Should we aim teaching at potential experts?

[inquiry]

Perhaps I just misunderstand what is a different level (beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert) problem should be.

 

I assume(d) that by the time a player was an "intermediate" he would know about DISCOVERY plays. The basic principle is simple. Postpone critical plays until you gathered as much information about the unseen hands as you can. As such a hand like 008 that has drawn heavy criticism as well as praise (neither of which is deserved) seems to me one that should be solvable by intermediates. That, at least, is what I was thinking. So I would not give the problem to intermediates (!) because they should (in my view) solve it. At the table, it would be a problem for intermediates only because they would play too quickly, but presented as a problem, they should solve it (I apologize to anyone who missed the discovery play, I don't mean your not an intermediate or even higher rated player if you missed it, it is only ONE problem). I suspect the intermediate or higher players who missed it saw this labelled as "A beginner problem" and went for the obvious only problem is if clubs are 4-1 and if so, it will be East who is long in it. After all, that is the level you might think a beginner would think at. If I had presented it labeled as an intermediate problem, they would have thought deeper into it. They thought "easy" because it was beginner.

 

So I give it to beginners, exactly because it will be a huge challenge for them. Exactly because they will have to work on it. Exactly because they will come up with a proud solution like deciding to cash the club King then Ace because East is most likely to be long in clubs if the suit doesn't divide evenly. In other words, I expect every beginner to get it wrong, and then eventually they will see the "solution" and the realization that hey, that wasn't so hard, I could have figured that out. It is meant as a learning process. The problem was selected because it was a trick one figure out the solution. It is not complicated with a lot of fluff. So that is my goal. To provide a simple looking hand with an important easy to digest lesson at the end of working on it .Give a beginner several problems on this kind of theme, and they will learn to spot these in the future. We did the same with a series of end play positions in the past. I was gratified that at least one self professed beginner thought the content was appropriate and he started a new thread looking for older problem hands

 

When I give an intermediate level problem, I expect most intermediates to struggle with it (and indeed most to miss the point), for the same reasoning. I want the problem to be just at the outer most level of their ability to solve it. Perhaps I should change my philosophy. Give beginners problems they are most likely to solve, give intermediates simple choose between a finesse and a 3-2 split hands. But I mean all my problems to be a learning experience, not a reinforce what you already know experience. I don't present hands that I don't know the answer too myself (other than bidding issues). I do know that after explaining how squeeze work, quite a few intermediate players told me they enjoyed the squeeze quizzes I added

 

I freely admit that I have high expectations for each level of bridge we have here in the forum. I sort of understand that, which is why I was adding rate the skill level need poll to solve problems to each of my initial problems (See play 001, 003, etc). This was meant to help me (and perhaps all of us) get a handle on what level of problem falls to which category or player. It never occurred to me that by asking what level of player a problem was suited for would cause problems for anyone. It was Kenberg who pointed out that people don't like being graded, and the implied reduction in their proposed ability if they can't solve a problem forum members rate as intermediate or beginner, etc. My attempt at ranking problems initially was I hoped to published many of the ones I have collected over the years into the forum and was seeking guidance to help decide where they should go. With Ken effectively killing my attempt to get a handle on what kind of problems was suitable for what skill level, I was back on my own again

 

Now I am learning that posting a problem and calling it a beginner problem is a problematic because people who struggle with it or have a temporary blind spot think I am insulting them, or more likely, I am out of touch with what the different level of players are capable of. This is not a new charge, I tried teaching counting hand patterns to novices (I know for a fact a self-professed novice can be taught fairly quickly to count the hands, (a skill for beginners) see this cute success story hallway's story about she with her name on the wall) and teach intermediate players about squeezes (A hugely long series of threads). I was told in no uncertain terms that you can't teach novices and beginners to count hands and you can't teach intermediates to play squeezes. I disagree. You start teaching beginners (and novices if they are ready) about counting hands. You reinforce those lessons at each level, helping them draw inferences from auction, leads, lines of play by the opponents. And you start teaching intermediates about squeezes. Do I expect an intermediate to solve a problem which has a guard squeeze or even simple squeeze? Not most of the time, but I do expect them to work on the hand, figure out something to hope for, and then when the solution is shown try to follow the logic of the solution. This is why I a book length series on squeeze to help with the process for intermediates.

