Is Your Learning Laminar or Turbulent?

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I recently spotted something that was a real light-bulb moment for me. I get a lot of those, so I guess I'm easily impressed.

It was while I was assessing my disappointing results from last semester. I was disappointed but not surprised. It was one of those semesters where my confidence was higher than my competence, and I failed to notice things were slipping a little.

That's when I considered the idea that my studying had been laminar when perhaps it should have been turbulent.

Laminar flow occurs when a fluid moves slowly down a smooth pipe. Particles in the fluid run in straight parallel paths, and the fluid maintains all of its original consistency.

Turbulent flow occurs when the input pressure applied to the fluid is increased. It results in random sideways particle movements, which mixes up the particles and breaks the fluid up, shearing through the fluid to create a new consistency. Overall, the flow rate is higher than laminar flow, but by a smaller than expected amount, because of all the particles colliding with each other.

So could learning be seen this way?

Laminar learning would be slowly working through each part, without applying much effort. In the end, you would know the facts individually, but not thoroughly.

Turbulent Learning would be more aggressive - a high degree of effort (pressure) and doing small pieces of work (particles) across the whole syllabus would lead to ideas coming together and a deeper understanding (mixing). Progress would be slower than expected but still outpace the rate of laminar learning.

This isn't purely about working harder, but rather working on the whole syllabus and constantly pushing.

In practical terms, laminar learning equates to just watching the lectures, whereas turbulent learning equates to immersing oneself in the tutorials, assignments and feedback, deliberately emulsifying all the course material together.

I'm going to go mix it up with my current courses right now...

Beanie's latest animations...

What makes this even more impressive is they are done like the old 1930's cartoons - bitmaps are hand drawn for every frame - no vector graphics or morphing between key frames.

Adopt an “I Can’t Do” Attitude

When something seems impossible to achieve, we often say “It can’t be done”. What we should be saying is “I can’t do it”.

When you say “I can’t do it”, you’re giving yourself two options that aren’t available for “It can’t be done”:

1. I can learn how to do it
2. I can get someone else to do it

This means saying “I can’t do it” gives you room to grow either your own skills or your relationships with others. Everybody wins.

Saying “It can’t be done” stops everything in its tracks.

There are things we can’t do, and admitting this is not a failure, it’s a tool to help improve ourselves.

Charm It Crazy

Heard Sam Hunt on the radio this morning. He's a New Zealand powet, for those of you who don't Knowet.

Very clever dude, laid back poetry, and one very cool story he told this morning: When he used to lecture at high schools, kids asked him for advice for exams. He told them that if the first question is "Here's a poem. Write what the poet is saying..." then they should write "The poet is saying..." and then copy the poem word for word, because nobody can paraphrase what exactly the poet is saying!

Sage advice, pity it will get you an F!

The whole "Charm it crazy" thang is quite a cool motto, though...it's not just what poets do: Salesmen and leaders do it too. Make the idea hip and hook people in. hence the "Doughnut model" in an earlier post. Sort of "The truth, the whole truth, and the best adjectives to go with the truth"

Just saying Sam is a really cunning linguist. Just saying, man.

Constructive Pessimism is Like Being a Platoon Sergeant...

Bear with me on this analogy, it will all hopefully make sense in the end...

So one of my fellow Constructive Pessimists wrote a brilliant article, which sadly has elapsed from the net, so you'll just have to take my word on this. He proposed that team members could be plotted on a cartesian graph with a horizontal axis representing the pessimism-to-optimism continuum and the vertical axis representing the destructive-to-constructive continuum.

From this, he identified some stereotypes in the team and suggested that the best performance occurs when the team is using at least one constructive pessimist for decision making.

Well, nothing beats a cartesian graph like a tasty doughnut!!!!

In the doughnut model, we have four types - obviously, any real person will vary along this continuum and behave either optimistically or pessimistically depending on mood, circumstance, involvement in the project and such.

The four types are Destructive Pessimist (DP), Constructive Pessimist (CP), Constructive Optimist (CO) and Destructive Optimist (DO).

The trick,

 for the manager

or anyone in the team needing to influence the team,

is to shift attitudes from

Destructive Doughnut to

Constructive Hole.

This is a far cry from what most of us are taught: That attitudes need to shift from Pessimism to Optimism.

In fact, I suspect it's easier to do the former than the latter anyway.

What you do is:

1. Get the COs to set the targets - it pays to dream big.

2. Get CPs to brainstorm the solutions - they will identify the potholes and work out how to get past them

3. Give DOs difficult new projects outside their expertise so they can't wing it. They will either become COs, or they will fail to change - and ask any T-Rex what happens when you can't change!

4. Give the DPs easy stuff to get some quick wins under their belts - they will either become more CP, or again, they will fail and you really don't need their negativity!

So how does this fit with the platoon model?

The most successful organisations are military - partly because shoot people who try to leave, partly because they blow up the competition, but mostly because they have had a lot of practice!

In  a platoon, the Platoon Commander decides what they will do strategically - he is a CO. The Platoon Sergeant is the guy who maintains discipline - that is, he ensures that what the CO wants is feasible, because he makes sure everyone is prepared - that is surely the perfect use for a CP!

