Thought of the day: Direct Studies for scientists?

I have heard a lot of good things about the Directed Studies program at Yale. It's an elective program for freshmen undergraduates. For their first two semester, the students take three classes covering "literature, philosophy, and historical and political thought."

My impression is that it's a survey of the foundations of Western culture. It helps people understand where many Western ideas came from, for example, democracy -- an idea we take for granted. The professors encourage a lot of discussion and deep thinking. Directed Studies teaches young people how to think. In the Boston Globe, one of the Directed Studies professors argues why the program and those like it are important:

The first is that there is more than one good answer to the question of what living is for. A second is that the number of such answers is limited, making it possible to study them in an organized way. A third is that the answers are irreconcilably different, necessitating a choice among them. A fourth is that the best way to explore these answers is to study the great works of philosophy, literature, and art in which they are presented with lasting beauty and strength. And a fifth is that their study should introduce students to the great conversation in which these works are engaged - Augustine warily admiring Plato, Hobbes reworking Aristotle, Paine condemning Burke, Eliot recalling Dante, recalling Virgil, recalling Homer - and help students find their own authentic voice as participants in the conversation.

Would it be possible to make an equivalent for science? How would you cover the history of science? What would be the book list? I'm guessing that constructing a science version of Directed Studies would be pretty difficult. Scientific ideas, especially from physics and math, are very abstract and difficult to grasp. If you don't have a good base of math, physics, chemistry, and biology, it'd be hard to have discussions. Moreover, the way that these subjects are taught in K-12 doesn't help. Students are taught to memorize and apply recipes. I don't think freshmen would have enough background. The only book I can think of that would work is Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Thought of the day: The self-aware learner

A lot of life seems to be learning self-awareness. Some major examples are being self-aware of your mental/emotional state and being self-aware of your learning process. No one teaches us these things, and few people talk about them.

Actually, that's not completely correct. You go to therapy and talk to a psychologist/psychiatrist/etc. There are different schools of psychology. One of the main branches is psychoanalysis, whose goal is to help the patient understand themselves.

As to learning processes, we spend so much of our lives in school yet we never spend any time thinking about how we learn. Meta-learning is an important topic. As the old cliched saying goes, it's so much more useful to teach someone how to fish than to fish for them. What type of learner are you? Visual? Kinesthetic? When you're confronted with a subject you know a little about it but not very much, how do you approach learning it? How can we teach people how to learn?

One way is project-based learning. Often, a class ends with a one-month long project. This tends to be very short-term and driven by trying to do an adequate enough job for an A. Maybe it would be better to have a class that is entirely focused on a project. Still, that is only a few months in a college course.

How about craft learning? What if you want to be a world-class hockey player or musician or mathematician? This isn't something that can be encapsulated in a class. You need to do a hobby on a semi-serious level for a year or so to get a taste of this. For example, I spent a year learning photography. After a year, I mastered all the basic technical stuff and had gotten a taste of the different fields (e.g. event, portrait, landscape photography). I could recognize what were the big ideas in photography. The use of light and shadow. Colors - warm vs cool colors. Right now, I could probably make a list of what general ideas every photographer should master. Then if you told me what type of photography you wanted to become (say macro), I could write a list of what technical skills you should work on.

Some of the greatest musicians/athletes/actors/etc had a parent who guided them from day one, telling them what to focus on, what skill to learn. A really neat story is László Polgár training his daughters into chess grandmasters. Or they grew up in an area teeming with the best in their field -- like actors and musicians who grew up in New York. These kids could go to the theatre and see world class productions, or find teachers affiliated with Julliard.

Thought of the day: Becoming an autodidact

I've found that the most useful skill to develop is the ability to teach myself. Recently, I found out that the term for this is "autodidact." I wonder if teaching oneself has general principles itself. Here are some of the methods I use to teach myself:

1. What is universal? What are the most important concepts?
   This is a typical physicist perspective. For example, for photography, I might say the important ideas are light and shadow, the quality of light (diffuse or harsh), warm vs cool colors.
2. How is this field different from similar fields?
   In physics, we tend to be concerned with finding clean, beautiful, logically consistent mathematical rules for explaining nature. In biology, people are trying to model complicated, messy, real systems.
3. What is the progression?
   You want to identify where to start, where to end, and how to progress in between. If you don't have a progression, you have no idea how far you have to go or what you've accomplished and it's easy to become frustrated. To learn hockey, you start with skating, then progress to stickhandling and shooting, and finally tactics and teamwork.
4. Read interviews with important people in the field.
   They'll identify what's important. I learned a lot about narrative and character by reading interviews with distinguished actors.
5. Listen to what people in the field say or read forums.
   This is a bit trickier because you have to find the right people -- hopefully intelligent, articulate types. This might not be easy. I read theater forums sometimes. I found one forum where people frequently trash shows (though there were some insightful comments if you sifted the wheat from the chaff). The Sondheim specific forum was better because people were more interested in analyzing the shows than shoving their opinions down people's throats.
6. Find a partner.
   I've never done this, but if you can find someone at a similar level and you get along well, this could be dynamite. You can hang out together, support each other, inspire ideas, etc. I guess this is not being an autodidact, but who cares.

If you try to learn several unrelated fields, you'll start to see patterns and that will make it easier to pickup more subjects.

Thought of the day: What is the progression?

When you're learning or teaching, a good question to ask yourself is: "what is the progression?"

I'm not sure where the term "progression" came from, but I've heard it used in reference to strength training and conditioning. One day, at the gym, I saw a new piece of equipment, a back extension bench. I asked the supervisor how to use the bench and I tried it. It was pretty damn hard and I realized that the exercise was too difficult/advanced for me. So I went back to the supervisor and asked him if there was an easier exercise that would help me build up to the back extension bench. He gave me another exercise and said, "That's the progression."

Recently, I having discussions on how to coach beginning adult hockey players. It's very tricky to teach adults hockey because there is just so much to learn and because hockey is one of the most difficult sports to become proficient in (let's not talk about being a master, it's hard enough just be decent). Through the course of the discussion, I realized that you need to design practices where the different drills reinforce each other, skills are applied in different contexts, and teach how skills are used in game situations -- all without making people frustrated or bored. There needs to be a progression to take people from not knowing how to skate to being able to play in a game with decent skating, stickhandling, shooting, and tactical skills.

