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What is truly astounding about this is the patience to even attempt to explain free theorems to a 6 year old. Most parents would likely answer "math" and that w
by dyladan 8y ago
What is truly astounding about this is the patience to even attempt to explain free theorems to a 6 year old. Most parents would likely answer "math" and that would be the end of it. I don't (yet) have kids, but when I do I hope I have the wherewithal to recognize and take advantage of moments like these.
- shawn 8y agoIt's fun to talk to kids! Many of them are way more curious than most people are.
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoAnd it is endlessly entertaining to see just how quickly their minds can wrap around a subject you would think is too advanced for them. Its a matter of establishing a common language. Seeing that light go on in their eyes is unbelievably satisfying.
- insensible 8y agoDad of 8 here. It makes life so sweet when we acknowledge the child's capacities. Notice it didn't take that much patience...it's almost just a matter of creatively overcoming a language barrier.
- curun1r 8y agoI'd think it would also be a great opportunity to have access to a young, malleable mind that's unencumbered by a significant body of past experience and preconceived notions. Every answer is like a pure function...it's derived from first principles rather than coming an existing corpus of 'state'. It seems like a tremendous opportunity to expand your own viewpoint with perspectives that you'd naturally ignore based on your own past experience. A good friend of mine was the grandson of a couple that ran a school for gifted children. When they retired, there was a video produced about their careers and, at one point, they were both asked what they liked best about their jobs. His grandfather answered, "Getting to speak to the children every day." His grandmother answered, "Getting to listen to the children every day. I always liked her answer better than his.
- jedberg 8y agoOut of curiosity, did you mean you have eight kids, or your kid is eight years old? Because if it's the former, I'm impressed you have even one second to be on HN!
- insensible 8y agoIt's the former!
- freedomben 8y agoIf you do have 8 kids, that's amazing. I have 5 myself and most of the time I feel more like a zookeeper/riot policeman than a dad.
- insensible 8y agoEconomies of scale. The kids work together, play together, teach each other, and parents facilitate (often leading to interesting conversations like the one in the article). It's actually probably a little easier than having 5.
- pavel_lishin 8y agoA coworker keeps telling me (I'm a parent of one, and intend to stay that way) that having a big family like his is easier, since the older kids can take care of the younger kids. Which sounds totally plausible and correct, 'cept it'll take you awhile to get up to that sort of economy of scale :P
- hycaria 8y agoHow fun that must be to take care of siblings, wow, youth enjoyed for sure.
- pavel_lishin 8y agoYes, of course, having younger siblings is exactly the same as being a full-time live-in babysitter. Did you know older siblings don't even get paid for the work they do?
- insensible 8y agoThis being Hacker News, we can talk about it in terms of graphs, right? Let's look at the sociogram when one parent is present. The transition from zero to one is of course world-changing. But at one child, 100% of the connections in the sociogram connect to a given parent: zero economy of scale. At two children they have each other, but that is only 1/3 of the children's connections when one parent is present. At three, we're up to 50% of the connections that are child-to-child. At this point the sociogram is rich enough to become interesting. Four => 60%. Eight => 77.8%.
- andrei_says_ 8y agoAnd, kids are fascinating conversationalists
- nickpeterson 8y agoMy wife recently put up a small message board in our kitchen, where you can press letters into fabric to say what you want. My daughter (5 years old), suggested, "Candy inside your heart." I find the sentiment very sweet. We have not broached free monads yet.
- gowld 8y agoMonadic candy machine: https://gist.github.com/hakuch/484ea9c4e4baaf7b3ab6 https://gist.github.com/hakuch/484ea9c4e4baaf7b3ab6
- andrei_says_ 8y agoHonestly, would you need free monads if you already had (the feeling of) candy inside your heart? Maybe we need to look at our priorities.
- wikwocket 8y agoAs a parent, I agree. One should not shy away from talking about "advanced" topics. Kids are naturally curious and bright and I think we should encourage their desire to learn and understand complex things. I worry that if you try to dumb down things for kids, they might become interested in dumb things. :) Also, as the OP mentions, it can be a fun "pedagogical challenge" to try to explain free theorems or turing completeness or MySQL sharding to a young child. And you may find a clever way to describe it, that they can easily understand, which is satisfying for both of you.
- intrasight 8y agoWhen my daughter was 10 we were waiting in line to checkout at a Home Depot. She asked me what was algebra. I think she had heard the older kids mention it. I responded with a question. "A plus B = 10, and A minus B = 1. What are the values of A and B?" She puzzled it over while I check out. Then her face lit up like a whole realm of knowledge had just opened up to her, and she proudly told me the answer. It's a special moment that we will both always remember. She told me that as a camp counselor that she has challenged younger kids who seemed bored with the same problem. Do challenge your kids intellectually beyond their years and you might be pleasantly surprised. My daughter heads to CERN in two weeks to study anti-matter, and I have no doubt that our brief intro to algebra at a Home Depot has a small role to play in that journey. Maybe Star Trek did too :)
- bjoli 8y agoAs someone who takes pride in having solved the first 100 problems of project Euler, I am slightly ashamed to admit that I probably spent as much time as your daughter to solve that. I got stuck thinking in integers, and quite quickly left the exercise as an oversight in writing the post (since X + y = even, X - y = odd is impossible for integers) 3 seconds into the first coffee of the day the realisation of my stupidity hit me in the face.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoIt's impossible until it's easy, like any good trick question.