And the soldiers? Any type, but I can tell you from experience, the army does not tolerate destructive personalities, and they have a knack for changing people!

Viva la Philosophie!

A Novel Concept - CPU with a one gate ALU

This was something I wrote a few years ago, and I found it again just the other day . Y'know, like your cloud drive becomes the bottom of the closet kinda thing? A Novel Concept…

Here's an idea for a logic controller that uses only one mnemonic! It's based on the fact that any sequential logic can be expressed as compound logic, and any compound logic can be expressed in "NAND" gates. Each instruction is in fact 3 register addresses:

A

B

X

So the function of each and every instruction is X=A.B. The architecture is similar to a PLC: Registers are 1 bit memories, and the scan cycle is:

1. Read Inputs into Registers

2. Execute Logic

3. Write Outputs from Registers

4. Check for Programming Device Interrupt

5. Goto Step 1

The Program memory is a printer buffer, with each read instruction generating a write to put a copy back in. A counter keeps track of where execution must stop and I/O servicing start.

The format used for notation is A-B-X - an instruction such as "start OR latch" becoming a sequence:

start-start-nstart

invert start

latch-latch-nlatch

invert latch

nstart-nlatch-nresult

NOR= NAND of the inverses

Some basic logic:

Dummy:

A dummy register, whose contents is considered irrelevant is used instead of a "NOP" instruction, as in D-D-D

Invert:

Not-A can be done 2 ways: A-A-X or 1-A-X, where 1 is achieved by always having a register with a 1 in it, called "SET"

NAND:

A-B-X

X=A.B

AND:

A-B-NX

NX-NX-X

X=A.B

OR:

A-A-NA

B-B-NB

NA-NB-X

X=A+B

NOR:

A-A-NA

B-B-NB

NA-NB-NX

NX-NX-X

X=A+B

XOR:

A-A-NA

B-B-NB

A-NB-C

NA-B-D

C-D-X

X=A(+)B

XNOR:

A-A-NA

B-B-NB

A-B-C

NA-NB-D

C-D-X

X=A(+)B

R-S Latch:

NRESET-Q-NQ

NOTE THAT NRESET & NSET ARE

NSET-NQ-Q

ACTIVE LOW, AND ALSO, IF NSET

GOES LOW, FOR 1 CYCLE OF THE

PROGRAM, BOTH Q AND NQ ARE HIGH.

Q-Q-NQ

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TO AVOID THIS, USE THIS LINE

AFTER THE LAST.

To the Lady I Had an Argument with Yesterday at Sylvia Park:

I'm sorry I raised my voice, and I'm sorry I lapsed into the vernacular, but I have already been inconvenienced by a do-gooder such as yourself who had preconceived ideas about disabled people.

My wife has one leg - I showed that to you yesterday. My wife also has a disability parking permit - specifically BECAUSE she has one leg.

We bought our beautiful Toyata Hilux in 2009 (which we nicknamed "Big Red") BECAUSE my wife has one leg. We tried the Hiace van, but it was too high for her to be able to hoist herself into. We had previously owned a Camry station wagon, but when transferring from the car to the wheelchair, she has to slide uphill, as it is too low.

Big Red has smaller wheels than the standard Hilux. This makes the seat hight about 5 cm higher than the wheelchair, and turns out to be a workable compromise for transfering.

The large load tray at the back means I can easily fold the wheelchair and store it in the back.

Unfortunately, in 2009, there was no automatic model available with the smaller wheels, so my wife does not drive Big Red.

She also doesn't drive a taxi, her work van or my father-in-law's Honda CRV. She is often a passenger in all of them, and they all park in disabled bays, BECAUSE she has one leg.

Disabled bays are wider than normal bays to allow wheelchair access, and have ramps to easily get onto the pavement.

About 10 years ago, somebody reported me to the Botany Downs parking attendant for parking in a disabled bay. I was fetching my wife from the hairdressers, and had been seen walking away from the empty car. When I fetched my wife, we went for lunch, and so when we returned to car park, enough time had elapsed for the parking attendant to clamp our car.

Since I had rather foolishly forgotten to put the parking permit in the window, I was technically in violation DESPITE my wife having only one leg. I had to pay $50 on the spot to get the clamp removed.

What if a do-gooder reported me, and as a result my car was towed? How would I get my wife home - it would be difficult, BECAUSE she has one leg.

I appreciate that there are people who use their relatives' parking permits illegally, but I do it BECAUSE she has one leg.

Disabled people may drive, or be driven in, any vehicle they wish - a Ferrari, a Rolls Royce, and yes, even a Toyota Hilux.

Particularly a wheelchair-friendly, low slung, comfortable, dependable Toyata Hilux.

Finally, for anyone who wants to question how a disabled lady can afford such an "inappropriate" vehicle, I would like to point out that there was no taxpayer's money spent, and she's not a leech on society. My wife is a qualified Accountant. My wife earns good money, for hard work, as do I, AND she has only one leg.