Richard Feynman was one of the great scientists of the 20th century, making significant contributions to physics and other related fields. Part of what made him stand out was his gift for teaching. He had a remarkable knack for explaining some of the most complex things in ways anyone could understand. He was also a model of the desire to deeply understand how things worked, often deriving a result in several ways to be more confident he was right.

The Feynman learning technique is typical of how he approached understanding something deeply and helps explain some of his teaching skills.

Spend time writing about a topic as if explaining it to someone.

Then practice explaining it, speaking and drawing as if you were a teacher at the front of the class. You may figure out some other aspect wasn't as clear as you thought and need to look into something.

Refine any gaps you reveal until you can share the topic fluently and clearly.

Then, simplify your language by replacing complex words and ideas with simpler ones and considering analogies to help people relate.

Now, you can explain it because you deeply understand it, too.

"You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird."

— Feynman's father, from Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman?

I loved the Fun to Imagine interviews to experience some of Feynman's joy and skill for teaching.

The sketch was inspired by this excellent animated video of the Feynman Learning Technique.

Though he was primarily a theoretical physicist, Feynman also made lasting contributions to the field of computation. If you want to get into those, you might enjoy the Feynman Lectures on Computation from the last course he taught at Caltech, edited, no less, by my Dad.

The Feynman Learning Technique

At times we've probably all been confused or struggled to understand a talk or a class. When I'm lost or confused my rule of thumb is to ask, even when it's not easy.

The desire to understand what's being said fights with the urge not to interrupt the talk or ask what may be a dumb question — perhaps everyone else already knows? But in my experience, if I'm confused, others likely are too.

It helps to believe this because I know that asking will probably help others and not just myself — asking is a public service. It's very easy as a speaker to assume that others will know what you know and so jargon and TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms - really an initialism) so easily slip in. When someone asks it helps include everyone again.

And you're not just doing a favour for the audience by asking — it's a gift for the speaker too. If I'm giving a talk I want people to get what I'm sharing and not suffer in silence thinking they're stupid and I'm confusing. I want everyone to follow from start to end. It's one more good reason to thank people for the questions you receive.

Let's banish confusion and all get to the end together by asking the question.

This advice stands provided you've been paying attention along the way.

I was surprised to find there are a number of, mostly older, sketches on questions and asking:

Ask the question at talks

Sir Arthur Eddington, an English astrophysicist, told a short story involving a scientist studying fish by pulling them up with nets. After checking all the fish hauled up, the scientist concludes that there is a minimum size of fish in the sea. But the fish seen were determined by the size of the holes in the net, the smaller ones having slipped through, unmeasurable. The instrument you use affects what you see. Or as Richard Hamming puts it: "You get what you measure."

This analogy provides a nice concrete example of a phenomena that affects us routinely in more subtle ways. What and how we choose to measure affects the conclusions we draw. So, a website may easily measure sales and bounce rate for its pages, while things like trust, authority or satisfaction, which may be more significant longer-term metrics, go unmeasured.

"There is always a tendency to grab the hard, firm measurement, though it may be quite irrelevant as compared to the soft one which in the long run may be much more relevant to your goals. Accuracy of measurement tends to get confused with relevance of measurement, much more than most people believe. That a measurement is accurate, reproducible, and easy to make does not mean it should be done, instead a much poorer one which is more closely related to your goals may be much more preferable. For example, in school it is easy to measure training and hard to measure education, and hence you tend to see on final exams an emphasis on the training part and a great neglect of the education part."

What gets measured gets better (an earlier take on this)

Quote from Chapter 29, You get what you measure, of Richard Hamming's, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn.

If you happen to be in the business of doing research or science Richard Hamming's Bell Lab's talk, You and Your Research (pdf), is an excellent read.

You get what you measure

I love this concept of the third teacher that applies just as well in a primary school as in an office. A well-designed environment can help us learn, encourage good habits, and improve our wellbeing.

I remember a previous mentor of mine saying he could tell how a project was doing just by taking in the project room.

Too often these days the environment is hidden away in software. A well-designed environment can really be a third teacher. Consider how you can make the most of yours.

Here's the third teacher illustration without the animation

The third teacher

Instead of ‘Anything else?’ ask 'What else?’. The slight shift in frame makes all the difference.

Sketchplanations tagged with teaching