How To Explain Things Real Good (Stanford mini-talk)

some people just want to watch the world learn if you're watching this video you're probably one of those um a science communicator a teacher a journalist an educator or just someone who is inspired

by those educational youtube videos and want to make some of your own well i know i'm someone who wants to watch the world learn i make these interactive web things to help people learn my play for example i made these

interactives on the game theory of trust and the science of pandemics both of which got tens of millions of plays each and given that we live in a 100 percent

trustful and virus-free world i think i really had an impact on helping people learn or at least a stanford professor thinks i'm good at helping people learn and that's why i was recently invited to

give a short talk and q a to a small class of grad students at stanford so the following is a very very poor quality recording of that talk which i'm not going to redo

because i'm lazy and i want to be able to name drop stanford i gave a talk at stanford anyway here's that here's here's our talk enjoy

your help others create exploitable explanations and regularly blogs about their practices and approaches for designing explorables let's give a round of applause too

[Applause] regularly blogs you do yeah once every like five months um so today i will try to explain how i explained but first

some theory about why i'm not going to give you some theory okay because explaining stuff is a skill and when training skills people usually think about theory versus practice

theory is easy to share but hard to apply um practice is hard to share but you should apply i mean like for example i can't talk to you to be able to ride a bike like that's how practice is not shareable

um but there might be something in the middle i think uh tricks or heuristics or rules of thumb whatever you call it uh tricks are easy to share

but also easy to apply but of course there's a catch most tricks are false like like for example a beer before liquor never been sicker liquor before beer you're in the clear that's

not true that's false it doesn't work that's right it doesn't work um so i only really simply realize financial test advice like all products advice can actually be

like actually tested and iterated upon of the hundreds of tricks i've heard over the years like i've thrown away the ones that don't work and the ones that technically work but are like way too easy to mess up um so after like eight

years making these ball explanations um here's a few tricks that at least for me i have served the test of time uh so here's mickey's top five tricks and how to explain things are real good

the first step is to helping someone learn is to help them actually you know want to learn so trick number one uh show what's made you care most textbooks

tend to be like fact dumps that don't really care about helping you care um sometimes it's even worse when they actually do try to help you care because uh well here's some other tricks that i've been told for making one's audience

cares i want one's audience care that can work but are very easy to mess up like for example make it interesting how do you do fellow kids math is cool or make it relevant math is important

because it helps you copy tips at restaurants or create a curiosity gap becomes like good old-fashioned clickbaits i should also clarify my top five titles ironic i'm being ironic here

i'm not it's fine the problem with all these tricks is that to make you second guess your audience uh so my solution is uh don't second guess why would make your audience care

about some topic just show them what made you i care about that topic like an interesting puzzle a clever equation a personal story show me what made you care

and importantly i said uh what made you care not why you care because if you're trying to report like why you care you can end up being too abstract so for example

if you ask me uh hindi why do you care about group theory um i might say group theory unifies several branches mathematics and it's application quantum field theory which is like true but like to a total novice that's like

completely abstract gobbledygook doesn't help somebody ask me what's made you care about group theory because only years after i learned about root theory i did i actually finally care about it um

thanks to this puzzle why do mirrors flip left and right but not up and down i didn't do that it's so [ __ ] weird which doesn't sound like it's a math

question uh and yet it is and the solution is actually a really great introduction to group theory this is a lovely this is a lovely video and i'm not going to explain to you because i only have 15 minutes just talk

so catch me later uh the point is uh to avoid second guessing your audience and to avoid being too abstract don't tell me why someone might care

show me what made you care but speaking of showing and telling i want to help your audience want to learn then how do you actually deliver well trick number two

show dental sure don't tell is good for fiction not so much for non-fiction but one common and very like natural mistake for educators to make is the opposite uh tell don't show

for example okay i love wikipedia but and i give jimmy my money every month but okay here's this here's an introduction to symmetry group in group theory the symmetry of the geometric object is the group of all