 

This discussion of giving problems at or slightly above a players ability reminds me of a difficult problem posted a decade or so ago by Mike Lucy. It was played by apparently by experts (mike called them "solid players"). Then a group of them analyzed the hand double dummy after declarer went down. Mike wonder in his posting if a "world class" player could have found the right line. The hog and I both found it, and neither of us are anywhere close to world class (well, at least I am not, I should let Ron speak for himself). I consider myself advanced. I could solve this not because I am a great player, but because I have studied these kind of problems extensively in the past. I have been exposed to them and I "grok" the solution. The fact that I got that problem right does not make me a great player, nor the fact that a "sound player" missed it make him worse than me. Trying and failing at solving problems is an important learning experience. I suspect many people don't try to solve problems because they don't want to "look stupid" for missing them. This is not the right approach in my mind. If you try to solve a problem and then can't, when the solution appears, it will show you a flaw in your visualization process and help you improve your play. That at least is the philosophy behind my posting problems. That and we need more relevant content posted in the forum. Play 008 has already created a two new thread (this one and the one about archived problems) and lots of discussion in its own thread. And I will now repost the mike lucy post after I find it

 

Here is the "problem" as I see it. I don't want to post un-interesting hands in the interesting hand thread. Play 008 only becomes interesting if you make it matchpoints. I don't want to post non-expert level hands in the expert forum. So most of the hands I have will fall into the beginner/intermediate/advanced pile. Even the Mike Lucy hand I hope to repost would probably be just advanced because Ron and I solved it, but I will re-post it in the "interesting hand" forum. I plan on posting five to seven hands per week, god only knows where I will end up posting them, but I am certain there will be complaints no matter where I do. :blink:

[nige1]

Some have suggested different forum-names. In the general bridge section, I would prefer a more orthogonal classification modeled on Bridge magazines e.g.

• Bidding
• Play
• Defense
• Law
• Reviews

We bridge-players tend to over-rate ourselves. When anybody posts anything to the "Beginner/Novice" "Intermediate/Advanced" or "Expert" forums, somebody usually complains that it's in the wrong place. But most couldn't care less. IMO it's not worth worrying about.

[kenberg]

One thing I like about the hands is that they are either all about or mostly about play rather than bidding.

 

On this hand, although I worked it out, I sort of got off to a bad start by the instructions. I solved it, as instructed, assuming that W started with KQxxxx. But I had this nagging thought that players have been known to open 2♥ on KQTxx and even KQxxx.It was only later that I realized it doesn't matter. If W has ♥KQ 6NT is on ice.

 

And I am not running the Jack of spades at mps. 6NT making 6 already beats both 6♦ and 6♣ no matter how many they make, and if they are in 7m then either they make it and beat me in my 6NT with or without my overtrick or they fail and I beat them in my 6NT making unless I do something bizarre like run the J of spades. If I can pick up the clubs without the throw in then I can make 7 w/o the spade finesse whenever the Q is on my left and I will settle for that.

 

Here is a thought. Rate your hands numerically, or maybe as a color code running through the rainbow. Blue hands easier than yellow hands easier than red hands. Or 1,2,3, Or something. Not that everyone would agree with your ranking, they might find some green hands easier than some blue hands, but it would give them an idea as to how you see it. Then people could, and I am very fond of this notion for many things, sort themselves. If they find blue too easy to be interesting they could try some greens. Or red ones. This is actually different from calling them Beginner or Advanced, it's not just some euphemism. You would be saying "I will present some hands, some easier than others, and I will code them to guide you a little on which ones you want to do." I think BBO has hands like this that you can buy and play. They are simply called levels 1,2,3 etc and you choose the ones you want. People can claim level 2 are low intermediate if they want to, or they can claim level 2 are advanced, or they can, my preference, just play them and move to level 3 if they find level 2 too easy. And then level 4.

