Dave's Whiteboard

Yes, you’re right.  Head First Statistics is really a form of teaching, not learning.  As with any book, you could see it as an extended lecture (660 pages, if you count the appendices).  No way to ask anything, easy to slide past questions or problems by turning the page.

Which is why HFS makes such a great example of a tool (depending on your interests) and such a great example of fun (depending on your mindset).

Those two “depending on” clauses are like the uprights for a suspension bridge.  If you’re not interested in learning about statistics and nothing’s pushing you to do so (like your job or your graduate program), then I’m confident (at the 0.975 level) you’re not going to, regardless of the form in which the opportunity to learn appears.  Much the same is true for the other upright: the way you feel about this particular opportunity. 

HFS has given both ends of that bridge some thought. Click the sample page to enlarge; you’ll see what I mean.

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What Dawn Griffiths has done is sketch a very high-level picture of the learning goals that HFS supports and the types of people who probably respond well to this approach.  Who’da thunk you could do that without the sacred incantation, “At the end of this course the student will be able to…?”

But–how can you be sure of what you’ll learn?

Hmm… the body-of-knowledge approach to learning.  It’s true: in many fields like statistics, there are concepts, principles, terms, equations, and so on that you’re expected to know.

By “know,” I mean you can agree on a description or definition for X with people who aren’t related to you.  Even if their reaction is, “Well, you could put it that way.”

At the same time, despite the sputterosity of purists, zealots, and cranks with time on their hands, most fields don’t have a body of knowledge; they’ve got a herd. Beyond the most basic definitions (like the difference between mean, mode, and media), no one factoid is make-or-break.

Granted, statistics does tend toward the lots-of-specific facts side. So HFS furnishes some tables.

A “Table of Contents (Summary),” which takes up a little more than half a page.  It’s followed by “Table of Contents (the real thing)” with a page for each of the 15 chapters, plus half a page apiece for the intro appendices).  Check the O’Reilly Books preview page for HFS yourself; use the next / previous buttons at the top of the book page to browse.

If I were smart, I’d end by suggesting you also look at a sample chapter (probability, PDF) or explore HFS on your own via Google Books.  The good-humored approach, the absence of dense text–those are obvious at first glance.

Beneath that, though, there’s a lot of cognitive infrastructure, the sort of thing that shifts from “fun” to “learning.”  Chapter 3, “Power Ranges,” is a good example.  It’s got 44 pages dealing with range and variation (the previous chapter dealt with mean, median, and mode).  This is what’s lurking as you turn the title page:

• The coach of the neighborhood basketball team needs one player.  He’s got three candidates.  All three have the same shooting average.  So, which one should he pick?
• Here are their individual stats (points per game and frequency).  What else does the coach need to know?
• Explanation: what “range” means (also, lower bound and upper bound).
• You try it: figure the mean, lower bound, upper bound, and rang for these two players.  Then, draw a histogram (as you learned in chapter 2) for each.
• Feedback for that exercise, and a troubling question about outliers.
• Explanation: why outliers are problematic.  Can you think of how to reduce their impact?
• Explanation: why ranges are quick-and-dirty solutions.
• Sneaky intro (“one way is to measure only part of the range”)
  accompanied by this:

That’s the first 8 pages.  Not only did you have a couple of get-out-your-pencil problems, but also questions to provoke thinking, questions to highlight potential confusion, and even, as in the above example, questions that are intelligent stand-ins for ones a learner might have.

As I said in an earlier post, fun in training (or in support of learning) shouldn’t be an afterthought.  It shouldn’t be force-injected, either, like the fake smoke-flavored streaks applied to frozen burgers to make you think they were grilled.

Dawn Griffiths shows that part of the engagement comes from a general approach (irreverence, retro photos, quirks of layout); another part comes from sample problems that offer real statistical challenges placed in…let’s say surreal settings.  (In chapter 7, you use Poisson distributions to figure out how often a movie theater’s popcorn machine is going to break downnext week.)