The progression for learning hockey would be something like:

1. Learn how to use your edges
2. Skating in a straight line, stopping
3. Crossovers, tight turns, transitions
4. Skating with the puck
5. Simple dekes
6. Shooting
7. Tactics

The learner is often frustrated about making progress or overwhelmed by how much work there is to do. So it's important to give them just enough to chew on, but not get stuck or become intimidated. The teacher is often frustrated that the learner isn't improving quickly enough. The key to solving these problems is to identify what skills need to be mastered and to come up with a progression to tie everything together.

Learning from other fields and cross-training

As I get older, I feel like scientists aren't really good at anything except science. Not that this is entirely surprising or that we should expect scientists to be amazing writers, speakers, etc. But if you're a scientist, you spend all your time immersed in the scientific community, thinking that the quality of writing or presentations that you see there are really the way things should be... well, you should go look at essays in the New Yorker or The Atlantic, or watch TED speakers or theatre performers or standup comics. The professionals of every field tend to have their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to shore up your weaknesses, go look for a field where that particular weakness is a strength, learn from those people, and use them as your inspiration. If you look outside your field, I think you'll have a huge leg up over others.

In sports, we call this cross-training. Athletes have no problem taking up yoga to help their hockey goaltending skills, for instance.

Backwards skating

I'm a terrible backwards skater and I finally decided to think about how to improve. Here are some things I've learned.

Backward stride

Windup

1. Glide backward on the flats of both skates.
2. Prepare to push with your leg. Place your weight above the pushing skate.
3. Pivot the pushing skate outward with the heel facing out to the side. You want the pushing foot to be nearly at a right angle with respect to your gliding foot.
4. Dig the inside edge of the pushing skate into the ice by rolling your ankle and bending the knee so that the skate and lower leg form a 45 degree angle to the ice. Make sure your full body weight is concentrated over the pushing skate.

Release

1. Start the c-cut. Use the front half of the blade to push.
2. Start the push from the middle of the inside edge and finish at the toe. Drive the pushing leg against the edge, using a forceful snapping action of the leg.
3. The push must executed with full extension of the leg, finishing with a toe flick of the inside edge. Your knee should lock out.
4. At the midpoint of the c-cut, transfer your weight from your pushing skate onto the gliding skate. When you skate backwards, your body weight should be over the back half of the gliding blade. However, the entire blade of the gliding skate stays in contact with the ice.

Follow-through

1. Keep the entire blade length of the pushing skate on the ice after the thrust is completed.
2. Keep the knee of the gliding leg well bent, even when the thrusting leg is extended.
3. Keep the gliding skate pointing straight backward all through the c-cut, with the entire blade length in contact with the ice.

Return

1. It's imperative that you do a proper recovery, so that your pushing foot is in the right position for the next c-cut.
2. After the thrusting leg reaches full extension, re-pivot the foot to face inward.
3. Pull the returning skate under your center of gravity and re-pivot your foot again when your foot gets under your body. You foot will make a larger arc as it returns and a small arc as you re-pivot under your body. Keep the entire skate blade on the ice as you complete the return.
4. After the return, your skates should be side by side and under your body. You should not have one skate in front of the other. If that happens, you might end up zig-zagging down the ice.
5. Now you are ready to do the next c-cut.

Key points and discussion

The most important thing to do is to get low. You want to bend your knees so much that they extend two inches forward of your toes. Imagine trying to bend your knees so much that your knees nearly touch your chest. Or imagine getting so low that you sit on the floor. Yes, get that low. And yes, it's exhausting. It takes much more effort and energy to skate backwards than forwards.

The second key point is to pivot your foot 90 degrees before you start the c-cut. It's hard to get power if your foot is at a shallow angle when you begin the c-cut. You want your foot to start perpendicular if possible. This requires some flexibility.

The reason you need to pivot your foot perpendicular is so that you can made a wide c-cut with a large radius. What you don't want is a c-cut with a small radius. The wider you can make your c-cut the more push you get.

The third key point is to get as close to 100% body weight on the pushing (cutting) skate as possible. To practice this, you can do c-cuts down the ice on one leg at a time. This will help you learn how to balance on your inside edge going backwards. It's similar to the power skating exercise where you glide on your inside edges, making half circles up the ice. The difference is that now you do it backwards.

You might have trouble getting full extension of your leg on the c-cut. This is a matter of balance. Make sure you do the things already discussed -- a) get as low as possible and b) get full body weight on the pushing skate.

A former Division I and Olympic player gave me the following advice. Don't skate pretty. Don't make beautiful c-cuts. Your goal is to skate with power and efficiency. You want to concentrate on pushing as hard as you can (explosively) on the first 1/3 of the push. As you push, thrust your leg out hard to full extension. As soon as you get to full extension, shift your weight to your gliding foot. I found that if I didn't shift my weight fast enough, I would lose my edge to the pushing foot.

When you start getting good at your c-cuts, you'll find yourself zig-zagging down the ice. Keep the gliding foot pointing straight backwards. You want to go backwards in a straight line, not a zig-zag. According to Laura Stamm, it's not possible to go backwards in an exact straight line, there will be a slight curve.

Remember to keep your skate blades on the ice. They should not lift up at any point during the backward stride.

The proper posture is to bend your knees as much as possible, keep your shoulders back, your back straight, and your head up. If you don't have a stick (for example, if you're practice at public skating where sticks aren't allowed), imagine holding a stick.

Keep the upper body and head still, except for the arms.

As you skate, move your arms in sync with your legs. As one leg makes a c-cut, move the arm, on the same side, forward while the opposite arm drives back. For example, if you make a c-cut with your left leg, move your left arm forward and drive your right arm back. The arms should move parallel to your body and not be swinging side to side.

Robby Glantz suggests that you practice the return, you should click your feet together. Of course, this is only when you practice, not in a real game situation.

A friend of mine who played Division I hockey had the following suggestion. When you first learn the backward stride, exaggerate the twisting hip motion.

Another thing you can try is to do forward c-cuts for practice.

Backward starts

There are two types of backwards starts: the straight backward start and the backward crossover start.

The straight backward start is pretty much like the normal backward stride. The difference is that you move your legs as rapidly as possible, while still making proper c-cuts at full extension and recovering. You do everything faster (push, recovery, etc), at a quicker tempo.

For the backward crossover start, you do a backward crossover followed by fast backward strides. It's debatable how many crossovers you should do. Some people suggest doing just one crossover, while I've seen other people recommend doing two crossovers in one direction and one more crossover in the opposite direction to straighten out.

Be very careful about using the crossover backward start. When you do a backward crossover before the forward has picked a direction, you have made the first move and the forward might blow past you. Several Division I players tell me that you actually start slower if you do a crossover. If you need to get back quickly, do a straight backward start. If you need to move laterally and have time, do the crossover start.

