Comment by Agentlien | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Agentlien | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the story one of my university teachers used to introduce himself. He was the most brilliant educator I've had, really passionate about making sure people could actually follow and so humble. The course was called "Digital and Computer Technology" and it was a first year course teaching you to build a CPU starting from logic gates and then program it with assembly.

He said that when he had recently graduated and just moved from Norway to Sweden his first job here was as a technician for the local railway. One of his first assignments was a call where the computer controlling all the track switches had stopped working. Luckily there was a backup, but they needed him to fix it immediately.

He arrived, took a look at the computer and its backup running next to it. He started out by measuring voltages on both, comparing to see what the difference was. After a while some men in suits came in and asked how things were going. He said it was all good, they said it wasn't because now all trains had stopped. Apparently, he had short circuited the backup.

"And that's when I decided to go for a theoretical career!" My teacher happily concluded. The classroom was left in a stunned silence.

Rolf Snedsböl? :-) Agreed that he was one of the best educators (if not _the_ best) I had

Yes, Rolf Snedsböl!

I absolutely loved his classes. I bumped into him a few years ago when I was holding a recruitment thing for Ghost Games and it happened to be just after his lecture. I told him how much I enjoyed his courses.

Did he wrote a book? Do you have a link?

An absolute legend! My favourite of his jokes: "when I moved to Sweden from Norway, the average IQ went up in both countries".

Take a bit time to understand this joke. Crazy. Especially the new host would not be very appreciated of that la.

To be fair, a great joke, but not an original one (unless he is the original author -- I've heard it before in different contexts).

Read it when new zealander move to australia

It's a known statistical phenonema (Will Rogers phenomenon) [1] used to illustrate the problems when adjustments are made to clusters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers_phenomenon

Concrete example from that article: with improved detection of cancer, it’s true that “people with cancer live longer on average” and also that “people without cancer live longer on average” even if there’s no change to the treatment or anyone’s lifespan.

My favorite story about him was when he caught a student sleeping in his class. He paused, mid-sentence, and asked the student if they were too tired. The student looked up sheepishly and confirmed.

"Did it get a bit late last night? Can't keep your eyes open?"

Again, the student agreed. Rolf flashed a huge smile and in a singsong voice said "then I have something for you!". He walked over to his bag, pulled out a stuffed animal and a tiny embroidered pillow. (I have a grainy photo of them somewhere).

Rolf tiptoed up to the student, put the pillow in front of him, and as the student rested his head on the pillow Rolf gave him a pat on the head.

After this Rolf went back, said that if you're that tired it's better to sleep in your own bed. He resumed the lecture, picking up in the middle of the sentence where he'd stopped. No one slept in his class for the rest of the course.

I have a similar anecdote which completely stunned us, but which may possibly be part of his standard routine, and thus something he does for every set of students:

He always wore the same striped sweater. At one point, he took a break to drink some water and remove his sweater. But beneath the sweater was another identical sweater!

I assume everything he did was very well-planned and part of his pedagogic system and routine, but it was often hard to tell if he was acting, or if he was actually being serious but eccentric.

I don't remember that but a lot of his antics seemed to be planned and part of his way of keeping people awake and paying attention. If it is part of his routine I wonder when he added it. I took his courses in 2006-2007.

I took that course in 2015 or 2016, so yeah, I guess that's about a decade in which he could have added it. I just browsed around Chalmers' course pages and am very happy to see that he's still teaching that course.

My Norwegian grandfather used to tell a lot of these jokes. "What do you call a Swedish golfer with an IQ of 120? A foursome!"

'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach'

-George Bernard Shaw

TIL that quote is _actually_ from George Bernard Shaw. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/176500.html

and I thought it was Jack Black

And I thought it was by Khaled Hosseini.

(He wrote The Kite Runner (among others), which is a heartbreaking novel).

We extended that at a technical college I went to for a while because so many of the teachers were downright incompetent.

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach work here."

I had a professor in college teaching computer systems and design. Somehow he got to talking about the NSA. He said that back in the 60s, the NSA had computers that were running at 1000. “1000?” I asked, wondering if he’d forgotten the units. He replied “Yes, 1000.”

I've heard this joke before on HN.

I’ve told this once or twice before I think. True story.

I'm not sure I got the pointe. Could you explain?

The professor is incompetent because he doesn't actually know how to talk about the performance of computers. It's not really a "joke", more of an anecdote

Or he was about to reveal classified information and stopped short.

In the original it's actually over 8000, which is interesting because numbers usually don't cause translation issues.

And nowadays they are over 9000. How time flies…

I heard from a group of teachers (my mother was a teacher) that were at our house once. "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, administrate."

There's a common extension to this about teaching colleges -

'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers.'

Maybe if we paid those who teach better, we'd attract the best of the best to teach. Instead we drive good people out by making the job unbearable.

We should pay better those who teach better, not everyone. Otherwise we just make the market bigger with even more room for incompetence. Look at the software industry.

And what kind of metrics can you use to determine whether someone teaches well? Whatever metrics you use, there's probably ways to game the system without providing better services.

Exactly, and this would be just as true, only on bigger scale, if we just raised wages and tried to filter out 'the best of the best' from a now larger pool of candidates. I should write "if anything" at the start of my previous comment as I don't really believe a good solution based solely on financial incentives exists.

Your other comment efficiently expresses my intuition on the topic.

> Maybe if we paid those who teach better, we'd attract the best of the best to teach.

I agree struggling for basic survival as a public servant is not ideal, but be careful not to turn education into a lucrative opportunity where people come for money not passion.

Money is certainly not the only way to attract talent (though teachers still need to pay their bills) and in most schools i've attended the talented teachers were just ridiculously hindered by the bureaucrats defining their program and agenda. David Graeber's talk "Manageurial feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes" comes to mind.

I believe that we should be making whatever changes we need to ensure that some of the most capable minds in our field are doing something more useful than ad tech. Speaking from experience, seeing where my classmates went to after we graduated a few years ago.

Making teaching a "lucrative opportunity" by paying a decent wage has absolutely no downsides.

What exactly are the downsides of an increase in intelligent people competing for teaching positions?

Or maybe he was just smart enough to go for a steady job with less stress and humble enough to make a self-deprecating joke.

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