Maybe we can get Griffiths and the folks from Head First to have a long lunch with von Merriënboer and Kirschner.

The other week, a #lrnchat discussion explored large training efforts.  Eventually the topic turned to fun.  In real life, when organization trainers start talking about fun and learning, I start looking for the exit.  I figure it’s not long before the Happy Gang shows up, determined to make you laugh no matter what, and I want to clear out before they do.

“Making Performance Reviews Fun.”  Sounds ghastly.

I think I have a good sense of humor.  It’s just that institutional attempts to impose humor are a lot like institutional attempts to compose music.  I end up feeling in tune with the universe’s most morose android.

Here’s what got me musing about this: at one point (around 9:35 in the transcript), the #lrnchat question was,  “What are some creative ways, in a mass approach, to make training stick?”

• Cammy Bean said: Use humor. Turn things upside down. Make it worth repeating.
• A bit later, Craig Wiggins said: @cammybean you know, i’m a big fan of humor and levity in elearning, but in some hands the idea of humor is…not humorous.

Craig’s right. Not everyone has a knack for humor.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be open to it.  You shouldn’t force it, thought, as if it were the interpersonal version of making people eat their brussels sprouts.

Which is what I meant when I said in two tweets:

• I am NOT a fan of “fun” sprinkled over learning like pixie dust (clown noses, loud noises, what veg are you)…
• … But humor or just enjoyable attraction can arise from relevant context that has value in eyes of participants.

In the genial chaos of a #lrnchat discussion, people don’t always pause to define their terms.  I have the luxury of taking that time here.  What does “humor” mean in a structured-learning context?  What does “fun” mean in a training program?  Depends on who’s talking.  And on who’s listening.

I believe what people are striving for is engagement: how do you create opportunities for learners to involve themselves with what they’re learning?  This is the sort of thing Carl Sagan meant while about new discoveries in cosmology: they “remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy.”

Admit it: some stuff just doesn’t seem all that joyful from the outside.  Adopting vendor-managed inventory systems, for instance.  Deciding whether a building needs an elevation certificate in order to qualify for flood insurance.  Shepardizing a legal case.  Learning basic statistics.

The answer is not (necessarily) to provide balloon animals and confetti, or to toss miniature chocolate bars at the participants while they chant answers to quiz questions.  Often that’s like putting frosting on those brussels sprouts.  Even if people try eating that, all they’re going to remember is a weird taste.

For an organization, the challenge is helping people learn and apply skills that will achieve the group’s goals.  Assuming the people in question do in fact need to acquire or strengthen those skills, of course, so you’re not boring them to death “teaching” things they already know.

That depends much more on relevant, realistic, worthwhile experiences.  Out of those, levity can emerge–if it makes sense.  Horse first, then cart, then passengers and cargo, and then (maybe) mood lighting.  (Later this week, I’ll give a couple of examples from one of those dry topics I mention above.)

So, instead of trying to sneak brussels sprouts pass some unsuspecting diner, work on finding fresh sprouts, demonstrating recipes and cooking techniques that capitalize on their flavor and texture.  Then work them into, say, creating a meal for a restaurant guest who insists on having five different colors of food as dinner.

The customer’s a bit of an outlier, but the core skills (menu planning, item selection, preparation, technique, timing) actually matter.

Humor as an addition to the main topic can also emerge naturally.  By naturally, I mean people use humor to make new connections with the main focus, or to reinforce the connections they’ve made.

• Marcia Conner (at the end of that #lrnchat session) : Last 2 days spent at 100% pixiedustfree event (#wire) & can attest to the fact it can be done beautifully
• And Mason Masteka added a final garnish: My name is Mason, I am a eLearning Dev in Maine and I am celery.

CC-licensed images:
Marvin the android from Wikimedia Commons.
Sprouts with bacon by sling@flickr / Steve Ling.