- thenobsta 8y agoRelated, "Math from Three to Seven" by Alexander Zvonkin[1] is an excellent book on discussing math with young kids. [1] https://bookstore.ams.org/mcl-5/ https://bookstore.ams.org/mcl-5/
- nickpeterson 8y agohttps://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Big-Math-Book/dp/9198282603 https://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Big-Math-Book/dp/9198282603 I have not read this, but it's from the same person who helped create "anchor modeling" and I find that quite interesting.
- gowld 8y agoFrom the "Look Inside", it strangely pairs very "childish" pictures with small-font densely-packed pages high-school or college-level mathematical prose.
- avip 8y agoI often tell my kids "I'll explain that when you're 16", or "you're too young for that, go out and play". This has proven to be very effective in motivating them to think for themselves, or ask someone more collaborative (s.a mom)
- avip 8y agoNote kid asked "dad what are you doing", not "what is functional programming". That's a simple call for attention, and it was equally suitable to close the book and play frisbee with him.
- theoh 8y agoBoo!
- ookdatnog 8y agoNo, he asked "What are you reading?" and followed up with the question “What are free theorems?”
- ascorbic 8y agoNo. Children like to copy their parents, and want to learn about what they do. If a six year old wanted to play frisbee, he probably would have asked to play frisbee. At the very least he would've made his boredom clear pretty quickly. Yes, he wanted attention from his dad, but best of all was being able to learn about dad's grown up stuff by doing something they both enjoyed.
- dsnuh 8y agoYes, those are equally suitable choices as you say. Why are you implying that stopping to play frisbee would have been the more "equally suitable" choice in this situation?
- freedomben 8y agoThe kid was crying out for a math education! On a serious note, you may be right in that it's a simple call for attention, but at least with my kids those are the opportunities for the best instruction, because the kid is usually bored, curious, and wants attention. If you give said attention, and answer questions in a way that they can think through and reason about, they will grok stuff you never expected.
- bonesss 8y agoWho's to say you can't talk about functional programming while playing frisbee? Who's to say that 9/10 times the kid gets some rough housing when he asks? And much more likely: who's to say that the overstimulated little monster that asked 15 questions in 5 minutes doesn't need a little dose of adult life to encourage some self-play?
- LyndsySimon 8y agoI'm a father of two girls, ages four and nine. Explaining things to them and seeing the dawn of understanding in their eyes in easily my greatest joy in life. As a parent, I basically get to relive this xkcd[0], over and over, every day. We take it to an extreme - we unschool[1]. We do our best to treat our daughters as any other member of the family, expecting to act as adults to the extent that they're able to do so. My nine-year-old spends much of her days right now playing Roblox and Star Stable, but even that is punctuated by her coming to us with random questions about things she's interested in. If I'm not head-down on a project I take the time to explain as best I can. If I'm otherwise occupied I always at least take the time to say "Go search for <insert keywords>" and follow up with once I'm free. The results have, so far, been incredible. Our oldest was a late reader by the standards of the testing done in government schools, but once she ran into something she wanted to do that could only be accomplished by reading, she achieved fluency more quickly than I would have ever expected. For what it's worth, that "something" was an online RPG where she had to do quests to progress. In order to do that, she had to be able to read the quest text. These days she's engrossed in the "Pegasus" series by Kate O'Hearn, and devouring them at a rate of ~1k pages per week. She'll have finished the series by the end of this week and I'm hoping she'll pick up Asimov's "Norby" series next. If not, she'll find something else that interests her and continue reading well into the wee hours of the morning I'm sure. 0: https://www.xkcd.com/1053/ https://www.xkcd.com/1053/ 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
- owenversteeg 8y agoHuh, that's the first time I've heard of unschooling, it seems like a really cool concept. If you don't mind me asking, where do you live and what are the laws like around unschooling there? How are people's reactions?
- LyndsySimon 8y agoWe're in Arkansas now, having moved from Virginia at the end of last year. Virginia requires a Notice of Intent to be filed with the local school district and periodic standardized testing - there are some way around each of these things, but that's the course that the vast majority of homeschoolers take. It's annoying but not onerous. Arkansas basically requires nothing at all.
