{"id":6962,"date":"2025-12-14T20:40:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T20:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=6962"},"modified":"2025-12-14T20:40:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T20:40:06","slug":"practice-and-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2025\/12\/14\/practice-and-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Practice and Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems appropriate in this 250th<\/sup> anniversary year of Jane Austen\u2019s birth to use a quote from Pride and Prejudice to kickstart this post. \u2018If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.\u2019 says Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The idea that one is naturally talented and would have been brilliant if only one had put in the time is a very attractive one. The idea that, if one started learning something, great things would have transpired; yes we can all see the attraction of that. But nothing happens without effort and, although \u2013 in the case of music that Lady Catherine was referring to \u2013 some of us may have larger hands or longer fingers making certain chords easier than for the average member of the public \u2013 the reality is, one will never be proficient let alone brilliant without putting in the hours.<\/p>\n

I am rediscovering the tedium of practice as I attempt to pick up my piano playing 50+ years after I last had a lesson. And, as I only had lessons for two or three years, I was never much good anyhow. However, it is part of trying to rediscover the things that used to give me joy before science completely took over my life. I\u2019ve written before <\/a>about the piano I originally learned on, which is now far away so my granddaughters can learn to play on it. Currently I\u2019m renting an e-piano to see if my elderly limbs can cope with the stretches required to play octaves and so on, given I\u2019ve had problems with one of my wrists since teenage years.<\/p>\n

However, the point of this post, is not to wax lyrical about musical recreation, but to remember that nothing comes easily. I\u2019ve never forgotten the moment I realised that, just because I had a first-class degree from Cambridge, it didn\u2019t actually mean I knew very much about Physics at all. It is easy to think that passing an exam or ticking off some other milestone means you\u2019re transformed from novice to expert in a moment. Life \u2013 and knowledge \u2013 sadly does not work like that. Nothing can be accomplished without putting in the hours, and you never know whether the challenge is one that you are mentally or physically capable of mastering until you try. Think of all the aspiring ballet dancers who, regardless of talent, were turned away from a career because they were too tall or heavy; they were not \u2018suited\u2019. But we all have brains or bodies that work better in some directions than others. Why I could never remember the basic facts, let alone the intricacies of NMR and MRI, I never fathomed. But despite reading the topic up multiple times (I seemed to be asked to examine an inordinate number of PhD theses involving the technique), the facts always failed to stick. No doubt something fundamental in my brain wiring, or perhaps merely a lack of real application.<\/p>\n

However, being an expert takes multiple forms. I worry that, when it comes to our schools, we are still cramming our children with facts \u2013 because these are the easiest to test in, say, a GCSE \u2013 rather than teaching them how to use the facts in unfamiliar situations, which will largely be what the world of work for them requires. We know children will have easy access to \u2018facts\u2019 (as well as misinformation) on the web, and be likely to use LLMs, whether or not they have a good sense of how to get the most out of them and spot a hallucination when they see it. The Royal Society wants to see a very different emphasis on mathematical, digital and data education <\/a>in our schools \u2013 for all, not just for those who wish to pursue a more formal route into computing or mathematics \u2013 and to help students with AI literacy<\/a>, again for all students. The skills the next generation need are not simply about memorising facts, and both what is taught and how it is examined need to be kept up to date. The recent Curriculum and Assessment Review<\/a> had surprisingly little to say about the actual assessments themselves, so we are likely to see little transformation from what strikes me as the Victorian ideal of knowing and testing facts, to using them wisely.<\/p>\n

Knowing how to approach problems, where to go for the necessary facts \u2013 even knowing which are the necessary facts \u2013 are a crucial part of solving anything, but remembering their details may not be the important thing. Knowing which questions to ask, without necessarily being particularly expert in a field, is a great skill. I expect most of us have encountered the professor (I knew at least a couple) who would appear to snooze through a seminar and then ask the killer question. Often prefaced with the humble \u2018I may have missed this\u2019 or \u2018perhaps I misunderstood\u2019, but usually leaving the speaker looking a bit foolish. Maybe there was an implicit assumption lurking underneath the analysis that the professor has spotted. Maybe they see an analogy with another field where they are expert and feel that the speaker has missed a trick by not looking there for understanding. Knowing what questions to ask is a skill every bit as important as knowing the facts that can easily be tracked down. Do we teach our students \u2013 of whatever age \u2013 enough about this? Are we moving on from regurgitating facts to knowing how to use and manipulate data?<\/p>\n

As a scientist I believe I am capable of critical thinking, which this is one aspect of, as well as be creative, both skills the arts and humanities folk sometimes seem to want to claim as if they are a race apart from scientists. We all need these skills, although obviously creativity may manifest itself in different ways across the disciplines. Memorising and reproducing the second law of thermodynamics (to replicate CP Snow\u2019s arguments) or knowing how to use Excel can indeed be demonstrated by a simple and easily marked test. But mastering more subtle skills of expertise, for instance to carry out analysis in an unfamiliar situation, is more challenging. Like a musical instrument, it takes time, practice and experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems appropriate in this 250th anniversary year of Jane Austen\u2019s birth to use a quote from Pride and Prejudice to kickstart this post. \u2018If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.\u2019 says Lady Catherine de … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[457,1720,677],"class_list":["post-6962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-science-culture","tag-critical-thinking","tag-curriculum-and-assessment-review","tag-jane-austen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6962"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6964,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6962\/revisions\/6964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}