transformations under which the object is invariant [Music] again i'm not fault on wikipedia here because

tell them show is what comes like naturally to most people if you ask someone hey tell me about x they'll tell you about x uh so a better trick is to show and tell but it's still like

easy to accidentally mess this up if you show and tell in the wrong order so yeah you get to show an intel thanks thanks slides thanks um so for example i recently read this classic masterpiece of math exposition

girdles proof it's fantastic i personally cannot do better and me critiquing this is like telling michelangelo hey you made david's dying too small so take us a grain of salt the point is

when these books explain what a formal mathematical system was um they started by telling me they told me a bunch of technic like a whole page of like technical definitions about theorems and axioms and i was completely

lost and now on the next page today actually show me an analogy chess chess pieces are like math symbols and arrangement of pieces is like an

arrangement of math symbols also known as a formula or a theorem uh the rules of how to move from one arrangement to another are like the rules for proving one theorem from another moving is like proving it rhymes therefore it's true

and the starting arrangement in chess i like scientists in math and those are called axioms and when i read this analogy that they gave out they gave me um i was like this is the most perfect and beautiful explanation

i've ever heard in pure mathematical logic why didn't you start that first so don't just show antel uh show vento concrete then abstract

familiar then unfamiliar and how do we do this uh easy with the acronym p pictures examples analogy show me a picture like this then tell me

a fractal is a shape that contains a smaller copy of itself show me the example of a square being flipped and rotated then tell me yeah show me the chest analogy for mathematics then tell me the technical

definition i'm not going to read that show vento so that's how you explain one idea but hear me hear me out that sounds crazy sometimes you want to explain more

than one idea um so how would you do that um well do not do a listicle um again top five tricks was ironic here just do as i say don't do as i do um

so don't give me a disconnected list to go give me a connected story uh how with this trick number three therefore in butt not and then i'll let that

very obvious and self explaining trick explain itself why there's some water [Music] it's not self explaining um imagine you have a story that goes

some guy gets super powers and then some other guy dies tragically and then it's a grand beautiful moral lesson have you noticed a lot of hollywood movies kind of feel like this like a series of like

grand sex pieces that should be emotionally moving on paper and yet like it kind of feels hollow i reckon that's because like each event is connected with an end then not a

therefore or buts um if events aren't consequences of each other then they won't feel consequential it almost rhymes therefore it's true uh contrast is bad to this story peter

parker was a kid who got no recognition or respect but one day a spider bites him and gets him super powers therefore he uses his power to get recognition and respect but his irresponsibility

indirectly causes the death of his uncle therefore he learns the grand moral lesson with great power comes great responsibility that's the catchphrase this is the kind of modern fable that will be carved into

our culture like like cry wolf or a sour grapes or a fly too close to the sun why because like it shows that therefore bugs of every great story and of life itself there's a

conflict therefore a character changes something whether that's their actions their beliefs feelings maybe their deepest values uh but this causes a new conflict therefore they change again but new conflict therefore change their

conflict therefore change so on and so forth in books and in life that's how you get real character growth i assert this different metric was coined by the creators of south park uh so here's an

example of using their foreign butts for nonfiction explaining how a piano key works here's a gif of how a piano key works is this is this self explaining is is

this transparent y'all does does this help no offense whoever made the gift and the diagram like the obviously put a lot of skill a skilled effort into it but um

contrast that to a recent video by engineer michael rober who used the therefore and butts loop to explain why piano key is designed like this like why it's like

this like why just press a button and make the thing make the thing um so here is rubber's a story so you want to play a note when you press the key therefore you try the obvious solution

you make a hammer hit a string when you press the key right that seems like the obvious thing but there's a problem if you hold the key the hammer stays touching the string stopping it from vibrating and so it can't actually play

therefore you add a flicking mechanism like this so that the hammer is flicked towards the string but it comes right back down afterwards but a new problem if you let go of the key the string will

not stop the notes will keep playing therefore you add a dampener that stops the string when the key is released and then there's some other stuff i don't remember um but the point is this chord therefore

