The Dangerous Mr. Khan - <AUTHOR> http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=2029 <comment><USER3> Hi Everyone,

This is Sal here. I wanted to respond directly on the author's page, but they seem to be having a problem taking comments.

The reason why I make history videos is that many people I know (many of whom are quite educated) don't even have a basic scaffold of world events in their minds (or the potential causality between events). Most American high school and college students would find it difficult to give even a summary of the Vietnam War or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many of these people have sat through years of traditional history classes (taught through state-mandated books by "experts"). Even more worrying is many experts who have taken one side or another of a historical issue and view their viewpoints as facts (this is the tone of most history books).

If the author really watched my videos, he would see that I start most of them telling the listener to be skeptical of anything I tell them or anyone tells them; that no matter how footnoted something is, in the end it is dependent on people's accounts--the people who weren't killed--which are subject to bias (no matter how well-intentioned). Very few history books or professors do this. If anything, they create a false sense of certainty.

As for the "one voice" issue, I don't see how a guy making digestible videos that inform and encourage skepticism (on YouTube where anyone else can do the same) are more dangerous than state-mandated text books. I don't see how lectures that are open for the world to scrutinize (and comment about on YouTube and our site) are more dangerous than a lone teacher or professor who can say whatever they like to their classrooms with no one there to correct or dispute them.

Finally, there is nothing I would like to see more than other teachers/professors/experts adding their voice to the mix. Rather than wasting energy commenting on other people's work with pseudo-intellectual babble, why don't they produce their own videos and post them on YouTube? If someone can produce 20 videos that seem decent and want to do more as part of the Khan Academy, we'll point our audience at them. If our students respond, we'll figure out a way that they can potentially make it a career.

regards, Sal

<comment><USER4> Sal,

The only thing novel about Khan Academy is accessibility. Its the same old teacher-centered lectures we've endured for the past hundred years, with a somewhat more charismatic instructor.

Most of the criticism I've seen of your work isn't "pseudo-intellectual babble," its merely pointing out what I've stated above, and that it isn't in line with what research tells us about how students learn. Your challenge for your critics to produce their own videos misses the point entirely.

I happen to think your videos are fine overall, and while I find some specific science content oversimplified and focus too much on mechanics rather than conceptual understanding, it serves very well for student review. For learning new content, however, I happen to believe that there is a better way.

Please view the video below:

Effectiveness of Science Videos <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8>

While you're there, consider his videos a part of your final challenge. <http://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium>

I am very interested in your thoughts about his approach to instructional videos.

<comment><USER3> This "Effectiveness of Science Videos" video that you refer to doesn't even use Khan Academy videos. Also, don't you think it is ironic to use video to explain that videos can't explain things?

You're entitled to your opinions. Our #1 priority is the millions of students who use our content and testify that it is measurably helping them. And to be clear, they aren't deluding themselves--read our comments and you'll see student after student using our content to rock any assessment thrown at them. The data we're seeing in pilot classrooms is showing students performing several grade levels ahead. We're seeing remedial students using Khan Academy software leap frogging non-remedial students. Very savvy school districts (with super demanding parents) that understand results are rolling us out on a district-wide basis.

As for conceptual understanding, this is what the Khan Academy is all about. We have multiple videos on proofs and conceptual understanding that are never touched on in most classrooms. I won't make a lesson unless I can explain the why and/or why it is intuitive.

As for your "research", what is it tangibly doing for students? Rather than talk, we think we should build, learn and iterate.

<comment><USER4> I never said that you "can't explain things" with video. I said that your videos work very well for review. The medium has changed, but you're doing the same thing that has always been done. If the goal is to get past a test or quiz, then I'm sure students love it. But will they understand it in a month? Two months? A year? They won't come back to leave those comments on youtube.

I simply ask you to watch the video, and respond to it. I think it makes valid points, and it agrees with the research I've read on how students learn (Available for free here: <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126>).

If you truly want to build, and learn (which I certainly want to), don't flippantly dismiss critiques. Just because all forms of effective teaching don't go viral on YouTube doesn't mean that they're invalid.

