Playing around with some ideas in functional programming, I ran across an article/tutorial titled "Haskell Applicative Functors Explained Without Words". The main thing I'll be discussing here is the without words part of this title.
How does one explain something without words? Why would you do that?!
Tutorial Mode
To begin, we'll briefly consider a popular and effective way of learning: tutorials.
The purpose of typical tutorial is show you how to do something. Tutorials are often intentionally written without discussing theory to focus on the project of doing first and foremost. Doing is first, understanding will come with repeated exposure. Or so the "learn X by doing a whole bunch of tutorials" approach goes.
In a well-made tutorial, next steps are obvious. Actually completing those steps may be difficult, but figuring out what it is that needs to be done is not. Tutorials make it clear what actions need to be done in order to do something. They should provide sufficient explanation to give you at least some idea why each step is taken.
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| Is it clear what actions need to be taken to go from two ellipses to an owl? |
Tutorials, unlike giant, comprehensive reference books, organize content for learning how to do and make content digestible for the uninitiated. Bite-by-bite, we can assimilate understanding.
While an introductory language textbook will walk a student through common phrases, core vocabulary, and basic grammar, a dictionary and a comprehensive grammar sit on the shelf waiting to be referred to. That's why they are called "reference books".
Note that authors of tutorials must make assumptions about what their readers do and don't know. It is for this reason there are "beginner", "intermediate", and "advanced" tutorials. Or "Python for C++ programmer" tutorials. Or "French deserts for Belgian chocolatiers". You get the idea.
Words are secondary
Returning to the topic of words (and doing without them)—
We find that much learning is done without much, if any, verbal explanation. Consider how an artist or a musician may instruct a master class mainly through speaking the "universal language" of their craft—a classical pianist who is not especially skilled in German may still benefit greatly from training under a master instructor who isn't especially skilled in English, or Japanese, or whatever non-German tongue the student happens to be most familiar with.
Or consider how you might "explain" the game Tetris to somebody. It is easier to just let this person play. Then they will know the way.
[LEVEL: 1 | SCORE: 0]
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! !
! !
! !
! !
! O O !
! O !
! O !
! !
! !
! !
! !
! & !
! & !
! # # X & & !
! # # X X X @ @ @ @ !
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Explaining without words takes the form of doing—
The tutorial is a patient teacher that lays out a short, clearly defined "training course".
Memory, Space, and Time
Let's consider language—in the sense of words, one after another— to be one dimensional. Words come one after another.
On the other hand, we perceive reality as multi-dimensional. For simplicity sake, let's say we perceive three spatial dimensions and one temporal (time) dimension.
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| Thinking spatially |
In our "natural habitat" of four dimensions, we can understand a lot more at once than we can trying to digest a one-dimensional stringy word salad. Showing somebody how to walk to the nearby post office may be easier than trying to explain directions. Giving directions with gestures and drawing maps may be easier than listing directions of the sort of "turn here", "turn there". For the already spatially adept, such instructions may be translated into an adequate representation to go by. But, especially in the age of GPS, lots of people these days are quite bad at that.
Uncompressing textbooks
How can the theory we find in textbooks be "uncompressed" into tutorial-style, actionable plans?
To start, we must identify problems. The more concrete and the more control we have over them, the better. That's why Kermit the Frog shares the common sense advice: "clean your room".
To learn with tutorials, we start with relatively simple, easy to act on problems. Tutorials break up these problems into steps, and we learn to step the steps.
Through action, we can see how things work by observing our successes and failures. To articulate each learned lesson in words may be beyond reach and may significantly slow down learning. Later, reflecting on our own learning, we may do the job of fitting words to actions and write tutorials ourselves to help others along their journeys.
I hope this post wasn't too theoretical 😅
Labels: information, learning, psychology
