stringmerc 9y ago
I love how often this comment gets upvoted because it's the perfect opportunity to point out usually 1% or so of any given cohort will have inherent talent that can be recognized as "Above Average" or maybe even "Exceptional." Throw a bunch of practice in, and yup, this is inherently a reasonable consideration. Point being, most people don't have what it takes to cut it, so might as well aim for a really high investment of time and effort, and eventually plenty of walls will arise. For me, it took somewhere in the neighborhood of "5 Walls" before I could become cross-genre competent, and I've still got Wall #6 I'm kind of reluctantly ignoring (sweep picking, FWIW). Most people give up around Wall #3, playing through extremely painful finger tips to the point of growing useful callouses (the kind you can stick a safety pin through and not draw blood). A lot of this discussion tends to have trouble differentiating between "Imaginative Genius" and "Craft Expertise" and basically what we call "Success" is a labor of love, passion, or lunacy somewhere in the middle.
gens 9y ago
My 2 moneys. I worked in construction a while ago. I was always slow, pedantic, and the work i did usually reflected that (usually, some things benefit from being done fast). Everybody kept telling me that i was slow so one day i said "f it" and started working faster. The quality of work went down, for obvious reasons, and never got to the quality that was before (for most of it, some work like cutting things to size stayed precise). But if you, for example, paint a hundred windows really fast, you will probably not find many windows painted nicely. (mind you that nobody notices the little imperfections in construction, like, for example, a drop of white wall paint on the white radiator pipe) Of course doing more means learning more, but so does thinking and experimenting. Pottery, i never tried, but i assume it is more about the "feel" then anything else. While programming benefits a lot more from learning random stuff. It's easier to write a huge mess of code that works fine then it is to make a huge pot that doesn't fall apart. All in all, why not bout ? Hack some 100 programs quickly, and write a couple programs with lots of preparation and research.
- vosper 9y ago
  Do you think there was any change in quality from the first window you painted after you decided to start going fast, versus the last one? Like, did you get better at painting windows quickly, even if they weren't up to the quality of the pedantic, slow one?
  - gens 9y ago
    It was a long time ago and i did do more of the heavier construction then stuff like painting. Biggest thing i learned from doing things quickly is where precision matters and where not. For example if i'm painting the ceiling it doesn't matter if i touch a wall as i will paint that wall later (unless i splat a bunch of it, ofc), but it does matter if i touch the ceiling when i'm paining the wall. Of course painting things quickly brings the risk of spraying paint around, especially when using a roller. Painting things too slowly can also be bad if the paint is highly viscous, like with the paint for outside metal surfaces (railings) as it ends up being obvious where you stopped to detail something else. Or wall paint if you cba to do it in two layers so you mix thicker paint and do it in one. With windows specifically (and doors and such) you would put the.. paper tape (idk how to translate it) (edit: masking tape) some 2 or more cm wide on the edges so you would have a nice margin of error. With paining fast there is a bigger risk of going over it, and that can be bad (oil based window paint on a wall is really bad, wall paint on a window easily goes away with a wet rag). In most construction it doesn't matter if you are little off, it was just me being anal. TL;DR I learned where it matters to go a bit slower and where i can go fast without consequences. edit: Forgot to answer the question. Yes, i did get better. Mostly because i learned where i can go fast and where i need to pay more attention. Learning to not wave brushes full of paint around like a figure skater also had a bit to do with it. I did also learn that some things come out better by default if you do them fast.
jholman 9y ago
There was no such study. The story you're repeating is a parable, published in a book called "Art & Fear" (as sibling commenters have noted). There is no evidence in that book that it's anything other than a fabrication, argumentation from "just-so story". I happen to believe the theory, personally. But the ceramics story is not evidence at all that the theory is correct. It's just a bald-faced assertion.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  This makes me wonder how many times, when people say 'I read/remember a study...', they actually read the study itself, and not some second-hand analysis (or, a story which masquerades as second-hand analysis). I think 'I remember a study' should be an anti-pattern for careful conversation.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    Yeah, I definitely wasn't careful with my wording there. I remembered reading about a study, not "reading a study". And even then, it was less a study and more "hey, a funny thing happened in my pottery class".
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      No worries! I didn't mean to call you out or anything - I've used the phrase frequently myself, and was mostly just thinking out loud for how I can communicate with more care.
  - gwern 9y ago
    It happens all the time. After being burned dozens of times by urban legends and grossly misdescribed studies, I started just always reading fulltext instead of relying on summaries or citations. And even then, you'll run into misleading to the point of lying summaries of past research throughout the literature. Life is hard.
- kens 9y ago
  I investigated this story a while ago and concluded it was a parable, based on how it was presented in Art and Fear. However, I checked with the book's author and found that it is a true story. Strangely, the class was actually a university-level photography class, but they changed it to ceramics in the book.
77pt77 9y ago
> There was an interesting study Source please.
baxtr 9y ago
Where is the data for that story?
prolifikosis 9y ago
I'm co-founder of Prolifiko and wrote the article you kindly commented on - thank you. Whilst the story you refer to might or might not be a parable - the thrust is correct. Check out this post about prolific nobel laureates - http://prolifiko.com/limitless/ http://prolifiko.com/limitless/