<comment><USER5> I think you're missing the point. Sal Khan isn't trying to replace all traditional forms of learning. He's not saying that his methodology is perfect and should be the first options. So picking apart his practices based on idealistic principles is really irrelevant.

I think all this criticism just further reiterates how amazing Khan Academy is. Truth is that their will never be an educational system that everyone thinks is perfect. We are all too unique and absorb information in different ways. The fact that people are talking about Khan Academy at this global scale is amazing and only further amplifies it's importance, last time I checked open source education doesn't generate too much press. So instead of seeking perfection, which is unattainable, we should focus more on actually doing the littles things to make knowledge more widespread.

To that end Khan Academy has no comparable peers. Critics can talk all they want about learning theory and this and that, but fact is that Khan Academy is really helpful to a lot of people.

If you think you see a flaw in Sal's approach and can do better, than just do it and we'll see if people like it. You're into education theory, great. Keep reading and writing about education. Sal Khan is into doing, into helping people learn so that they can improve their own lives. Kindly get out of his way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The comments thus far show exactly what is wrong with HN. HN has become an echo chamber where we all love certain people/companies/ideas and immediately dismiss any counter viewpoint.

Instead of immediately discrediting the linked article because they're "haters" or "threatened", try reading it and understanding their point of view. I love Khan's work and what he's doing, but at the same time the article raises some valid points. You learn a lot more by examining both sides of a story than being a fanboi.

<comment><USER7> I read it and normally consider myself pretty open minded. But then you read things like this.

 __"Here Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia's standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence. " __

And in my mind the author is exposed.

I am hoping that my son grows up being taught by postmodernist that don't present history as fact but as I believe it is – a perspective.

I would rather that my son grasp a few things about history and don't get the exact dates or details right. That he understands what history is as much as he knows what went into it.

So in my mind the valid points you talk about are nothing but the authors own idea about mainly his own field which is history. In other words his own interpretation – how ironic.

I agree that Kahn probably shouldn't be teaching history and I am sure with time that will be changed. But to claim that he is dangerous is simply missing the grander scheme of things.

<comment><USER8> > I am hoping that my son grows up being taught by postmodernist that don't > present history as fact

How else could it possibly be presented? Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say that history is "a perspective"? Can one change history simply by deciding to view it differently, somehow?

<comment><USER9> History is not comprised of a set of value-neutral facts. History is a narrative constructed out of fact and interpretations, and every history has a viewpoint.

Without question, one changes history by deciding to view it differently. If it didn't work that way, we'd only need one history book and we'd be done.

<comment><USER10> Well actually, history _does_ consist of value-neutral facts, but the sum total of all those facts is far too complicated for any one mind to comprehend. This atom moved there, that atom moved here, and so forth. Even if you scale up to the actions of individual people rather than atoms, we're still far beyond what we could comprehend... and in any case, most of it isn't recorded.

Having acknowledged the limitations of the historian's knowledge, though, the question is what do you do next? A good historian will use the fact that he can't divorce himself from his own viewpoint as a reminder to be extremely cautious. A bad one will use it as an _excuse_ to indulge his particular biases.

<comment><USER11> I cannot agree. There are so many "facts" that the mere selection of which ones get recorded already puts an overwhelming bias on the stories they tell. History is obsessed with narratives, and there is an ineluctable requirement, when doing history, to create a story where earlier "facts" leads to later "facts" in a hypothesis of cause and effect. The requirement for a pseudo- logical story with internal consistency further cherry-picks the "facts", until you're left with a complete bowdlerization of reality. The truth is, there are enough "facts" that you can very probably tell a whole lot of different stories using the raw material, but people have a very strong disinclination to cognitive dissonance and won't do this. They'll pick one and stick with it, and argue it against other stories in ego-driven battles, until a consensus emerges as a sociological phenomenon, rather than a fact-driven one.