- ams6110 8y agoIt's an immense amount of effort to do it consistently. And it gets harder with each kid, at least for me. One of the things you figure out is that some kids aren't interested. And if your kid isn't interested in thinking about prime numbers, you're going to be hard pressed to change that. Conversely they will have interests that you don't share, and it's going to be harder for you to participate meaningfully in that beyond being generally supportive. They are individuals that way.
- jimbokun 8y agoMy teenage son is a musician and is taking AP Music Theory right now. I ask him to tell me about what he is learning, and he patiently tries to explain it to me, but I just nod along because I have no idea what he's talking about.
- jamiepenney 8y agoDon't feel bad about that! My dad didn't know what the hell I was talking about when I was learning C++ as a teenager, but he asked anyway because he saw I got excited about it.
- nitrogen 8y agoWow, more parents should be like that! I'm not a parent, but I try to do the same kind of thing for friends and coworkers in hopes of spreading the idea that others' interests are worth attention and respect even if you don't share them.
- AbacusAvenger 8y agoMy mom certainly does that for me. I try to explain non-intuitive programming concepts to her with analogies, but I don't think I succeed most of the time. I love her dearly for putting up with it, though.
- steamer25 8y agoThe gist of music theory: It sounds interesting when sounds with simple frequency ratios are played at the same time. E.g., playing a 440 Hz tone at the same time and 660 Hz tone has a 2:3 ratio. Some combinations of frequencies, when played before or after other combos can establish an expectation and then either fulfill it or negate it. E.g., if you take the ratio above and then play 440 + 587, it'll sound like it's moving forward and that the second combo has 'arrived' as you might have expected. The 587 is derived by fixing the first note but inverting the relationship from 2:3 to 3:2 (and then doubling the frequency of the second so you don't have to move so far from 660). Most everything beyond is attaching labels to the frequencies and combos. Just as we have names for frequencies of light (red, yellow, blue) and patterns (gradient, checkerboard) there are names for frequencies of sound (A, C#, E) and their combinations (major, minor). There are also more esoteric terms (chiaroscuro in painting, neapolitan flat 9 in music) for people who've spent so much time on a subject that the basics have become boring. Oh, and there's also divisions of and patterns for time in music theory. E.g., "hold this note for twice as many milliseconds as the previous one". There have been some good resources here on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=music%20theory&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=music%20theory&sort=byPopulari...
- jedberg 8y agoOne thing that makes this easier is being rich. What I mean by that is for example, when my kid is asking me questions or wants to "do it myself!", the fact that I have a flexible schedule helps immensely, and that flexible schedule is possible because I can turn down work that doesn't give me that flexibility. If I had a strict clock-in/clock-out job, and only had limited time to run errands, I'd have a lot less patience for waiting for my kid to do stuff or answering her questions. I consider myself very lucky that I have that privilege and can pass that on to my kids.
- imnotadoctor999 8y agoMaybe it helps being rich, but just as a counter example, my grandfather was never rich. He was a clock-in/clock-out guy and still managed to spend a lot of time with me while I was growing up. He had a lot more patience than most of the "white collar" adults in my life ever did, and taught me lots of useful skills like how to fix a lot of electrical or mechanical things.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoI have three very inquisitive kids and I love trying to explain complex topics, like reinforcement learning, to them in a way that they can understand. The best thing I get out of it is clarity for my own understanding, or gaps/lack of clarity, so it's a valuable exercise. People don't give children enough credit for what they can really understand. I remember distinctly teaching my oldest daughter how to do a basic cipher - like direct substitution and she got it immediately. I also taught my son how to do pin bumping and pin counting/picking on locks with my lockpick set. I even bought him a transparent set of master locks to practice on and he would sit for an hour at the age of 4 picking those locks. The obvious downside now is that he knows how to get into everything! Very cool to watch what are basic principals being applied at the very basic level.
- cerberusss 8y agoExactly. My 4 year old sometimes surprises me like that. Last week she asked me how you can talk into a mobile phone. So I said, there's a tiny transmitter in there, and it sends the voice over waves in the air. So she's like, "OK" and I thought it went over her head. Then yesterday she asked: "Why couldn't you call gramps when we were on the plane?" I told her that the mobile phone wasn't close enough to the receivers on the ground. It amazed me that obviously some facts had been stewing for a week in that tiny head. And out comes another question.
- freeopinion 8y agoWhen my mother died, I was asked to think of one word to describe her. The best word that I could come up with was "teacher." One quick example: when my own child was 2 or 3, we spent some time with Grandma at Yellowstone National Park. Grandma walked with her grandchild through the park and explained geisers, plate techtonics, and many other topics of geology. I rolled my eyes and thought, "Really? He can barely speak and you are delivering a college lecture?" But then I remembered all the college lectures of my own youth. It's amazing how much even the youngest minds can absorb. One of my biggest failings as a parent has been to assume that my children will learn things somehow without me teaching it to them. If anybody learned 1/3 of what my mother taught them in detail, they learned a lot.