Drills

There are a couple things you can do to help people one-on-one. You can hold your stick above their head to force them to stay low. You can also have them hold their stick on one end with both hands while you hold the other end of the stick. They skate backwards while you provide resistance to help them keep their balance.

As mentioned before, to practice balancing on one leg and getting full body weight on the c-cut, practice making backward c-cuts down the ice and alternating legs, balancing on the cutting leg.

If you have a lot of players and not too much space, you can have the players lay their sticks on the ice and practicing doing c-cuts with their gliding foot gliding parallel to the stick. This helps teach people to keep their gliding foot pointing straight backward. You can have them do forward c-cuts, backward c-cuts, or both.

Finally, when the players are more advanced, you can have them play defense in one-on-one situations.

References

Laura Stamm, Laura Stamm's Power Skating (3rd ed), 2001.
Robby Glantz Secrets of Hockey Speed, Vol 1 - "Backward stride"
Laura Stamm - "Smooth powerful stride", 7:45

Some thoughts on playing defensive hockey

I haven't played much defense, but I played D the last few games and frankly was terrible. I realized that I just don't know how to play defense. So I watched a college Division I game and some videos and here's what I've noticed.

1. The keys to defense are:
   • Reading the play
   • Positioning
   • Angling
   • Gap control
   • Limit time and space
2. When to pressure:
   • The puck carrier has his/her back to you
   • The puck carrier has poor puck control
   • Support is available
   • The puck carrier is isolated
   • The puck carrier is a scoring threat
3. When to contain:
   • There's no immediate goal-scoring threat
   • The puck carrier is approaching
   • The puck carrier has good puck control
   • You have no support
   • You need to buy time in outnumbered situations
4. When you play 1-on-1 defense against a forward, you keep a two stick length gap and watch their chest (not the puck). You want to angle them towards the boards by putting your outside shoulder on their inside shoulder and directing their movement with your stick. Generally you place your stick in the middle of the ice to force the attacker towards the boards.
   • If you get beat, you can try to "turn and burn". Turn from backward to forward, sprint after the forward, and force them into the boards, taking the body and the stick.
   • If you're close to the boards, take their body into the boards and put your leg inside their legs to tie them up. You can "step out" 90 degrees (sort of a backward to forward transition) and cut them off.
5. At some point, you want to close the gap and challenge the forward. When to do this is subjective. The guideline is that you make a move between the blue line and the top of the faceoff circle. If you make a move at the blue line, try to force them offside. Don't let them go beneath the top of the faceoff circle without challenging them. At that point, they have a good scoring opportunity, so you must challenge them. You might want to "step up" and take their body/stick. Or try a poke check.
6. If you're under pressure when going back to pick up the puck, you can execute an escape. Or if you're close to the net, use the net as a shield, skating around it with the puck close to the net.
7. When in doubt, dump the puck along the boards, or if you're skilled enough, hold on to the puck, do some escapes/dekes, and skate it up until you can pass to the forward.
8. If you're forced to ice the puck, you want to lift the puck, bouncing it high off the boards or alley-oop it.
9. Playing the forward near the net. You can lift his/her stick or push them away (but not too aggressively). There are other techniques but I'm not sure which ones are legal. You always want to keep your chest facing the forward and swivel your head to keep an eye on the puck. Never turn your back on the net-attacking forward.

For points 1-3, the information is quoted from USA Hockey Magazine, February 2007.

Thought of the day: Speculation on why the public has no interest in science

I haven't made any progress figuring out ways to convince the public that science is cool or worth learning. So I thought I'd do the opposite and list all the reasons why science is such a tough sell with the public.

1. Science is hard and takes a lot of time to learn. It requires sequential knowledge. You need to know math before you can tackle any scientific subject and that alone is a huge hurdle. Most people learn science and math for one of the following reasons: a) their parents said it was important, b) if they don't do well in those subjects, they won't get into Harvard, c) it was a relatively easy subject for them and made them feel smart. Deep ideas in science aren't typically taught until college (maybe even graduate school), so you have to brainwash people until you can get them to the point when they know enough to appreciate the beauty of science. How many kids have you met who sincerely want to grow up and be a scientist? There are only a few sexy scientific endeavors. The ones I could think of are inventing cures for diseases and going to space. Sports and performing arts look cool, even to a five year old kid. Watching a scientist pipette or sit at a computer does not look cool.
2. People can get away with not knowing any science in their daily lives. They don't need to navigate ships at sea, write computer programs, or farm their own food. There's a mass-produced machine or product to do anything they desire or need. At worst, they can hire a repairman. Yes, science is taken for granted... until the next celebrity comes down with a life-threatening illness.
3. Let's face it, people want fun, fame, and money. Fun has been eliminated in item #1. Scientists are not famous unless they build atomic bombs, cure caner, or invent a limitless energy source. I guess there is some money to be made in science (even if we don't consider technology companies like Google). For some reason, the idea of scientist as the money-making profession only seems to resonate with Asians.
4. The practical uses of science consist of either a) modeling the world and using the models to make predictions or b) testing designs by experimentation. Modeling is abstract and not people friendly. You need to know math (it rear its ugly head again!) Experiments? Yes, you can build cool stuff and write nifty code. But it's hard to get into that stuff when the chemicals they used to have in educational kits are banned; schools don't have the budget for equipment or don't want to be liable; there are more interesting distractions like TV, video games, internet, Facebook.

These are just a few "guesses." I don't have any research to back this up.

Some things I learned from M2 Hockey videos

I learned a lot from watching Hockeyshare's YouTube video channel.  They have a lot of great drills which are actually demonstrated on the ice.  I also really liked their tips on general tactics like breakouts and defense.  Here are some things I learned:

Skating

Backwards quick starts

You do two quick crossovers.  Do one crossover, followed by another crossover in the opposite direction.  This evens out your direction.

Forward stride

Make sure you flick your toe at the end of the stride.  If you don't do this, you'll lose a lot of power.

Passing

Forehand passing & receiving 101

Pass with the puck in the middle of the blade. You don't want the puck on the heel, because it will be prone to elevation (like in a saucer pass). With the puck on your blade, push your arms forward in a straight line, roll your wrists, and point the toe of the stick towards your target. While you catch the pass, you should be looking for the next target where you'll be passing.

When receiving the pass, don't bring the puck too far back. You want to finish receiving the pass so you are in a good position to make your next move. After you receive the puck, avoid stickhandling. Each "stickhandle" costs you a half second.