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Criminals often think they're justified in the actions they take; in fact, often they must self- justify their own actions in order to sleep at night at all, so they will have their own internally consistent narratives. It's extremely difficult to fight the dominant narrative once it has become accepted.

IMO, the highest value history has is in telling stories about a world which is different from our own, but for which we have somewhat believable evidence actually existed. The degrees to which it is different tell us what varies in human nature, and what stays the same, stays the same. It teaches us to not take the present moment too seriously as some kind of apex or nadir. But I don't think it _actually_ tells us a whole lot about the past, per se.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has a point. The Khan Academy approach is very good for maths, and most sciences. These are cases where you can distil knowledge into a few examples and cases, and it works well. The viewer now has a working, and accurate mental model of whatever they were learning, without having to go through -everything- involved.

However, this approach to history and other topics can be a problem. While some of the criticism is somewhat overblown, it is valid. Distilling history and other social sciences down, to the degree that Khan does is very hard to do properly, and likely to introduce all sorts problems into the mental model of history the viewer has.

It's not a case of "taking sides" or whatever. But, if the Academy really does want to be "the classroom of the world", then it -should- go into enough detail to build accurate mental models. How much stuff do you think people learn in a classroom, and never have a chance to "relearn". How many incorrect mental models are formed, and then never corrected until catastrophe. The responsible thing to do, if attempting to be come the classroom of the world is to realize that if they are successful, then for many people, the Academy will be their sole source of information for some topics (as in, not the only source of information, but the only source that they go to), and teach accordingly. Either have the lesson be able to provide an accurate and correct mental model, or make the learner explicitly aware that what they are learning is incomplete/unprecise/whatever.

<comment><USER13> "Either have the lesson be able to provide an accurate and correct mental model, or make the learner explicitly aware that what they are learning is incomplete/unprecise/whatever."

Khan does the latter, it is called an overview. I think this aspect of the original critic's article displayed his lack of understanding of an incremental and iterative approach. If we waited until he had completed every lecture on history, we'd never have any. Given the current state, and even considering the future state, it is nonsensical to judge it on the basis of being the "sole source" of information on a subject.

The second bad assumption is that Khan's work is somehow inferior to other high school teachers' presentations of the subject. In my experience, at a high school frequently referred to as the best in the US, we barely even made it through the Vietnam war, and the "mental model" presented was merely a random collection of facts.

If only this author could see the average high school history teacher in action, he would be demanding that they stop teaching kids to glue garbage on a piece of poster board and teach his version of the subject. The difference with Khan is that it's all out there. He's open for review, and the videos can be improved.

<comment><USER14> "Khan does the latter, it is called an overview."

It is an overview, but absurdly condensed. A skill like calculus can be thought in brief, clear overviews; you either understand _it_ or you don't.

History is no such _it_.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps.

And yet few historically literate people understand the intimate workings of the alliance system prior to WW1[1] - but it is a vital piece of background information that explains a lot about what happened.

In my view, "the great powers had alliances and went to war to support one another" sums it up reasonably well, despite ignoring viral things like the 1839 Treaty of London[2], etc.

For someone studying post-Vietnam US history (say), I think the Kahn summary might be a reasonable background. Probably not sufficient in itself, but _reasonable_.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I#Web_of_al...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I#Web_of_alliances) [2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_London,_1839>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The way the author writes, it's as if he thinks there is some superior alternative that Khan is displacing. Last I checked, there ain't.

Fact is, Khan's videos are considered good because the actual history education that most students take away from classrooms is even worse. Like most other subjects, that's what you get when you try to deliver a comprehensive, objective, detail-oriented education to students who (within a small margin of error) couldn't give a shit. Never mind the Bolsheviks or the timeline -- what percentage of randomly sampled American high school graduates would even know that there _was_ a Russian Revolution if you asked them?

If we can replace zero history with a fifteen-minute-chunk version of history, I'm for it.

<comment><USER17> _it's as if he thinks there is some superior alternative that Khan is displacing. Last I checked, there ain't._

Yes, that's what I was thinking. The stuff the author quotes sounds bad, but probably better than you'd get from some teachers I had.