[akwoo]

I'm going to suggest that instead of trying to rate difficulty by a single number, we rate them by a pair of numbers, indicating bridge knowledge required and brainpower required.

 

Here's the problem with the example hand. Its knowledge requirement is about a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. Ben is right - you don't need to know much or have much bridge experience to work it out. However, its brainpower requirement is a 9. I count about 5 distinct facts (W has Q♥; W has 2 clubs; when West is down to 3 cards West will have only those 3 cards; when West gets in with the Q♥ West will have only clubs to lead; when West leads a club I will get a free finesse) that one has to keep in one's head in one moment to solve the problem, and most of my students (at university) can only keep 2 facts in their head at a time.

 

A lot of advanced or expert bridge players are in professions where they generally have meaningful interaction only with very smart people, so it's hard for them to get the following fact: The average person cannot follow a simple syllogism without significant mental effort.

 

Let me repeat that: THE AVERAGE PERSON CANNOT FOLLOW A SIMPLE SYLLOGISM WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT MENTAL EFFORT.

 

Yes we all have known some novices and intermediates who can solve these problems, but they are exceptional novices or intermediates who have exceptional amounts (compared to the general population, not to bridge experts) of brainpower.

 

So the question is: Should we teach the general beginner/novice (e.g. in a class to a wide audience, or a forum with wide readership, or to someone whose abilities we don't know) problems that require an amount of knowledge appropriate to their level but an amount of brainpower few of them have?

 

And this question applies not only to bridge but to other subjects.

 

(FWIW, I believe brainpower is not fixed but can be significantly improved through practice. But that's another discussion.)

[Fluffy]

The idea of using grand slams and slams is that the focus can be narrowed down so the lesson on each hand is clearer. This also explains why I have so many 7NT (earlier series) and 6NT hands. They are very easy for getting across a single point about the play. 3NT hands often have a lot of conflicting issues, but after players learn some of the basic playing principles in a clearer position, coming up with a game plan where you are going to lose quite a few tricks becomes somewhat easier.

 

You can always play 3NT and the opponents cash the first 4...

[blackshoe]

When I was in the tenth grade, I was required to take a semester of trigonometry. One day, the teacher was going over trig identities. At one point, he wrote one on the board, and looked around the class. Having discovered that I was reading a book rather than paying attention to him, he called me to the board and instructed me to prove what he'd written was in fact an identity. I looked at it for a minute, took the derivative of both sides, did a little multiplying and such like, integrated both sides and voilà! Identity established! His reaction: "You can't do that! You don't know that yet!" The book I was reading? Thomas' Calculus and Analytic Geometry. B-)

 

Unfortunately, I did not go on to solve Fermat's Theorem, or develop the Unified Field Theory, then or later. ;)

[akwoo]

So I give it to beginners, exactly because it will be a huge challenge for them. Exactly because they will have to work on it. Exactly because they will come up with a proud solution like deciding to cash the club King then Ace because East is most likely to be long in clubs if the suit doesn't divide evenly. In other words, I expect every beginner to get it wrong, and then eventually they will see the "solution" and the realization that hey, that wasn't so hard, I could have figured that out.

 

And I disagree with this.

 

Yes the reaction you give is exactly that of a smart beginner.

 

The average beginner looks at the solution to this problem, and doesn't go "That wasn't so hard, I could have figured that out." The average beginner, even the one eager to improve his or her bridge play, goes "I would need to think pretty hard to figure this out, and thinking that hard gives me a headache. I'll never be good at this. Let me take up knitting instead."

[Antrax]

I...took the derivative of both sides, did a little multiplying and such like, integrated both sides

But... you really can't do that. Did your math teacher not know any calculus? :)

[eagles123]

Interesting stuff, I think part of the problem is that the novice/beginner forum has nothing to do with novice or beginners. There are pretty much no beginners on the forum really. Even the ones that come and post there imo post intermediate level problems. for example, http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/64852-attitude-signals/ do we think real life N/B players even know what signalling is! virtually everything in there is lower level intermediate or higher. it's like I/A has virtually no low level intermediate stuff it's all high intermediate or better. maybe the forums should be re-categorized as like level 1 level 2 and level 3 or something. I really think it might put people off joining when for example they're an intermediate and find I/A a complete mind ***** or the same with N/B looking at the N/B section and thinking what on earth is going on.

