Richard Feynman and the tyranny of measurement | Hacker News Reader

Richard Feynman and the tyranny of measurement

andrewgelman.com

23 pointshgennaro8 comments

If I was a technical editor, I would encourage my authors to keep the word count down. I think Feynman knew time was limited; why wast it on bloated, badly written research papers?

I don't buy bloated books anymore. My reading skills have never been great. I drift--unless I'm reading Vladmire Nabokov, or the like?

If technical books were in comic book form I would be happy--kinda like some military manuals? I just want the information. When I'm learning someting, I like a brief summary of what we're doing, or explaining. Then, I like simple numbered steps. Then give me the theory. The least amount of words; the better! I do like a lot of relevant pictures.

In college, I think I was a visual learner? In pretty much every class I ever took-- I would sit down-- I would open my organized binder to the corresponding course. I would get a visual picture of what the professor is trying to teach us that day. I would draw a picture in the middle of the page.(someting that correlates to the lecture. Draw a femur in anatomy, trig--draw a funny looking triangle.) I would then write my lecture notes legibly around the picture. I would never re-copy my notes. When taking the exam--even if I was unsure of a question, I could usually recall that distinctive looking picture, and recall some of my notes that day. I used this technique all through college. I got good grades. If you are a visual learner this technique might work for you? I guarantee it saves a lot of time. I never had to cram, or spend a lot of time studying. The night before the test, I would thumb through my visual notes, and try to get a good nights rest.

I had a learning disorder before they tested for learning disorders. I went to someting called early primary. Basically, I flunked kindergarten. How does a kid do that? I managed to do it. I then flunked second grade. I have never been a natural reader. I need to be interested in the subject,and the author needs to write well. Personally, I'm in awe of natural readers. I can't even get through a thick Steven King book? I can get through his short stories, like Dolan's Cadillic! Maybe, his best writing though?

> If technical books were in comic book form I would be happy--kinda like some military manuals? I just want the information. When I'm learning someting, I like a brief summary of what we're doing, or explaining. Then, I like simple numbered steps. Then give me the theory. The least amount of words; the better! I do like a lot of relevant pictures.

I think there could be a real market for that.

They exist:

https://www.nostarch.com/catalog/manga

Your college notes sound similar to something I did with the mandatory "notes from assigned reading" I did in an Electronics class. Instead of outlining what the text was saying, like a nested bullet point list, with figures only rarely. I would draw out the graphs and figures in the assigned reading section, nice and big. Then around the figure/graph (like in a spray diagram) I would put notes from the text where they were relevant (usually in a uml, folded corner, box). Sometimes I would combine a couple of the figure/graphs or redraw a section of them more than once, or expand some part out larger, but largely (after I noticed what I was doing and made it intentional) each figure/graph in the reading was a page of "illuminated" picture notes, and that is all the notes were or needed.

I think that it is not important if the concept it is yours or not, but it should be important if the concept is reasonable and clear. I have pretty good mathematical skills but I have also a short time memory and I forget a lots of things. So if a concept is not really clear in my mind, sooner or later, I will forgot it.

Some useful background for the story: Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work in QED.

That being said taking shots at Feynman is a public act of rebellion these days, like running up and touching the scary neighbor's house as a kid.

Of course it's ideal to think of cognitive skills in as many ways as possible. However, there is always a need to quantify these skills. It's hard to consider more abstract strengths at a large scale if they aren't quantifiable.

The trouble comes when you can't be sure that you're even measuring what you're attempting to compare.

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