Shooting

One timers

Typically, you want to receive puck somewhere between middle of stance to back foot. Drop your body and get low. Pro players often "sit" down or even go down on one knee for the one timer. For a "slap" type one timer, you are relying on the flex of the stick to generate power. In game situations, you don't usually get the puck in your favorite place. The puck may come slightly in front of you or slightly behind you. You need to learn how to adjust your position on the ice.

Shooting from a D to D pass

Don't take the shot if you don't have a lane. Nothing is worse than our shot hitting a shin pad and causing an odd man rush the other way.

Catch the pass in front of you by stopping the puck right off your outside foot. Then turn your body, open up your body, and immediately step into the shot. Don't stickhandle. Try to do this sequence of motions as quickly as possible so you get the shot off quickly and avoid hitting any traffic.

Breakouts

Strong-side breakout fundamentals 

There are three options for strong-side wings breaking out:

1. Post up at the hash marks and jam your skate against the wall. Position your outer skate so that when the puck bounces off your skate, it will be directed to a good position. Open up your body a bit so that you can accelerate when you catch the pass. Your skates should be in an upside down V position. You don't want to face the defensive zone straight on, because that is a difficult position to accelerate out of.
2. Skate forwards towards the net, then transition to backwards, and curl towards the boards.  As you transition, sneak a look back at the ice to see where everyone is.  You are facing the defensive zone, looking for a pass. Open up your body for a pass near the hash marks.
3. Skate forwards towards the net, make a hockey turn towards the boards, and accelerate up the ice, looking for the pass. Only do this when you are confident there is no pressure or when you're on the powerplay.

Receiving a breakout pass

You have four options when receiving a breakout pass:

1. Pass back to defensemen or pass up to another forward.
2. Skate the puck after receiving the pass. Preferably you'd like to catch the pass with speed. You can do this by skating down towards the defensive zone and transitioning. Make two hard steps and look to make a play.
3. Chip the puck off the boards out of the defensive zone.  Don't chip the puck towards the defenseman.  Bank the puck off the boards at an angle so it goes around the defenseman.  If you're playing on your strong side, shovel the puck up with your backhand.  Otherwise, you can lift the puck with your forehand.
4. Eat the puck. If you get the puck and can't make a play, jam the puck up against the boards with your stick and protect the puck with your body.

Always sneak a look to see where everyone is before you catch the pass.

Some tips on receiving a hard pass wrapping around the boards.  Jam your skates up against the boards.  Don't put your heels perpendicular to the boards.  Stand with your skates making an upside down V.  The skate closer to the net will be positioned to allow the skate to bounce out towards your stick.  Your body will be slightly opened up so that you can get a good quick start.

Forwards

Offensive escape move

If you're a forward skating down the ice with the puck into the offensive zone and you don't see a play, you can curl around towards the boards. This slows down the play and gives you time to look for more options.

Attacking the point

This is about how to pressure the point when you're a defensive forward.  You'll either be on the boards as the strong side winger or in the high slot as the weak side winger.  If you're coming from the high slot, angle  the point towards the boards, away from the middle.  If you're coming from the boards, you want to curl around to push the point towards the boards.  This isn't always possible.  In that case, put direct pressure on the point by skating straight at them.  Don't follow the path of the defenseman.  Take the straight line path.

To block the shot, you need to put your body between the puck and the net.  Don't skate up with your body to the side and stick in the shooting lane.

Attacking the low seam

The low seam is the goal line in the attacking zone.

In this situation, you are at the hash marks.  (You might be catching the puck off a cycle.)  You skate down the wall over the goal line, then do a hockey turn back toward the goal line, then a second hockey turn toward the net and shoot.  Always protect the puck from the defense, with good body positioning and by keeping the stick and puck wide.  Make sure you accelerate out of each turn, either with a heel drive or a crossover.

(update 7 Oct 2012)

Defensemen

Defensive positioning

Stay between the forward and the net at all times.  If you see a good opportunity, you can try to pin the attacker along the boards.  As the attacker moves, move laterally with them.

Defensive zone pickup

While you are skating back as a defenseman to pickup the puck in the defensive zone, you want to do two things before you even pickup the puck.  First, sneak a look back to see where your forecheck pressure is and where your pass options are.  Decide whether you are going strong side or weak side.  Second, angle your path depending on whether you chose the strong side or the weak side.  Make sure you pick up the puck facing the sides, not the end boards.  If you face the end boards, you won't be able to see incoming players.  When you actually pickup the puck, minimize stickhandling.

If you go strong side, either pass immediately or use a two-touch movement to bring the puck to your forehand and then pass.  Avoid wrapping the puck around the boards.  It's too difficult to control for the wingers.  The amount of time the winger needs to control the puck can be the difference between breaking out and being stuck in the defensive zone.

If you go weak side, your defensive partner should be dropped behind the net for a D-D pass.  Check what hand your partner has.  If his/her blade is next to the boards, you can try a direct pass.  If he/she is the other hand and the net is in the way, you can bounce the puck off the wall.

A last option is an escape move.  You angle your path as if you are going weak side.  Skate all the way to the net, using the net to block forecheckers.  Then hockey turn towards the wall, go up the strong side, and pass a pass quickly.  Try to make the pass right out of the turn. Don't stand flat footed after making the turn.

Defense neutral zone transition options

This discussion covers what to do if there is a loose puck in the neutral zone and you are a defenseman skating back to pick it up.

The first option is a quick D-to-D pass. Your defenseman partner should be positioned 1-2 stick lengths behind the puck. This gives you a good passing line and makes it harder for your opponents to forecheck. After you make the pass, get open as support, in case your defensive partner wants to pass back to you.

A second option, if you have more time, is to skate towards the puck and do a 180 transition, so you face up-ice. This option gives you great vision of the ice, but the puck is in a slightly awkward position. You'll need to pull the puck back towards your body to put it in a good position for passing.

A third option, if you don't have time, is to skate towards the puck, pick it up (protecting the puck with your body), and immediately pass it while you are still facing the defensive zone. If you pick up the puck on your forehand, it's straightforward to make a pass up off your forehand. If you pick up the puck on your backhand, you want to do a hockey turn and lean in, as you do the backhand pass. This will give your backhand pass some strength. You don't want to be in the situation where you are standing stationary and doing a shoveling style, weak backhand pass.

It is essential to make quick passes. The opposing team won't have time to setup their defense. And you'll generate lots of scoring opportunities for your team.

Defense recovery

Suppose you are skating backwards playing defense on a forward. You know you are beat when the forward's shoulder comes in line with your own shoulder. To recover, turn your body and skate towards the net, to cut off the forward's angle. Don't make the mistake of skating towards the forward or following the path of the forward.