[Fluffy]

Ben I am curious, how much time do you invest to publish one of those problems?

 

In my page grand slams are the easiest to program since defene has to just follow suit and with whatever trick they can, assuming there are no bidding alternatives those hands could take me between 20 and 30 minutes (the average is around 90 minutes)

[helene_t]

What is the point of rating the problems at all? Not only do we apparently have very different ideas about what a novice or a beginner is (to me, a novice can draw trumps and a beginner can take a finese in the trump suit while an intermediate can postpone drawing trumps in order to make a ruff in dummy, but that's just me).

 

But also, even if we had the exact same target group in mind, different modes of teaching would call for different kind of hands. If the students are meant to play the hands, they should be quite easy. If they are meant to solve them on paper and will be guided in the analysis ("how many hearts can partner have?" etc) they can be a lot more difficult.

 

The problems are great, I just wish that we didn't get distracted by this futile rating discussion.

[Fluffy]

you don't want novices to attemp expert problems.

[gwnn]

Rogerclee defined a B/I problem (when it was still a B/I forum) as 'anything you can explain in less than 5 sentences,' I believe. I like that definition a lot.

[kenberg]

Rogerclee defined a B/I problem (when it was still a B/I forum) as 'anything you can explain in less than 5 sentences,' I believe. I like that definition a lot.

 

You have to also insist that those sentences not include the word "squeeze" with or without adjectives such as "strip squeeze". But I like this operational approach.

 

Fundamental: I hope Ben keeps posting these hands.

 

Secondary: Where, and how? We do have an "interesting hands" forum. Interesting always carries the question "Interesting to whom?" When I post a hand, wherever I post it, the answer is "Interesting to me". Still, if I were to (as I have no plans to and I hope Ben continues to do) post a fairly large collection of "interesting hands" I think it could be useful to roughly group them in some way. I don't expect that the grouping could be or needs to be very exact, just a rough indication.

 

If the number is sufficiently large possibly bbo would find it worthwhile to assign a specific spot for these hands. Bbo has "bridge movies", composed by members including Ben. It could have a specific slot for these hands. That of course would be for them to decide, but a bunch of hands on "Intereesting hands" with some indication of which hands, in Ben's opinion, are more difficult and which hands are less difficult, seems like a reasonable approach.

 

Mostly though: Ben, keep it up and don't let us wear you down with all these suggestions. Feel free to tell me to buzz off, you will do it as you think best. No one will croak if you just do it your way.,

[TimG]

I agree the beginners who come to the forums are looking to improve. But, at least for most of the real life beginners I know, most beginners looking to improve are looking for simple rules of thumb that will make them better life novices, not for what to them are cognitively overwhelming tasks that set them on the road to expert.

The beginners that are looking to improve and come to BBO Forums in furtherance of that effort are not "most beginners looking to improve".

[Elianna]

But... you really can't do that. Did your math teacher not know any calculus? :)

 

Or even not know Trig proofs (work on one side completely to show it is equal to the other).

[y66]

What is the point of rating the problems at all?

The point of rating problems is to provide a rough ordering to guide discovery as in

 

“No step is too small to ignore,” Mighton says. “Math is like a ladder. If you miss a step, sometimes you can’t go on. And then you start losing your confidence and then the hierarchies develop. It’s all interconnected.”

 

Mighton saw that if he approached teaching this way, he could virtually guarantee that every student would experience success. In turn, the children’s math anxiety diminished. As they grew more confident, they grew excited, and they began requesting harder challenges. “More than anything, kids love success,” he says, “and they love getting to higher levels, like in a video game.”