Plus on the Internet kids can watch these videos at any age. His simplified version of history could be way better than what e.g. an 8 year old might otherwise have access to.

<comment><USER18> In the site's current form, I think the fact that a viewer of any age can watch a history video is actually a bit problematic.

For mathematics, all of the material is broken down into the very basic components, so it's easy for a video to have a set of prerequisites which any viewer should understand before watching (with a set of links to the videos corresponding to those prerequisites).

For a subject like history, the material can't easily be broken down. As the article points out, a statement like "as you can imagine, Japan did not produce a lot of its own oil" may be common sense to someone of high-school age, but an 8-year old may have no understanding of how oil is produced or where it comes for and the statement may make no sense. This doesn't render KA as dangerous or useless, just points out a problem which needs to be solved and which they are certainly aware of :).

<comment><USER19> To me, that a viewer of any age can watch is practically the whole point of Khan Academy. Kids learn at different speeds and are interested in different subjects at different ages. Whatever subject you're talking about, there are some 8-year-olds who could benefit from it. The traditional approach of having grownups _decide_ what material is suitable for what age is _guaranteed_ to produce a mixture of kids who are bored and kids who are lost; khan materials present the promise that kids might be able to learn at their own pace and according to their own interests. The ones who find history of X fascinating will race ahead and do related research and file info away for later; the ones who lack context will probably be bored and lose interest and want to study something else _and that's okay_.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. Watching Carl Sagan´s Cosmos at age 9 was fascinating, even though a second viewing, years later, was much more informative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A visit to the wikipedia entry on the National Association of Scholars may help you understand the author's perspective.

The first half of this article makes a reasonably convincing case that Mr. Khan is a much worse history teacher than math tutor. The second half of the article makes a totally convincing case that the author understands the Internet worse than Khan understands anything.

I guess in his nightmare scenario the "algorithms of the Internet" will one day cause everyone's web-browsers to redirect every request to one of Mr. Khan's fizzy history lectures where he just glosses right over the moral infallibility of the US, the inherent superiority of western culture, and the fact that Jesus died for your sins. The same algorithms will doubtless prevent the author from creating his own history videos clarifying those topics for people. After all, Mr. Khan appeared on Charlie Rose!

<comment><USER22> Exactly: NAS "opposes multiculturalism and affirmative action and seeks to counter what it considers a 'liberal bias' in academia"

Quotes from this article:

"Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia's standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence"

"A MoveOn.org liberal,..."

This article can be safely ignored, including the author's other article about how "Online education should serve as a home for orphaned liberal arts and "boutique" courses."

There are actually more substantive and _constructive_ criticisms of the Khan Academy out there. But ultimately, we should make sure we don't ignore the great parts of it, either. After all, one guy recording screencasts and sharing them on youtube has helped millions of students now with understanding and doing math and other topics. With no budget and no formal training.

Imagine if we had 1000 or 10,000 Salman Khan's teaching the public online, with perhaps a little more pedagogical content knowledge ([http://www.tpck.org/tpck/index.php?title=Pedagogical_Content...](http://www.tpck.org/tpck/index.php?title=Pedagogical_Content_Knowledge_\(PCK\)) ), and using other tools in addition to just video (simulations, assessments, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, their biggest problems with Khan are that he doesn't go into enough detail and that he doesn't pick sides in the wars?

Wow, that -is- dangerous. He might teach children to think for themselves or something!

As for the Skinner Box, the internet is anything but. Yes, you tend to only see things you want to, etc... But there is nothing stopping you from seeing other things, and most sites will step out of your comfort zone quite a lot.

They honestly believe that somehow Khan's videos could become the -only- resource for learning about history. Not a chance.

<comment><USER24> It's challenging to think for yourself when you don't have enough information to make reasoned decisions.

<comment><USER25> How many people have watched Khan's video who otherwise wouldn't have learned shit about WWII or the Korean War. I know I learned stuff about the Korean War myself which I wouldn't have learned otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> +1 for the idea that history is more than an "incoherent torrent of factoids"

I heard Khan say recently on the Colbert Report that he read the Wikipedia article on the French Revolution as his source before making his video on the subject.