Net protection for hockey defensemen

When you take the puck around the net, hug the posts so there is no room for a forward to pressure you on that side. You use the net as a protective barrier.

Defensive Lateral Movement Tips & Drill

This discussion concerns defenseman playing point when their team is in the attacking zone.

If you are trapped on the boards, you want to move laterally towards the center of the ice. As you move towards the middle of the ice, you get a much better shooting angle on the net. You also create space for your forwards. Another option is to move laterally towards the center of the ice, drawing a defender off the boards. You can bait this defender towards you and then bounce the puck off the boards around them to one of your forwards. As you moving laterally, you can keep your feet outside of the blue line as long as the puck stays in the offensive zone. This will give you another 5-6 feet of room to make a play.

Improving the public image of science

I think sometimes about how to improve the public image of science. There are a million things going on in people's lives, things that worry them; children have so many ways of occupying their time, whether it's sports, Facebook, or video games.

I want people to believe that science literacy is important the way that reading is. You wouldn't tell someone you can't read. Yet people have no problem saying that they're "not good at math."

I want to see people doing amateur science whether it's on the computer, looking at stars, or performing experiments. I see all these people buying $500+ dSLR cameras. Thanks to the advances in digital photography and the huge drop in the price of equipment, anyone is capable of taking pro level photos if they work at their skills [1].

Some ideas I have

1. Take better photos of scientists. I've never really seen many good portraits of scientists [2]. On that note, why can't we make a documentary or a music video that will convince people that scientists are heroes?
2. Get the public more involved in science. Make them feel like they can make a contribution.  We need more initiatives like Galaxy Zoo.
3. Find ways to get children more interested in science. Maybe high school kids could be allowed to write software for the library. Have kids do Make Magazine projects.
4. Show people how they can use science and math to great benefit in their lives. I have to admit, I don't really know how to do this. I've always liked how you can use statistics to expose cheating in polls and things of that nature.

[1] Not that I'm saying amateurs are actually pros.  The professionals can take a much higher percentage of good photos than an amateur can.
[2] This one from the New York Times is not bad for an environmental portrait.

Notes on transitions/pivots in hockey

Forward to backward

1. Glide forward on both skates.
2. Shift your weight to the front of your skates.
3. Turn your upper body and hips approximately 90 degrees.
4. Shift your weight to the back of your skates.
5. (advanced) Do a backwards crossover.
6. Skate backwards. 

Can be done on a curve or on a straight line.

Keep your body low and your feet wide. Keep your head up! That will ensure that your body is square.

The key is the part where you turn your upper body and hips. This does most of the work. Don't try to turn your feet. Turn your upper body and hips first, and your feet will follow. As your turn your body, keep your body square -- your shoulders should be level, your body weight centered over your skates. You shouldn't be leaning backwards or forwards or dropping one shoulder.

Concentrate on shifting/transfering your momentum from forward to backward without losing speed. The pivot is similar to the pivot in the hockey stop, but you don't want to do the stopping part! Ideally, you want to accelerate out of the transition.

Backward to forward

1. Glide backwards on the back inside edge of one skate, on an arc. Keep gliding until your body faces 90 degrees to your original direction of travel.
2. Open up your hips and hold the other skate in front of you and off the ice.
3. Now turn your upper body and hips towards the skate that is off the ice. Your body should be an open, V-shaped position.
4. Shift your weight to the other skate. Put that skate down on its back inside edge.
5. Skate forward. 

Can be done on a curve or on a straight line.

Keep your body low and your feet wide. When you are gliding on the back inside edge, keep your feet close together so you can really put your weight on the back inside edge.

Remember to keep your head up!

Imagine that your feet are skating on an arc. When you do the backward to forward transition, your skates need to be on a deep inside edge.

Don't change feet too early. Keep gliding (for what seems like a long time) until your body faces 90 degrees to the original direction of travel. Then rotate your upper body and hips, not before.

Applications

In game situations, transitions are used so that you always face the puck and never turn your back on the play.

Forwards might use transitions when going down low on the breakout. This way they don't turn their back on the puck when making themselves available for the defenseman to pass to.

Defensemen probably use transitions the most.

1. They might be skating forward with the puck. They can't see a good play to make, so they buy some time by transitioning to backwards.
2. Your team is attacking and you skate forward into the offensive zone to help out. But then your team loses possession of the puck and you need to switch back to defense. So then you do a transition and skate backwards to cover the defensive zone.
3. You are skating backwards playing defense against a forward. Then you use the backward to forward transition to cut off the attack and push the forward towards the boards.

Drills

1. Do transitions around a pair of cones.
2. Do transitions around your own stick.
3. Do transitions on a slalom style course. 
4. Have the defenseman skate forward towards an attacker, then transition from forward to backward and play defense against the attacker.
5. Have the defenseman skate backwards while an attacker skates forwards. When the attacker gets close, the defenseman cuts off the attacker using the backward to forward transition and pushes the attacker towards the boards

References

Robby Glantz Secrets of Hockey Speed, Vol 1 - "Change of direction", 0:00
Laura Stamm - "Quick turns and transitions", 1:26

Link of the day: "Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player"

I follow Cal Newport's blog, whose theme is something along the lines of how to live your life, so that you are creative and get a lot of (real) work done while staying sane.

I liked one of his recent posts where he discussed a piano player's strategy to becoming better. The strategies of "Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy; To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder; Systematically Eliminate Weakness" -- they all fit the general strategy of deliberate practice, which I've discussed in the past here and here.

The last strategy "Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness" fits into the general strategy of visualization. In sports, coaches talk a lot about visualizing your success or visualizing your strategies to deal with a particular situation. For example, if you are a forward playing ice hockey, you could visualizing the three different moves you'd use to score a goal on a breakaway. But visualization can be extended to so many other situations beyond athletic and musical performance. When you get up in the morning, you can script your day and visualize how you want things to go.

Quick notes on the hockey slap shot

I got most of the following information from Total Female Hockey.

The further back you place the puck, the lower the shot. Put the puck near your front foot for a high shot. Put the puck near your back foot for a low hot.

Place the puck as close to your body as you can without impeding arm movement. Don't make the mistake of putting the puck too far away from your body.

Use proper grip. Slap shot grip is different than stickhandling grip. Turn your wrists away from you, such that the blade closes a little. The bottom hand should rotate so that your elbow goes from slightly bent to being locked straight. Similarly, the top hand should rotate so that your elbow is locked straight.

Keep your bottom arm straight and locked down

Get low and stay low through the shot and follow through. Lead with the bottom hand.