ghubbard 9y ago

While a nice story, I have been unable to find any citations that would indicate that this was ever an actual study.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
I may be mis-remembering the level of rigor, it may have just been a thing a professor tried because they were curious.
TheBiv 9y ago
it looks like it was a class https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality...
draw_down 9y ago
It appears in the book "Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking" by David Bayles and Ted Orland. PROTIP: Google will often tell you these things!
- ghubbard 9y ago
  And where in that book are the references to an actual study? PROTIP: Books are often filled with creative writing.
  - draw_down 9y ago
    Fine, OK. I checked it out and there are no citations in the book at all (1993 edition), so yes it's a just-so story.

MikeTheGreat 9y ago

I'd be interested to know if this is true generally, or just for people learning a new skill. I.e., Making a lot of pottery without caring about the individual quality leads to more learning (possibly because you can try lots of new stuff without fear of failure, possibly because when you find something that works you can keep practicing it, etc, etc). Once you know what you're doing I can't imagine that blasting through something in a half-assed fashion produces better results than carefully doing a thoughtful job.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Definitely the latter, sorry if the story wasn't clear about that. Spending more time on an individual piece means that within the band of results your current skill is capable of delivering, you get a better result. Repetition, on the other hand, does a much better job of improving your skill.

bluGill 9y ago

I'm curious what would happen if they took Group A just before they started their last piece and said there was a change and the quality of this piece would count. They have now learned a lot about making pottery and one would presume just need a little more effort to perfect it.

pvaldes 9y ago

It seems that the test was 'average' value in 1 x B against 'maximum' value in 50 x A. Different measures (and not totally fair game). There is a bigger probability of doing something well just by chance if you repeat the test more times.

nothrabannosir 9y ago
Not exactly comparable; the 1xB group had (took) a lot more time for their pot, and consciously spent more effort on making it look good. They actively went for max, while the 50x group didn't even go for it.
- pvaldes 9y ago
  Making it look good is not the time that counts really here. Extra time is useful only in some parts of the process. Cooking time would be similar in both cases for each piece and this is the critical part. "went for max" would mean here more ornamentation and bigger pieces. Is easy to cook perfectly a small pot, but the challenge is hugely increased if you are expected to produce bigger, more fragile pieces, with more parts that can fall off, and a structure that needs to carry more weight. 'A' can afford to play safe and small in this game, 'B' can't. You would need to be 'good' to be sucessful playing the A game, but would have to be 'a master' to be successful in B group. No only they are different levels of challenge. Is a different level of learning. Even if A can do small and simple pieces, we can't say that are better than B in this sense (nobody had evaluated B doing small pieces). The opposite is also true. There is not guarantee that A are ready for the bigger pieces at the end of the course and wouldn't fall for the same errors than B.

6stringmerc 9y ago

I love how often this comment gets upvoted because it's the perfect opportunity to point out usually 1% or so of any given cohort will have inherent talent that can be recognized as "Above Average" or maybe even "Exceptional." Throw a bunch of practice in, and yup, this is inherently a reasonable consideration. Point being, most people don't have what it takes to cut it, so might as well aim for a really high investment of time and effort, and eventually plenty of walls will arise. For me, it took somewhere in the neighborhood of "5 Walls" before I could become cross-genre competent, and I've still got Wall #6 I'm kind of reluctantly ignoring (sweep picking, FWIW). Most people give up around Wall #3, playing through extremely painful finger tips to the point of growing useful callouses (the kind you can stick a safety pin through and not draw blood). A lot of this discussion tends to have trouble differentiating between "Imaginative Genius" and "Craft Expertise" and basically what we call "Success" is a labor of love, passion, or lunacy somewhere in the middle.