That's fine for his purposes, but somewhere up the information food chain someone must actually read the sources, weigh them, interpret, compare, and do all the other work of understanding and transmitting history. It's hard to imagine that those 'educated' by Khan can take up this work, or if they do, that by the time they become competent, they will regard his videos as anything other than inconsequential in their effort.

However, I do think it's overblown to say that Khan is any more dangerous than Cliff's notes or similar supposed shortcut to education. And I suspect his math and finance videos might be quite good, based on the response, and on the fact that he actually spent time in school learning math and finance. (But I haven't watched them.)

<comment><USER27> _his math and finance videos might be quite good [...] But I haven't watched them_

You may want to try watching a few first. Based on the amount of praise Khan received on HN, I had high hopes. So I did watch a few, and I was disappointed. I'm not sure what I was expecting.

I think on HN a lot of people love the _concept_ of online education that Khan represents, but many have not bothered to seriously try it.

<comment><USER28> I've tried it. Or rather, my students did.

Back when I was teaching, I know many of my students found Khan more understandable than me (or at least complementary to me). I started encouraging everyone to go watch Khan videos and see if they liked them. Many did, and learned quite a bit from them.

I didn't like Khan that much - his style didn't work well for me. But it worked for many people. It's a lot to expect a single lecturer to be perfect for everyone.

What would be really great is if we had multiple Khans, each teaching in different styles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's quite apparent to me that Mr. Clemens' political leanings and the exigencies of blogging culture have worked together to transform a worthwhile small point into a pretty overbaked big point. Mr. Clemens demonstrates ably, I think, that Mr. Khan is a lousy history teacher. I haven't taken any of his science courses, so I can't speak about them, but it's clear that when it comes to history Mr. Khan lacks the depth of knowledge and fluency with the facts to teach effectively. So he ends up missing things, leaving things unexplained, falling back on pop culture depictions, oversimplifying motivations.

On the other hand—what does this have to do with pretty much anything else? I think it's not a stretch to see how every deficiency displayed there can be directly derived from a lack of familiarity with the material. Do you really need to try to make the overheated claim that being waffly with facts and simplistic with the human narrative is the result of an academia-enforced political and epistemological philosophy? Mr. Khan isn't exactly saying, you know, 'As we learn from a cursory reading of Baudrillard, the concept that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in any meaningful, substantial way is clearly a fiction of the necessities of realpolitik.' He's just fudging it. Mr Clemens continues to spiral outward, proposing a grim reality where all our education is mediated through Facebook and thus (because of the nature of Facebook's algorithms at the moment) through political conformity, confirmation bias, and groupthink—which results in Mr. Khan's own pernicious beliefs being beamed, unopposed, into the minds of our modern youth. All this from "from FDR's point of view, Hitler definitely was in the wrong here" and a reference to _Saving Private Ryan_.

Mr Clemens should have restricted his aim to a more manageable and germane topic: the unfortunate fiction that we can teach history, or anything else, by reading out loud from the textbook, or by stringing together a sequence of pictures of famous people. Teaching is hard, and many people in lecture halls and seminars all across this great nation do it poorly every day. Unfortunately, when it comes to World War II, Mr. Khan is a member of their ranks. I'm not sure that Bill Gates' neoliberal plans for a New World Order history course necessarily enter into it.

</comment><comment><USER30> As someone who has been a teacher and trainer of various kinds, removing your own bias from your teaching does not come naturally or easily. So I think the points made (while exaggerated) have at least a kernel of validity. However, ranting on a blog is not a productive response. Instead, I'd document them as constructive criticism and send them to Mr. Khan directly. I've got to believe that anyone who is passionate enough about education to put the Khan academy together in the first place is also willing to hear suggestions on improvements.