 

As the children experienced repeated success, it seemed to Mighton that their brains actually began to work more efficiently. Sometimes adding one more drop of knowledge led to a leap in understanding. One day, a child would be struggling; the next day she would solve a problem that was harder than anything she’d previously handled. Mighton saw that if you provided painstaking guidance, children would make their own discoveries. That’s why he calls his approach “guided discovery.”

 

From a A Better Way to Teach Math

This is probably also why Louis Watson chose to present the material in The Play of the Hand at Bridge in a non random order and why trigonometry is taught before calculus.

[inquiry]

Ben I am curious, how much time do you invest to publish one of those problems?

 

In my page grand slams are the easiest to program since defene has to just follow suit and with whatever trick they can, assuming there are no bidding alternatives those hands could take me between 20 and 30 minutes (the average is around 90 minutes)

 

I wouldn't do it if it took anywhere near that long. I review a lot of hands on BBO that others play for obvious reasons I will not mention here. Very few of the hands was I one of the players at the table (all most all of my personal hands are from face to face are in notebooks, so that takes longer to enter those, as I have to place the cards manually). When I see a hand I think is interesting, I do this....

 

I cut the http://bridgebase address line and paste it into excel in file I call "bridgehands". currently there are 2754 hands in that file. I add just a few notes, one is declarer (E,W,S.N) in one cell, dealer (N,S,E,W) in another, and a comment or two on type of play required (most interesting addition is expert, complex). Then I have a couple of cells to pull the hands out via position, then another cell that rotates the hand so that declarer is always south (it take the original declarer hand and moves it from wherever to the South Seat and rotates the position of the other seats so that they are in the correct position and bidding stays correctly originated. This also strips out the players names for me, Then I have a concatenate command that adds the handviewer tag equals lin stuff with the modified (rotated hand without players). I then copy the cell I want and paste it into the forum. I manually remove the hands I don't want in the problem once I paste it in the forum by changing something like SAKQH432DQJTC7654 with shdc, and edit out the plays I don't want shown.

 

I don't really create any hands from scratch, although occasionally I will move a card from one hand or change the split of a suit when the solution is revealed if that is needed to make to the reason for the solution obvious I can paste one of the hands in just a minute or two if it doesn't require a lot of talk.

 

Keeping track of hands in excel has worked out to be a wonderful way to manage, sort, classify, find, and post hands. You might want to consider automating some of your process. But you have lots of problems as players will take losing lines, I don't have any interactive problems when posting on the forum.

[blackshoe]

But... you really can't do that. Did your math teacher not know any calculus? :)

I suspect he did.

 

Maybe I'm misremembering it — it was a half century ago, after all. I'm pretty sure, though, that calculus was involved somehow, because that was his objection — I wasn't supposed to know calculus yet. I did take the AP calculus course, but that was two years later.

[barmar]

It seems like we have two completely different discussions going on here:

 

1. How to teach bridge beginners, including what should be in the B/I forum.

 

2. How to teach students in general. I thought the bridge material in the OP was just intended as an example that all of us would understand.

 

All the detailed bridge- and forum-specific discussion doesn't seem to be appropriate for the WC.

[kenberg]

I wouldn't do it if it took anywhere near that long. I review a lot of hands on BBO that others play for obvious reasons I will not mention here. Very few of the hands was I one of the players at the table (all most all of my personal hands are from face to face are in notebooks, so that takes longer to enter those, as I have to place the cards manually). When I see a hand I think is interesting, I do this....

 

I cut the http://bridgebase address line and paste it into excel in file I call "bridgehands". currently there are 2754 hands in that file. I add just a few notes, one is declarer (E,W,S.N) in one cell, dealer (N,S,E,W) in another, and a comment or two on type of play required (most interesting addition is expert, complex). Then I have a couple of cells to pull the hands out via position, then another cell that rotates the hand so that declarer is always south (it take the original declarer hand and moves it from wherever to the South Seat and rotates the position of the other seats so that they are in the correct position and bidding stays correctly originated. This also strips out the players names for me, Then I have a concatenate command that adds the handviewer tag equals lin stuff with the modified (rotated hand without players). I then copy the cell I want and paste it into the forum. I manually remove the hands I don't want in the problem once I paste it in the forum by changing something like SAKQH432DQJTC7654 with shdc, and edit out the plays I don't want shown.

