Timeline for What is a wise reaction to a silly question?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
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| Apr 10, 2014 at 9:24 | comment | added | vonbrand | @user1729, one of the skills they'll need badly later is precisely how to find answers for themselves (searching the web, asking at sites like this one, finding out who they can ask profitably). | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 12:02 | comment | added | dtldarek | @user1729 Maybe it wasn't apparent enough, but I do try to teach students asking questions, e.g. see this post. I rest my case. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 11:54 | comment | added | user1729 | @dtldarek I am not saying that asking questions is somehow better than doing your own leg-work. Rather, I am saying that asking questions is an important skill, much like researching online for an answer, and so should be encouraged and taught in a similar way. Both have their merits, both have their downsides. But both exist. I brought up my example because I learned this lesson late. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 11:48 | comment | added | dtldarek | @user1729 "I wasn't meaning that I asked someone who definitely knew the answer." That's a different context, and I suspect you did put some effort before asking your question (e.g. checking if it is trivial). Moreover, as a more senior member of academic community you have more trust. Finally, I guess that despite the initial trust, this person would get annoyed if you flooded him/her with pointless/trivial/non-sense questions. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 11:18 | comment | added | user1729 | @dtldarek Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear: I wasn't meaning that I asked someone who definately knew the answer. Rather, I just got talking to someone, they seemed interested, so I dropped my question. We met in his office the next day and had a very good chat. I still have the notes hidden away somewhere... My point is that asking a well-directed question off of someone can have benefits, even if the person is not necessarily likely to know the answer. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 10:46 | comment | added | dtldarek | @user1729 Imagine you are the one who is writing these libraries, would you like to answer the 24637212 questions in your inbox, or perhaps fix that subtle, but crucial bug you discovered recently? In academia it's a bit easier, there's the supervisor, friends, coauthors and so on. However, if you want to be a good researcher, there's a moment when you have to start pushing your cart yourself. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 10:19 | comment | added | user1729 | @dtldarek Okay, thanks, yes, I can see how your approach would be helpful. However, I am unsure how computer science research is different from maths research. I was genuinely shocked and surprised when I first ventured to ask a that I got a perfect answer from someone with a different specialty from me but with much more experience. Someone has to write the libraries you are searching...... | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 10:16 | comment | added | dtldarek | @user1729 I don't know if this works generally, I would say that it does not. However, in specific cases it does work. Observe, that I made sure that they know they can ask questions, that they are motivated enough, and didn't cop-out of the questions (e.g. I helped them search it). Finally, in computer science, knowing how to look for an answer on your own is one of the most important skills: you need to know how to find your way in the myriad of libraries, interfaces and quirks of the framework you currently use. There's nobody who would answer such questions for you in research or work. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 10:03 | comment | added | user1729 | Also, I understand that looking stuff up on your own is important, but it wasn't until the final year of my PhD that I discovered that you can actually ask other people your questions and that they will often know the answer! This came as a big surprise to me at the time... Knowing that you can ask questions of others is, arguably, just as important as knowing how to look things up yourself. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 10:02 | comment | added | user1729 | I am unsure the "getting them to look it up" method works. It requires extra motivation by the students, and although students might be interested in the answer they are going to wonder if it is really that important to them to waste so much of their time looking it up. Spoon feeding is important (but needs to be done sparingly) - teaching is essentially spoon feeding! I used to TA (I hate that phrase) for a lecturer who took this approach, and I remember thinking that it was a cop-out. It came across as "jump through all these hoops and then you can ask me". Which isn't helpful... | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 9:41 | comment | added | dtldarek | @AndrejBauer You wrote phrases like "If they want to know, then who cares if they didn't think of the question" or "And even if it isn't related to the current subject, so what?" I care if they thought, I care if it is related, this way I can help them more, perhaps by choosing a different kind of action than just answering the question. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 6:48 | comment | added | Andrej Bauer | Well, you still addressed the questions, which is the important thing to do. You used them to teach students something (just not in a way they expected). I don't see any disagreement between your answer and mine, except perhaps in the choice of words. Certainly, sometimes the best way to answer a question is not to answer it directly. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 0:26 | history | edited | dtldarek | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 82 characters in body
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| Mar 27, 2014 at 0:12 | history | answered | dtldarek | CC BY-SA 3.0 |