gens 9y ago

My 2 moneys. I worked in construction a while ago. I was always slow, pedantic, and the work i did usually reflected that (usually, some things benefit from being done fast). Everybody kept telling me that i was slow so one day i said "f it" and started working faster. The quality of work went down, for obvious reasons, and never got to the quality that was before (for most of it, some work like cutting things to size stayed precise). But if you, for example, paint a hundred windows really fast, you will probably not find many windows painted nicely. (mind you that nobody notices the little imperfections in construction, like, for example, a drop of white wall paint on the white radiator pipe) Of course doing more means learning more, but so does thinking and experimenting. Pottery, i never tried, but i assume it is more about the "feel" then anything else. While programming benefits a lot more from learning random stuff. It's easier to write a huge mess of code that works fine then it is to make a huge pot that doesn't fall apart. All in all, why not bout ? Hack some 100 programs quickly, and write a couple programs with lots of preparation and research.

vosper 9y ago
Do you think there was any change in quality from the first window you painted after you decided to start going fast, versus the last one? Like, did you get better at painting windows quickly, even if they weren't up to the quality of the pedantic, slow one?
- gens 9y ago
  It was a long time ago and i did do more of the heavier construction then stuff like painting. Biggest thing i learned from doing things quickly is where precision matters and where not. For example if i'm painting the ceiling it doesn't matter if i touch a wall as i will paint that wall later (unless i splat a bunch of it, ofc), but it does matter if i touch the ceiling when i'm paining the wall. Of course painting things quickly brings the risk of spraying paint around, especially when using a roller. Painting things too slowly can also be bad if the paint is highly viscous, like with the paint for outside metal surfaces (railings) as it ends up being obvious where you stopped to detail something else. Or wall paint if you cba to do it in two layers so you mix thicker paint and do it in one. With windows specifically (and doors and such) you would put the.. paper tape (idk how to translate it) (edit: masking tape) some 2 or more cm wide on the edges so you would have a nice margin of error. With paining fast there is a bigger risk of going over it, and that can be bad (oil based window paint on a wall is really bad, wall paint on a window easily goes away with a wet rag). In most construction it doesn't matter if you are little off, it was just me being anal. TL;DR I learned where it matters to go a bit slower and where i can go fast without consequences. edit: Forgot to answer the question. Yes, i did get better. Mostly because i learned where i can go fast and where i need to pay more attention. Learning to not wave brushes full of paint around like a figure skater also had a bit to do with it. I did also learn that some things come out better by default if you do them fast.

jholman 9y ago

There was no such study. The story you're repeating is a parable, published in a book called "Art & Fear" (as sibling commenters have noted). There is no evidence in that book that it's anything other than a fabrication, argumentation from "just-so story". I happen to believe the theory, personally. But the ceramics story is not evidence at all that the theory is correct. It's just a bald-faced assertion.

oh_sigh 9y ago
This makes me wonder how many times, when people say 'I read/remember a study...', they actually read the study itself, and not some second-hand analysis (or, a story which masquerades as second-hand analysis). I think 'I remember a study' should be an anti-pattern for careful conversation.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Yeah, I definitely wasn't careful with my wording there. I remembered reading about a study, not "reading a study". And even then, it was less a study and more "hey, a funny thing happened in my pottery class".
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    No worries! I didn't mean to call you out or anything - I've used the phrase frequently myself, and was mostly just thinking out loud for how I can communicate with more care.
- gwern 9y ago
  It happens all the time. After being burned dozens of times by urban legends and grossly misdescribed studies, I started just always reading fulltext instead of relying on summaries or citations. And even then, you'll run into misleading to the point of lying summaries of past research throughout the literature. Life is hard.
kens 9y ago
I investigated this story a while ago and concluded it was a parable, based on how it was presented in Art and Fear. However, I checked with the book's author and found that it is a true story. Strangely, the class was actually a university-level photography class, but they changed it to ceramics in the book.

77pt77 9y ago

> There was an interesting study Source please.

baxtr 9y ago

Where is the data for that story?

prolifikosis 9y ago

I'm co-founder of Prolifiko and wrote the article you kindly commented on - thank you. Whilst the story you refer to might or might not be a parable - the thrust is correct. Check out this post about prolific nobel laureates - http://prolifiko.com/limitless/ http://prolifiko.com/limitless/