Ask HN: How can i become a better explainer | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can i become a better explainer

31 pointsskyisblue15 comments

I struggle to clearly explain things like a story i read on the news or a movie i watched recently. What can i do to be more eloquent?

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Approach it like you're teaching someone who has zero knowledge. For anything that isn't a common household term, explain it.

Instead of, "Tavis Ormandy broke news about Cloudflare's memory leak that potentially reveals sensitive data," you explain each of those terms.

"This guy, Tavis Ormandy, is a security researcher at Google, so his job is to investigate bugs and find ways into otherwise secure systems. Yesterday, he wrote a blog post about a bug with Cloudflare. Cloudflare is what's called a CDN or content delivery network. A CDN is a network of servers distributed across the world, so that when you request data, they can find the closest one to you and serve you content from that server. The closer it is, the faster your download. That seems really useful for a lot of websites with lots of traffic, right? Well, it turns out Cloudflare is one of the largest and most popular CDNs out there. Anyway, Tavis revealed that Cloudflare had a memory leak that revealed sensitive memory. A memory leak is... well, imagine an Excel spreadsheet...."

It's like teaching someone calculus. In order to teach them calculus, the must first know algebra. In order to know algebra, they need to know basic arithmetic, and so on. For reach term, you either define it and then define other terms in that definition, if needed (e.g., "Cloudflare is a CDN; a CDN is...") or you make an analogy ("if you have a spreadsheet and the cells represent bytes,...").

Anyway, that's my trick. Another way to practice this would be to subscribe to /r/explainlikeimfive on Reddit, and try to answer questions as simply as possible. Study some of the top answers and see how they do it. Like someone else said, one trick is to actually know what you're talking about!

Good luck.

Dude carry on, you were doing a good job! I for one want to understand this Cloudflare fustercluck all over HN. Unfortunately i don't understand much of what is written about it!

That was a really good explanation and tip. Nicely done.

That's very nice. I also think if you use metaphors and analogies you can get your point across much quicker. The more related to their own domain, the better.

People can easily grasp quite complex stuff if can teach them that way. Like for CDN would be, imagine you had to buy XYZ but only 20 shops have that. It would of course make a lot of sense for the company to have the product in a shop closest to you otherwise it would take a lot of time for you to go, buy it and come back. Now imagine that shop is a server and the product is the website data, etc...

Even when a lot of it lost in translation it still makes a good foundation to get the point across. Then you can iron out the kinks when the person has some basic understanding..

I used to teach Computer Graphics for almost 10 years, and I like to believe I became somewhat good at it. I've written some articles about fairly technical topics and the reaction I tend to get is "oh wow, that's the clearest explanation I've read".

I think it boils down to two things: form a mental model of the state of the other person's mental model, and find a path from something they already know to the thing you want them to know.

Start from some basic assumptions, state them explicitly if you need to. From this starting point, build the explanation gradually, step by step, and perhaps most importantly, in a way that makes sense to them.

That's how I structured my CG course. We alternated theory classes (where we'd explore some concept, say, drawing a filled triangle) and a practical class (where the students would implement that). So after the "filled triangle" class, they applied the algorithm to their existing wireframe cube code, and most of the time it looked completely wrong, because the order of the triangles was random.

So I'd start the next class with "Last time your cube looked all wrong. Why?". Students would offer their ideas, and I always tried to find something right in them to build towards the idea I wanted them to arrive at. Then I asked "How can we fix this?", and again, depending on their suggestions, guide the conversation towards the algorithms I wanted to "rediscover" (painter's algorithm and depth buffering).

The key was that the students were very motivated to understand why their cube looked wrong even though they had no bugs in their implementation. They wanted it to look right. And I didn't just walk in and say "open your book on page 159, this is depth buffering" (I didn't use a book at all, in fact), but "reinvented" the algorithm with them, based on their suggestions and some gentle nudging in the right direction.

The worst thing in these circumstances is the opposite: "there's this random thing you need to learn, it will make sense in 5 weeks, I promise".

Sorry for the long-winded answer... I hope it applies to explaining stories and movies, and hey, this is HN ;)

Thank you so much for writing this! This is awesome <3 Kudos to you for being a great teacher!

It's like coding, when you fully understand OOP, you can easily switch languages. Same goes for story telling. You need to learn the structure once, then practice with different stories. People never take time to work on the foundation... they jump straight to the story. Great story tellers are people who use the same approach over and over. They ultimately get better at it. They re-apply the same patterns for new stories. Each individual has its own style. I'd suggest you to work on your own structure. How do you approach a story? Do you start with a punch line that tells people you're about to tell a story? Do you hypnotize people until they realize you're in the middle of a long story and they've been listening for hours? There are different ways of telling a story and you should start by asking yourself, what did I do yesterday? Try to come up with an answer if someone asks you the question. Write the structure down on paper and iterate until you come up with great sentences. Do that during your commute to work. Get ready just in case... How do you tell a great story? You need to highlight the emotions. Did you do something cool yesterday? What was cook about it? Why was it cool? What was your reaction? That's what people want, they're looking for emotional things (things that makes them react). Usually great story tellers make me feel like I was the subject in the story.

I mean... There are a lot of things you can do...

I was always impressed with one of my past IT managers at how he could "wing it" when explaining the latest services his teams offered in front of a hundred people. He also happened to be a pastor so I figured he had learned something I didn't. I asked him if he had any secrets of the trade, and I'll never forget his answer. He said "Yeah, I know what I'm talking about." So simple, but don't forget to really know what it is you're explaining.

This is a great question. Is there an algorithmic way to offer the best explanation of an idea to an audience?

Do you mean filtering explanations by reading level, or displaying the answers that best match an audiences comprehension level of certain things?

Yes and more.

Is there an algorithmic way to get an explanation ? Then

What is the filtering mechanism to make sure the audience get maximal understanding based on their comprehension level

What is the particular problem behind it? Getting the main point, structuring the answer, using the right words? These aspects should be addressed differently, but they seem to be clear and easy to improve on. Like, learn to quickly capture the core points of a book or film, train this ability by doing it after each movie orbook. Look at some good book/film reviews to learn how they are structured, what words are used. Train to write or talk aboun them the same exciting way.

Think it through. Ask a question before beginning the topic. Provide some history. Be more direct with the important parts. Summarize and keep it simple.

I remember reading about how politicians deliver information and learned a lot about both effective 'explaining', story telling and just good conversation structure.

Also, don't over think it!

teaching is a good start

practice answering questions out loud (even when on your own)

practice communicating while restricting your resources (read picture-book with it facing your audience, when discussing a bug with someone don't touch their keyboard)

when listening to your favorite examples, pause the feed to consider why they selected a particular path

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