butts loop is how any complex idea is designed whether that's in engineering science philosophy medication anything you have a problem or puzzle therefore you try a solution or

hypothesis but this gives rise to a new problem uh therefore we try a new solution about a new problem therefore solution but new problem therefore solution so and so forth in scientific life that's how we get

real intellectual growth i assert so the next time you explain the complex idea don't give me a disconnected listicle and then give me a connected story therefore but and as we saw with

the humble piano key you don't need to make up a story the story is already there so our first three first three tricks show what made you

care show then tell their phone but this will help make your explanation more beneficial for your audience but thank you it's not enough to think just about

benefits you just need to think about costs specifically the cost of time our time being alive is fragile and precious i think as we've all learned very recently and it's our ultimate non-renewable resource

time therefore we need to respect our audience's time and be concise so trick number four write the draft and cut ten percent no matter how good you get in writing for whatever reason at least ten

percent of your first draft would always be fluff so find that fluff and cut it so write your first draft then get a word count multiply that by zero point nine to get ninety percent of the word count then cut your draft down to meet

this new word count and there is so much more i want to tell you about being concise and i won't so trick number five and the final one uh do real tests early

and often here's a fun story in the 4th century bc aristotle claimed that heavier objects fall faster everyone thought so that was just common sense in the 16th century

a.d scientists finally tested idea it's

a.d scientists finally tested idea it's false i can probably test it right now is anyone below us right do we have a heavy and a light object

well in my left hand i have a feather in my right hand a hammer and i'll drop the two of them here and hopefully they'll hit the ground at the same time

how about that who said mr galileo was correct in his findings you know what it's not important so two lead balls of different sizes and weights drop from the top of the

building will fall of equal acceleration as an aside galileo himself never did this experiment but we know like other scientists did during the time 4th century bc

18th century 80 that's 2 thousand years for this like super basic thing that you could have discovered by taking like two objects yourself and then

dropping them and it took us two thousand years the idea that we should actually test and iterate upon ideas does not come naturally to human beings like it doesn't happen enough in politics for

example um but it's especially hard to test ideas including the creative arts you know like making an explainer article or video uh it's because it's hard to put your own creative darlings to a trial by fire elemetric number five

is still the hardest for me uh but i am trying to get better for a concrete example of what i mean by do real tests early and often here's the story of how i tested and iterated upon

this talk yeah pretty meta wow so matter um so yeah a few days ago i met up with two friends for dinner and another test to talk with them usually i only test my fingers like after i've written the first draft and already edited it which

is like which better than nothing but i'm still kind of late then i just improvised this entire talk using sketchbook to draw diagrams and take feedback notes so that's what's what i mean by testing early and often

uh i went further and told my friends please hackle me as soon as something i'm saying is redundant or makes no sense please interrupt and tell me heckle me so that's doing a real

test oh thank you so next time you test an explainer don't just share it for feedback after you edit the first draft get feedback when all you have is an outline and a sketchbook and encourage your friends to

hackle you in science politics life and art we should do real tests early and often because when when humanity forgets the idea that we should test our ideas apparently we deceive ourselves for two thousand years

in conclusion those are the five tricks that he coming back to that have stood the test for time of time for me for over eight years show what made you care

show then tell also use p pictures examples analogy therefore in butts also that problem therefore solution but problem loop write a draft cut ten

percent uh do real tests early and often so dear listener here's our story luke problem there's a beautiful important concept that you want others to know

about therefore solution you write an outline of explainer what made you care concrete examples therefore but and you improvise and talk with your friends but your friends like it but they were born by

some parts and they misinterpreted other parts therefore you take in their feedback write the first draft cut 10 percent of the words then send it out for more feedback but you test the audience find more problems therefore you iterate on it with more solutions

but problems therefore solutions repeat until your explainer has gone from good to great hit publish and you show it to the world the end for now so that's the story

of some people people like you and me some people who just want to watch the world learn hey girl

[Music]

my um all right it's done you