<comment><USER31> Is removing bias even possible? I mean, even if you succeed from removing your own personal bias, can you be sure that the person who wrote the material from which you learned had successfully removed their bias? And the person from which they learned?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> On the facts reported in the submitted article, I would have to suggest that Mr. Khan bring some expert historians (preferably of multiple cultural backgrounds and different nationalities) on board his project to produce the history videos. He could well devote his own time to producing more videos on more elementary levels of math, as elementary mathematics is still very poorly taught in much of the English-speaking world.

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/>

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html

<http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER33> The author's complaint seems to be that the Khan Academy's history lectures give an overly simplified view of history and that this, along with their availability, will make them more attractive to students who, the author fears, will watch Khan Academy videos in lieu of studying the topics in depth. This, he fears, will lead to a cultural forgetfulness of what the author considers to be the important moral lessons of WWII.

It's an important objection. There is a real tendency towards laziness among human begins and an easy availability of a simplified history _could_ discourage people from deeper study. A simplified history from only one viewpoint is even worse. But I think he's pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Wikipedia is already a far greater threat on that matter and their are plenty of simplified versions of history available, some even taught in schools. Sal is only example of this (and possibly a product as the author alludes.) The proper solution would be more, and more in depth videos from other perspectives. I know some people who might be willing to do just that...

</comment><comment><USER34> The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was _the big picture_. A brief summary, a TL;DR, an idea, an answer to questions like "what does it mean?" or "why should I care?".

My experience with education is that for most of the time, we are being taught 'the form', not 'the contents'. It was after I've watched SICP video lectures that I finally understood many computer science concepts that I was being taught (read: forced to memorize for the exam) at university and even in high school.

I strongly believe in what Einstein said: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." If Khan can summarize almost entire XX century into a 15-minute talk while staying correct with the facts, then that's great. It's what we call a 'high level overview'. It might be not sufficient, but it's a good start, as it constructs a skeleton which makes the details stick easier in our brains.

<comment><USER32> _The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was the big picture._

What do you think the learner's responsibility is in the educational process? I am a teacher, and I do attempt to provide both big-picture ideas and detailed supporting facts and examples as I teach my students. (I try to elicit a lot of those from my students themselves, with a discussion format with lots of questions and answers as I present new concepts.) But I would hate to be in the position of my high school American history teacher, who was frequently interrupted by one of my classmates who would ask, "How am I supposed to write that down in my notes?" When I was in university studies, I read a very interesting book called Speaking and Listening

(It may be this book on Google Books, but I am not completely sure:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=sOp5MbE6-jYC&q=Speaking...](http://books.google.com/books?id=sOp5MbE6-jYC&q=Speaking+and+Listening&dq=Speaking+and+Listening&hl=en&ei=RpnvTbvlHuHr0gH_nOnzDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA)

as it has been a long time since I read the book)

in which I learned about the style of note-taking that many people call "Cornell notes"

[http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/Sidebars/Study_Skills_Resources/c...](http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/Sidebars/Study_Skills_Resources/cornellsystem.pdf)

<http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/cornellnotes.html>

<http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/printer/cornellnotes.pdf>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes>

in which it is the note-taker's responsibility to sum up what the lecture means and what the main points are. Taking that approach was very helpful for me in my university studies and especially in my postgraduate professional school studies. I think Einstein too would agree

<http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html>

that ultimately it is up to the learner to seek understanding of the main points of any subject.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the link to "Cornell notes".

I don't think we should assume that learner has _any_ responsibility in educational process - at least not when talking about kids. Keep in mind that from their perspective it looks more like them being locked up in classroom against his will, and it's only up to school to try not to kill his interest in the world around him.

I agree that if a learner cares enough to actually think about what was told on the lecture - to come up with his own understanding, to summarize on his own, etc. he will benefit greatly. One can't really understand anything without doing some mental work on his own.