You must turn the blade over and closed during the follow-through to have power and accuracy in your shot.

I've heard recommendations that you should hit the ice 6-10" behind the puck, rather than the common refrain of 1-2". Supposedly the pros use the 6-10" distance whereas beginners start with 1-2". The reason for using a longer distance is that it gives the stick more time to flex and makes your shot more powerful.

There are lots more slapshot tips at Wild About Hockey. When I start to really practice my slapshot, I'll write up something more complete.

Hockey wrist shot

My wrist shot has always sucked. Like everything else in hockey, you need incredible technique to do it well. I thought I'd write down the important ideas behind the wrist shot, to remind myself.

Main ideas

The wrist shot consists of two major motions:

1. Sweeping the puck forward while transferring your body weight.
2. Pushing and pulling the stick hard and fast and snapping your wrists towards the end of the push-pull.

You need to be able to do all the different motions well, on their own. Then you need to put everything together and time everything properly. Timing is crucial. I suggest breaking down the wrist shot into small motions and making sure you can do each separate motion before you try the entire wrist shot.

Going on to more specifics...

Stick grip

You want to grip the stick properly to make your wrist shot as easy and efficient as possible. The top hand should be in either one of two grips.

1. Hold the end so that knob is inside the palm of the hand with the thumb wrapped around the stick and next two fingers gripping the end and with the pinky closed into the palm and resting on top of the butt end. With this grip, the two fingers after my thumb are behind the butt end and the fourth finger is resting on the side of the butt end.
2. If you have a weak forearm/grip, hold the end with the thumb wrapped around the stick and the next three fingers

For more details and photos, see the middle of this webpage by Madknuk Enterprises. No one ever told me this -- I've been holding my stick wrong for years.

As for the bottom hand, place it on the stick so that you arms are about shoulder width apart.

Weight transfer

New note: Dip the leading shoulder before skating into the shot. (from Jarick)

You start with your weight on your back foot, slide the front foot forward, and twist your torso. This provides a lot of the power behind your shot.

You want to time your motions so that you smoothly transition from transferring your weight forward to twisting your torso. Think of your body as a spring.

To exaggerate the weight transfer, you can step forward with your foot, actually lifting your foot off the ice.

I usually don't have too much trouble with the weight transfer action, because it's a natural instinct from playing other sports.

Cupping the puck and sweeping motion

The proper starting position is to cup the puck with your blade closed near your back foot. Then sweep the puck forward, keeping the puck on the heel of your blade. The sweeping motion should be straight and smooth. As you sweep the puck forward, put down with your bottom hand to put some pressure on the blade so it flexes, but not too much. You just want to use enough force to flex the stick, while the majority of your weight transfer focuses on moving the puck forward.

Make sure the puck isn't too far away from your body. I find it easier to shoot wrist shots with a short stick because the puck starts closer to my body. However, you don't want the puck so close that torso gets in the way of your elbows.

I have a lot of trouble with my wrist shots because I always open the blade of my stick too early. The blade starts closed, then when the puck gets near your front foot, you quickly open up the blade, and snap your wrists to close the blade. If you do this right, the puck should stay at the heel of your blade throughout the entire sweeping motion. You don't open up the blade until near the very end.

All the work of putting your weight behind the puck and sweeping the puck through does no good if the puck falls off your blade. This happens to a lot of beginners. They can't lift the puck, their shot is weak, and the reason is that the puck is falling off the blade because either 1) they're opening up the blade too soon and/or 2) the puck isn't staying on the heel of the blade during the sweep.

Kevin Muller mentions the importance of keeping the puck on your heel in this instructional video.

You can do the following exercise on or off the ice. Without the puck, practice transferring your body weight and sweeping the puck. Work on this motion until it becomes natural. A good way to remind yourself about weight transfer is to start with all your weight balanced on your back foot and your front foot in the air, then step forward with your front foot. Obviously you wouldn't do this in a game, but it reinforces the idea behind the weight transfer.

Push-pull motion

When the puck gets near your front foot, open up the blade and then push-pull the stick. You push with your bottom hand and pull with your top hand. You want to do this as fast and hard as possible. Again, do this as fast and hard as possible. The proper technique is wonderfully explained in this Total Female Hockey video.

The speed of the push-pull determines the timing of when you start the motion, i.e. where the puck is in relation to your feet when you start the push-pull. Also, you should be twisting your torso while you do the push-pull.

As Coach Kim explains in the above Total Female Hockey video, you can practice the push-pull motion off the ice without a puck.

Wrist snap and follow-through

As you push-pull the stick, when the puck gets to the end of your blade, you want to snap your wrists really fast and hard so that the blade opens, then flips over and closes. Point the stick blade towards the target and follow-through. The stick should point straight out in front of your body if you follow-through properly.

If you get the push-pull, open-close motion of the blade, wrist snap, and follow-through sequence right, the puck should spin off your blade and not wobble in the flight.

When you are on the ice with pucks, you can practice the push-pull and snap motion separately from the weight transfer/sweeping motion. Put the puck near the front foot and just do the push-pull and snap without any weight transfer or snapping motion. Kevin Muller explains this exercise in the same video from previous section. If you do this exercise, you'll realize how much velocity you get from just the push-pull and wrist snap alone.

Checklist

1. Make sure you are holding the stick properly. Hands shoulder width apart with the top hand holding the stick with the pinky off the end. Start with the puck close to your body.
2. Weight transfer from back foot to front foot. Slide the front foot forward
3. Sweep the puck forward in a smooth straight line, while pushing down with the bottom hand to flex the stick.
4. Make sure the blade stays closed during the sweep.
5. As the puck gets near your front foot, twist the torso and push-pull the stick really hard and fast.
6. As the puck leaves the end of the blade, snap your wrists hard and follow-through.
7. Concentrate on power, spin, accuracy, and quick release.

Final notes

If you practice off-ice, make sure you wear your gloves while you're shooting. You need to get used to how the stick feels with your gloves on.

Practice shooting facing perpendicular to the target and also facing the target. The position where you face the goalie is called the triple threat position because you can either pass, shoot, or make a move.  When you get good at stationary wrist shots, start practicing wrist shots while skating forward.

If you master the wrist shot, try learning the hybrid wrist shot/snap shot. This is what the pros use because it has a quicker release. NHL player Mike Cammileri demonstrates the more modern version of the wrist shot in this video. To see a more in-depth instruction video, check out HowToHockey's explanation of the traditional and modern wrist shot. The modern wrist shot focuses on quick release and relies mainly on the forearms and flex of the stick for power. There is very little weight transfer and the puck starts pretty close to the front foot, compared to the traditional wrist shot.