 

I don't really create any hands from scratch, although occasionally I will move a card from one hand or change the split of a suit when the solution is revealed if that is needed to make to the reason for the solution obvious I can paste one of the hands in just a minute or two if it doesn't require a lot of talk.

 

Keeping track of hands in excel has worked out to be a wonderful way to manage, sort, classify, find, and post hands. You might want to consider automating some of your process. But you have lots of problems as players will take losing lines, I don't have any interactive problems when posting on the forum.

 

 

Could you say a little more about just what you do? Let me explain.

 

I save hands. When I am in the online version I save them to, I thinnk, Hands and Results. Or some similar name. I can edit them there. I can attach comments. I can send them by e-mail to a friend. What I cannot do, or at least do not not know how to do, is to easily insert them into a forum post. Any one individual hand is fine. I just start a message in the forum and use the forum hand editor to do it, but I have to put everything in from the start, clicking on who is vul, who is the dealer, etc and then clicking on the cards.

 

Are you saying, for example, that there is an easier way to do this? I am assuming that there is, I just don't know it. A link to instructions would be fine. As for Excel, I am unclear as to what role it plays. I have hands sitting on my computer, or maybe they are just links, but I click on them and a hand comes up in the vugraph, so what more does Excel do?

[FM75]

What is the point of rating the problems at all? Not only do we apparently have very different ideas about what a novice or a beginner is (to me, a novice can draw trumps and a beginner can take a finese in the trump suit while an intermediate can postpone drawing trumps in order to make a ruff in dummy, but that's just me).

 

But also, even if we had the exact same target group in mind, different modes of teaching would call for different kind of hands. If the students are meant to play the hands, they should be quite easy. If they are meant to solve them on paper and will be guided in the analysis ("how many hearts can partner have?" etc) they can be a lot more difficult.

 

The problems are great, I just wish that we didn't get distracted by this futile rating discussion.

I would rate quantum electrodynamics (includes relativistic effects) as significantly harder than quantum mechanics. Each is impossibly hard without an understanding of calculus and partial differential equations, and the first is truly difficult with limited knowledge of particle physics.

 

If you punt on rating problems, analogously, we might ask first graders to solve Ph. D. level problems in any subject.

 

Rating is (I hope, now) obviously important. Does it need to be one dimensional? Likely not.

 

Perhaps Ben's problems need some sort of rating system that includes pre-requisites. Even then, there may be an occasional problem that can be solved with either of two prerequisites - and resulting in two different solutions, to be truly interesting. I have seen this in a published software program by our revered host. http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif

 

Can we give Ben his own section for his problems?

[inquiry]

Could you say a little more about just what you do? Let me explain.

 

 

Ok, I will, but in a new thread.

[blackshoe]

Heh. Story goes that some physics professor wrote a new textbook. Only, he didn't indicate the difficulty level of the problems in the back of each chapter. He told the class "Some of these are homework problems, and some are research problems. Try to do at least all the homework problems." Students asked "but how are we to know which are homework problems, and which are research problems?" "Simple," said the prof. "If you can find the answer it's a homework problem." B-)

 

When I was in high school, I picked up a theoretical physics book that was written by some Russian. First part was Mechanics. I had no problem with that. Second was Quantum Mechanics. Okay, that was a little hard. Third part was Quantum Electrodynamics. I was very confused by that part. :lol:

[Fluffy]

Keeping track of hands in excel has worked out to be a wonderful way to manage, sort, classify, find, and post hands. You might want to consider automating some of your process. But you have lots of problems as players will take losing lines, I don't have any interactive problems when posting on the forum.

 

It took me a lot to master it, but I can get hands and plays included from lin files automatically now. It saves a lot of time, right now only works for team matches, travelers for mbc hands aren't working not sure why.

 

But most of my hands come from deals not played online sadly. So I enter them manually.