If we talk about mature learners, than yes - they have a big responsibility in the educational process and they take it (sometimes in spite, not because of their tutor). But still, we can help them by conveying our ideas well. And it is especially important when dealing with children, as they don't give a damn about anything until proven interesting. It's actually quite understandable. Because, well, why should they care?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Okay, so the first part of this is nitpicking the obviously impossible task of summarising the history of the world (perhaps it was Khan's intention to simply get students interested in the subjects so that they could study them further), and then the second part verges on parody by putting together some poorly connected thoughts and trying to pass them off as an argument.

If this is representative of the type of person against the Khan Academy, I'm for it even more.

</comment><comment><USER36> I agree strongly with the Author's issues with presenting history in this manner. History is a living document of clues that are merely interpreted by us- very little is fact.

I've been studying Egyptology for about 6 years now and it's amazing what perspectives have changed in that time. We're even starting to see stories now that are challenging the "Out of Africa" theory. Whenever I hear a teacher/lecturer describe something historical as fact, it makes me cringe because so much is left to interpretation.

Khan doing history in this manner is dangerous. But at the same time, the ways our schools do history is dangerous as well. Presenting singular perspectives and presenting them as fact only breeds misinformation.

I believe khan academy is superb for math and sciences, especially for quick overviews of concepts. But the format is absolutely terrible for presenting historical topics. Understanding history requires reading from many resources and coming to logical conclusions. A copy/paste job from wikipedia is simply pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER37> >I pulled up his video "U.S. History Overview 3—World War II to Vietnam"

Well, there's your problem. If you concern yourself primarily with US History, as Khan does (and declares what he is doing), you're going to necessarily ignore a lot of non-US perspectives, like, y'know, Leningrad, Churchill, the rape of Nanking, Japan's lack of oil reserves, the whole bit. The real question is not whether Mr. Khan did a poor job of explaining US History, it is whether the idea of teaching "$country history", when we concern ourselves primarily with foreign affairs as Mr. Khan does, whether focusing on the actions of $country in an era of global politics gives a skewed and ultimately inaccurate perspective. The answer to that should be a rather obvious 'yes'...

I do doubt however that Mr. Khan truly hopes to achieve or at least does not really believe that he can achieve a monopoly in education. Perhaps his format will be copied but I doubt his lectures themselves will become the _status quo_ especially if they are as lacking in depth as the example shown (I am not really familiar with the Khan Academy). The graver problem shown in the article does not really concern the Khan Academy but rather our method of consuming information from a general standpoint, and the dangers of the personalization of news; but this is a rather tired complaint, and the author does not suggest a novel approach for combatting it.

</comment><comment><USER38> I believe it's still a very good way to get students to actually _read_ a book. In 15 minutes, Khan does a great job, and the author of the article... well, he fails to get that.

The idea behind it is getting children __interested __in history enough that they would pick up a book. It's not, as I understand it, the only account of history they're expected to have. And to think otherwise is to think stupid.

<comment><USER9> _In 15 minutes, Khan does a great job_

A great job of what, exactly?

<comment><USER38> Of getting you into the narrative, interested enough to wonder – "what led to the cold war?" or things like that. I haven't seen the video, I've only read the article, and from what the author writes... it seems he goes directly into events without building / contextualising too much. But events are interesting (like the space race) to children, and they will probably be more interested once they've got a timeline of a few anecdotes, than if they started with a dense lesson for each topic.

I see it as investigative learning: you get some facts, a few events, a few ideas... and you're curious. You want to get more knowledge or discover the truth behind something, then you try to fill those gaps with evidence (in this case, with more historical facts?).

I wouldn't dismiss Khan just because he doesn't go into detail with aspects. For example, the holocaust... it that the only thing that we remember from the WW2? In fact, Allies and Russia did not go to war because of the holocaust, so why is it so important that he mentions it? Is everything else so "not" important in WW2? If I were giving an account of it, I would even be praising Germany's technological advancements as a nation and comparing them to their contemporaries.

<comment><USER9> My question, then, is: is his lecture better, worse, or about the same as we'd expect in, say, a typical undergraduate history lecture?

