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Comment by randomsearch | Hacker News Reader

I’ve done a few degree-level teaching courses, and what I gathered from them is that the notion of individual learning styles is a bit of a myth.

Most people learn best from examples, which makes intuitive sense. Purely theoretical learning does not come easy to most people - that’s why maths is so scary to so many.

Given that the learning style myth has been mostly discredited, I also wonder about preferences such as night owl vs morning bird - it seems to me that people learn best in the morning, _unless_ they have poor sleep hygiene. Which would again make totally intuitive sense.

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>they have poor sleep hygiene

This just sounds like a morning person trying to imply that night owls are unhealthy.

I consistently go to bed around 2 and wake up at ~10. I have better 'sleep hygiene' than many people I know who are 'morning people' because they force themselves to strict wake-up times.

Even with a good amount of sleep at consistent times each night, I am still more intellectually productive in the evening than in the first couple of hours after waking up.

> This just sounds like a morning person trying to imply that night owls are unhealthy.

I wondered if anyone would interpret it like that, but I decided you would give me more credit, given I was speaking from a professional POV.

Before I did the teaching courses, I would have described myself as a night owl. I did then (and still do now to a lesser extent) have poor sleep hygiene. However, since I became more wary of how illogical the dichotomy is, I have found I'm just as productive in the morning provided I've slept well.

In the morning, your brain is fresh from sleep and flushed of toxins. Your energy levels are higher and you've been hit with blue light indicating it's the start of the day. It makes sense that you would learn better in such a state.

What's the argument for night owls being better learners at night?

> What's the argument for night owls being better learners at night?

I would say that the argument is that many people report this to be the case and there are some studies pointing to the existence of such an effect (sometimes called chronotype). Even in the absence of rigorous studies, a reasonable default view is to say that such an effect may or may not exist and we just don't know for sure if it does.

I would argue that the burden of proof is on the person making the claim that this effect doesn't exist, as that's a stronger statement about the world. It also seems to contradict a lot of anecdotes without proper evidence that casts doubt on their accuracy; the simplified model that you mentioned, about sleep flushing toxins from your body may not capture all the relevant aspects here (for example genetic components to concentration ability).

Wikipedia references a few studies, but I'm not an expert and can't tell how conclusive or rigorous they are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype

I'm not asking for evidence, just a reasonable argument as to why people might learn better at night. Because the obvious thinking on that is, until very recently, night time meant most humans simply went to bed.

I would say that variability in ability to concentrate might be reasonable to assume as a starting point, given how much people vary in other features as well, even if there are similar connections to how humans evolved. For example, food preferences are also in part a result of evolutionary processes, but vary a lot between people.

>What's the argument for night owls being better learners at night?

That your 'brain toxins' and first blue light are irrelevant to many people's abilities to learn. Also, being a night owl doesn't mean you aren't getting blue light while you study.

I'm struggling with some issues right now where I'm finding that I'm much more productive in the late afternoon/evening than I am during the daylight hours. I'm a telecommuting software engineer, and it's somewhat important that I be available during core business hours (9AM-4PM) yet I find that I just am unable to focus and get into my work during the day only to leave much of my work left to be done during the evening. My work is very challenging and interesting, so i do not believe it's a boredom issue.

I've been thinking about whether it has to do with the daylight/sunlight and my inability to "settle down" and concentrate when it's light outside. This "condition" is causing me to stay up late and lose hours of sleep per night. I've been thinking about going to see a psychologist or therapist to see wtf I can do to rectify the situation.

Is it possible you're just being (or expecting to be) interrupted during those hours? That's a classic reason for delaying challenging work until people have gone home / signed off.

I'm curious about your last statement. I guess I'd be considered a night owl by most people, and certainly have poor sleep hygiene in the eyes of early birds, but I find myself most motivated to do really "intellectual" work about 2-3 hours after dinner. For the record, when I say "intellectual" work I don't specifically mean academic, but more broadly creative. Do you specifically mean something like learning in the classroom setting?

Now I'm also curious about the differences in free-form learning (which I guess I'm talking about) vs the more traditional classroom learning. Do you have any insight on this?

I'm referring to the ability to learn and retain material, doesn't have to be in a classroom. So I don't think that whether you're reading, being lectured, etc. would impact whether the time of day affects you. As for being creative, I imagine the same arguments for mornings being more productive would apply (better physiological state).

I have a feeling you might enjoy "The One World Schoolhouse" by Salman Khan (as in Khan Academy).

So would you say people who do master complex mathematical concepts too learn from examples, rather than a deductive approach of understanding pure theory?

Here's Timothy Gowers, a Fields Medalist, on the principle of giving examples first:

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/my-favourite-pedagog...

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/examples-first-ii/

(There are also comments by those who disagree.)

I looked at a couple of instances to see how one of my favourite authors, Knuth, explains things. If you look at how he introduces BDDs (Binary Decision Diagrams), it is with an example first: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/knuth/fasc1b.pdf#page=8

When he introduces an algorithm for generating all permutations (http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/knuth/fasc2b.pdf#page=5), he does not work through the entire algorithm on an example case. However, when he mentions “all permutations … in lexicographic order”, he immediately gives an example of what that means.

(In general Knuth is a big fan of the principle of saying everything twice, once informally and once formally; his literate programming paradigm is also an extension of this idea, where first you explain something informally and then write down the code which is supposed to be a precise version of it.)

My answer would be "yes, but perhaps eventually they've bootstrapped themselves where they can escape examples."

Everyone learns better starting from examples. Humans are inductive learners. Makes sense, given our situation.

However, from our starting point some people meta-learn abstract reasoning i.e. mathematics, which doesn't come naturally. Maths is hard because it isn't the way we usually think.

Often those people claim to find purely theoretical approaches better for learning, although I'm personally sceptical from attending a decade of seminars and classes at many institutions; people presenting a purely theoretical introduction to a topic are immediately hit with requests for examples. And usually criticised for not starting with examples. But I do not usually attend lectures in maths departments (rather than related subjects, e.g. CS).

I remain sceptical of your scepticism since I'm one of those people that gets fidgety when someone wants to explain something to me using examples. It's not that I don't appreciate examples too, but starting with a high-level, abstract explanation clicks much more easily, especially for CS/math topics.

> the notion of individual learning styles is a bit of a myth.

I suspect it's really just a numbers game: Present the information enough different ways and you're more likely to use one which happens to click for a particular student temporarily receptive to a particular mental model.

If so, that means diversity of approaches is good even with no personalization.

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