3 ms·
You probably shouldn't try to explain things to your family until you understand them yourself.
by TigeriusKirk 5y ago
You probably shouldn't try to explain things to your family until you understand them yourself.
- okareaman 5y agoI think we have to try or we're letting our people down From an excerpt of the book published in a 1996 issue of Caltech’s Engineering & Science magazine: Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, “Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.” Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.” But he came back a few days later to say, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don’t really understand it.” John Gruber writes the simple explanations are the goal at Apple as well: Engineers are expected to be able to explain a complex technology or product in simple, easily-understood terms not because the executive needs it explained simply to understand it, but as proof that the engineer understands it completely. https://kottke.org/17/06/if-you-cant-explain-something-in-simple-terms-you-dont-understand-it https://kottke.org/17/06/if-you-cant-explain-something-in-si...
- CogitoCogito 5y agoYou can never really be sure you actually understand something. Trying to explain it to others is just about the best possible way to probe your understanding.