Many thanks to Wild About Hockey and its great article on improving wrist shots. I incorporated some of the tips from that article into my post here.

Link of the day: Khan Academy goes beyond just video

As Khan Academy (see my earlier post) gains fame and recognition, the backlash of criticism is starting. Some commenters on the recent New York Times feature "Online Learning, Personalized" think Khan Academy is overrated and nothing special.

In this article on Inside Higher Education, Salman Khan explains that in fact,

“I think too much conversation about Khan Academy is about cute little videos," Khan said in an interview last week. “Most of our resources, almost two-thirds of [the staff], are engineers working on the exercises and analytics platform. That, I think, is what we’re most excited about.”

It's true that people visit Khan Academy for its online video tutorials of math and science subjects, but behind the scenes, Khan's team is collecting statistics on 1.4 million registered users. They are using that data to understand how well the user is learning, for example, to predict whether the user will be able to solve a similar problem weeks later. One of Khan's engineers notes that "the work he does for Khan Academy is similar to the statistical modeling he did in finance."

They are also experimenting with incorporating memory research into their software. Websites like SuperMemo have touted the power of reviewing material at specific time intervals to deepen your memory of the knowledge.

What impressed me most is that Khan's team is working to differentiate between "pattern matching" and true understanding. Pattern matching is a problem solving method in which the person recognizes a class of problem and then uses a standard method to solve it. As Eric Mazur remarked in his talk on teaching introductory physics, his student would look at an exam question, think "oh, this is a Kirchoff's law problem" and then use the textbook method to solve it. Pattern matching is a useful method, but rather low-level, "a sort of useful imitation that allows toddlers to learn how to use language without first learning how grammar works." Unfortunately, in the real world, we can't easily identify problems in convenient categories like "Kirchoff's law." Even in the confined reality of physics class, Mazur found that his students would become frustrated when they came across a problem they couldn't classify. They would blindly apply atextbookrecipe and complain when it didn't work. Moreover, innovation and creativity requires global, comprehensive mastery of concepts, what I would loosely call "trueunderstanding." One of Khan's engineers states

“A big part of real-life problem-solving,” Kohlmeier says, “is recognizing what kind of problem you’re dealing with.”

Salman Khan proposes a radical idea: develop an independent agency to administer an exam that will test college students' competencies and mastery of concepts. The problem is that we have a mass of college graduates with degrees and GPAs, but there is no easy way to differentiate between them -- to know if they have developed the skills that employers want. That's why a lot of employers simply hire Ivy League graduates, because the colleges have already done the hard work of filtering already.

Khan is not impressed with the liberal arts education, an opinion that will no doubt spark controversy.

“If you can go deep in many things, awesome,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “That’s wonderful. But the reality is, right now, you’re forcing students to [obtain], and employers to hire students with, kind of a broad and very shallow experience base -- an expensive broad experience base. And it’s not clear that’s doing anyone any good.”

“Higher order” skills in critical thinking and creativity are useful only to the extent that graduates wind up in a position to apply them, Khan said. In the malaise of post-college unemployment, a graduate’s aptitude for analyzing themes in literature or conducting reliable research will languish. “If you don’t have that starting point of [graduates] being engaged and productive in society in some way, then the rest is just a waste of time,” said Khan.

Distribution requirements, the four-year model, and the buffet approach to curriculum all contribute to the “arbitrariness” that muddies the signaling function of college degrees and “have no relation to what makes you a more productive citizen or better for society or a more creative person,” Khan said.

“If you decouple [learning and credentialing], the arbitrariness is gone,” he added, and “it federates the options to adjust to what people’s needs are.”

I don't think we should completely get rid of the liberal arts education, but I agree that it's definitely not for everyone and that perhaps we should move to the German model where some students go to university and others attend vocational schools.

Unexpected conversations in the medical library

I had heard about a new exhibit in the medical library. It's based upon the collection of a famous American neurosurgeon who lived around the turn of the 20th century. I visited at the spur of the moment, since I had just finished a workshop in the same building. There were hundreds of jars containing brains and brain tumors, even a technical document by the architectural firm that designed the exhibit. When I was about to leave the exhibit, a woman approached me and asked me if she could answer questions about the exhibit. She had been giving a tour while I was looking around.

Looking back, it was a serendipitous conversation. I didn't expect to run into an artist who was working on the exhibit and who taught photography at the art school I had attended (she doesn't teach there anymore). She was an exceptional conversationalist. She was receptive, open-minded, and kept the focus of the conversation on me for the first ten minutes. Can you think of anyone who does that? I can't.

I asked her why put so much effort into this exhibit. She said that a lot of medical collections like this have been thrown away. So it's important to preserve this particular collection.

I also asked her a lot of questions about photography. She told me that if you are a good wet lab printer, you'll be a good digital printer. The terminology is the same. She showed me some prints she made for the exhibit and I couldn't tell the difference from the silver nitrate prints (the gold standard for film). The quality is that good.

She made some interesting remarks about art education. I told her about how frustrated I felt when learning how to draw. I always felt like my work wasn't very good. She said that her friends in art education find that even children are expressing the same "I'm-not-good-enough" attitude by fifth grade. She also mentioned that today's children are constantly presented with processed 2D images on a screen, to the point that they don't know how to think spatially before. Drawing is the process of observing a 3D scene, interpreting it, and rendering it on a 2D surface. This makes me think that more kids should learn drawing.

We spent a long time talking and I'm grateful that she took the time to enlighten me.

Link of the day: Khan's Academy

Lately, I've tired of TED talks. They were bold and exciting when they first appeared online (3-5 years ago?), but now people just seem to be selling their ideas whether they are merely good or truly brilliant. It's important to have inspirational meetings, but I think they should also be authentic and realistic.

There is one recent TED talk that I do like very much. Salman Khan, a former hedge fund analyst, spoke about how video can re-invent education. Originally, Khan recorded videos to help tutor his cousins in math. He posted the videos on YouTube and left them publicly available, in case someone else might find them useful. His cousins told him that they preferred their "virtual" cousin on video than the real thing! They found the video less intimidating because they could stop and repeat it without appearing stupid; they could learn at their own pace.  Other people discovered Khan's videos and gave him so much positive feedback that he quit his finance job and started producing videos all the time. (Khan does all the math and science videos, and he hired experts to do the videos on humanities subjects.  The scope of this project is astounding: 2000+ videos.)

That alone would have been an outstanding accomplishment, but Khan didn't stop there.  He tried to track learning outcomes.  He associated each video with a particular concept and made tree diagrams showing which concepts were prerequisites for other concepts.  Khan calls this a "knowledge map."  Students can work on modules.  When they get enough problems from the module correct, they can move onto another module.  When they master the prequisite modules, they can move on to a more advanced module, and so on.

This systematic tracking of the student's progress is invaluable to a teacher in charge of 30 students.  The teacher can see how the class is doing.  Moreover, if a student is struggling with a particular module, the teacher can find another student who mastered it and have that student teach the other one.  Peer learning!  (I discussed this topic in an earlier post about a Harvard professor struggling to teach first-year physics.)  Now, at least one school district (in Los Altos, California) is trying out Khan's system in the classroom.

When the system was used in the classroom, it showed that different people find different concepts easy and different concepts hard.  In Khan's words:

Because every time we've done this, in every classroom we've done, over and over again, if you go five days into it, there's a group of kids who've raced ahead and there's a group of kids who are a little bit slower. And in a traditional model, if you did a snapshot assessment, you say, "These are the gifted kids, these are the slow kids. Maybe they should be tracked differently. Maybe we should put them in different classes." But when you let every student work at their own pace -- and we see it over and over and over again -- you see students who took a little bit extra time on one concept or the other, but once they get through that concept, they just race ahead. And so the same kids that you thought were slow six weeks ago, you now would think are gifted. And we're seeing it over and over and over again. And it makes you really wonder how much all of the labels maybe a lot of us have benefitted from were really just due to a coincidence of time.

I found this very interesting.  I'm guessing that a lot of teachers and coaches know that student learning is much more complicated than "gifted" and not gifted.  It's nice that Khan can actually provide hard evidence establishing this fact.

Khan's work is amazing and inspiring. I do have a few questions. Using technology to tailor education is not a new idea. Why did Khan succeed? Is it because students are more comfortable with technology compared to students of the past? Why is video better than a textbook? A textbook is also non-intimidating and self-paced.  Maybe it's because Khan is a great tutor who is both a talented teacher and entertainer?  (I briefly viewed one of his videos and he seemed funny and charismatic.)  In an ideal world, each student would have a one-on-one tutor.  This isn't realistic.  However, if we have a great tutor like Khan and he makes free videos available to anyone on almost every possible math and science topic from kindergarten to high school, this tutoring database is a pretty good, though imperfect solution.  It's reminiscent of an idea in artificial intelligence.  You can have a computer that isn't smart in the human sense, but if you program it with an astronomical amount of information, it can be very useful.

I think that doing online homework is becoming more popular as teachers realize that there is simply not enough time in the classroom to do everything.  There are a lot of things students can do on their own with a "computerized" tutor.  By "outsourcing" this teaching and doing it outside the classroom, the human teacher has more time to teach things that are hard for computers.  Like having students discuss problems together.  Or showing how many seemingly disparate concepts unify into a larger concept.  Or doing hands-on science experiments.  I know that for first-year physics courses, some universities assign online homework several times a week.  This forces students to read the book and work on problems at home so that the lecturer can spend time explaining concepts rather than writing 20 equations on the blackboard.

What Salman Khan is doing is incredible work and I wish him the very best.

Physics as a subject for a kids comic book and how to get kids interested in science

For several years now, I've wanted to write a physics comic book with the goal of getting kids interested in science. The problem is that I just don't have a good idea how to do it. I need a really great idea because a comic book has to compete with TV, video games, internet, and all the other entertainment children are exposed to in the modern world.

I'm starting to feel like physics is simply not a good subject for a kids comic book. Anything that is abstract like physics will be difficult to pick up quickly and therefore you need to be able to play with it, experiment. Programming is abstract but lots of kids pick it up because you can write code and run it immediately. You can quickly progress to the point where you can make images fly across the screen. You know if the program works, because either the image flies across the screen or it doesn't. Instant feedback. That is fun, exciting, and addictive (in a good way). When you do a physics problem and you get an answer, it's very difficult to know if your answer is correct or if it makes sense. You could do a real physics experiment, but physics experiments are notoriously difficult to do right and require special equipment. I was always amazed in high school at how much equipment we needed to do simple experiments let measuring the velocity of an object moving along a track. When you do a chemistry experiment, you mix two solutions and the color changes. You can see or feel the result qualitatively. Physics experiments require too much precision; you actually have to measure the exact numbers to see if you're doing it right.

I'm starting to think that if you want to get kids interested in science and engineering without much equipment, the appropriate subjects are programming and math. I've already discussed programming. You can come up with all sorts of interesting math problems at all different levels. You can get a sense of whether your answer is correct by plugging in numbers. For geometric problems, you can often solve them by drawing pictures. Best of all, you don't have to worry about equipment failing in your experiments. Mathematics isn't constrained by the physical world, so there are lots of different ideas you can talk about, whereas in physics you are stuck discussing Newton's laws, Maxwell's equations, etc. For older kids who want to do something hands-on, I would recommend electronics. The parts are small and you don't need to go a machine shop.

Sports analogies to deliberate practice

Being an athlete and training for a sport confers skills that are easily transferred to many kinds of work. Many employers like athletes because they know how to be part of a team (unless it's a solo sport), and they understand what it's like to work towards a goal.

The nice thing about sports is that training and the results of that training are tangible and easy to see. When you train for a sport, you aim to be consistent in your performances. You also pace yourself so that you peak at competition time. Each sport is different. For instance, playing basketball requires you to peak several evening a week for games, but a marathoner might only run a race every few weeks. However, the ideas are the same. Pacing is important because you don't want to get injured. This is just like in a knowledge worker type job. If you work too hard, you'll burn out. So pace yourself.

The reason that athletes become really good is because athletic training is a form of "deliberate practice." The idea is that you figure out what are the key things you need to work on so that you can perform at the highest level during competition. For a hockey player, that might mean trying to take shots from many different angles, off different feet, in awkward positions, so that during a game, you can score. For more information about deliberate practice, check out this post about deliberate practice at Psychology Today and this discussion of Geoff Colvin's book on the subject.

Link of the day: "Maths busking"

A huge problem in science is how do you get laypeople interested in science? (I'm using science as a blanket term which includes engineering, natural science, and math.)

Most of the popular books and media written about science are only interesting to people who already enjoy science and those people are only a small fraction of the world's population. If we truly want to make science mainstream and boost science literacy, we need a way to reach "regular" people.

Enter "Maths Busking" -- a really cool project whose goal is

Maths Busking aims to show the public the surprising and fascinating side of mathematics through the medium of street performance.

You can also see some video of their street performances.