 _I wouldn't dismiss Khan just because he doesn't go into detail with aspects_

I wouldn't dream of doing that-- there's only so much detail one can fit into a brief lecture. The problem (if there is one) is one of selection and interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It seems to be pretty nitpicking. He says things that plenty of educators would likely say in describing events such as, "as you'd imagine".

His point about FDR's viewpoint of Hitler's invasion of Poland is really weak and I just don't get it. Everything actually _is_ relative. The Germans probably thought it was just as fine (if not moreso) to invade Poland as in the US Bush thought it was ok to invade Iraq. Of course history is written by the victors. Had Germany won, it would have been written as a good action from their perspective.

So in 15 minutes he doesn't dig into terribly much detail. Let's face it, even after a teacher spends an entire semester going over this with 8th graders, in 10 years time do they remember all the details? Details are something that can come after interest is solidified. Pushing details on 8th graders misses the larger point often as it is buried in dates, maps, names and such. If you get them hooked on the main point, they will find the details.

</comment><comment><USER40> To the author of the article, Mr. Clemens, and other academics annoyed by Mr. Khan's compressed description of important topics, I ask the following question:

Other than criticize this new source of education, what are YOU doing to address the needs of people hungry for learning other than continuing on the same well worn path that you've been on for decades?

Professional academics whining about Khan Academy ignore the fact that their customers are telling them something by flocking to Khan's videos. They're saying that higher education today doesn't always meet their needs, and they need these services packaged, priced, and delivered in new ways.

If Mr. Clemens doesn't like Khan's treatment of a particular topic, how about recording your own video that does it right.

It does seem easier to criticize and keep to your own cloistered little world rather than put yourself out there and try to innovate. But that's just my perspective.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think this article is very interesting, if only to get a look at what objections might exist to an educational paradigm similar to KA. If we're serious about fighting for an efficient education system, we must be prepared to answer objections like this.

He brings up a few valid points that I haven't thought of before. Presumably, as systems like KA are adopted the _amount_ of total educational material decreases, as individual curricula are replaced by a standard set of materials. This decreases diversity in the type of education available for students, which can be seen as a good or a bad thing. I bet the author would be all for the system if the videos were "conservative" and they were replacing curricula of "liberal" educators teaching our children filthy subjectivist lies.

</comment><comment><USER42> The article is full of FUD, but Khan himself probably shouldn't be teaching humanities (like history) or social sciences (other than for his own specialization, economics) or the life sciences (and any other discipline he is not too familiar with).

</comment><comment><USER43> The only real problem I have with the Khan Academy is that they appear to be using a mouse to write notes on the digital chalkboard. This is incredibly messy and really hard to understand.

For example:

In the first video on motion, Sal is going on and on about the topic, and is doing a wonderful job. At the same time, he's writing notes. This would be fine, except the first '=' he writes looks like a 'c', and then in his first example, he is literally saying "D is equal to fifty.", while clearly, his writing looks more like "d=60".

Seriously, couldn't Bill Gates buy some new tools for Sal? It really takes away from the production value when I see this.

<comment><USER44> The newer videos have more sophisticated drawing and recording software; he simply hasn't redone the old ones. Example:

[http://www.khanacademy.org/video/object-image-height-and- dis...](http://www.khanacademy.org/video/object-image-height-and-distance- relationship?playlist=Physics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> If the Khan Academy were the final station in someone's education, as the author silently presumes, that would be bad. It's simplified and sometimes wrong as the article points out (though no educating institution gets everything right) .

If on the other hand Khan Academy were the FIRST station in education: igniting passion for a subject - as it does for some people in math and economy - inspiring people to explore further and read more about it, mending the damage done by our institutional education!

Than that would be a great achievement regardless of the mistakes, simplicities and even the ideological leaning.

</comment><comment><USER46> While this article does argue against Mr. Khan being the one and only teacher, it does not refute the effectiveness of his teaching.

This is exactly why every teacher should be delivering their course content in the same format as Khan. I am in the process of building a platform for any teacher to manage learning online in the same way that Khan has been so successful. I've been fortunate to be receive support on this transformation in education as recipient of the Thiel Fellowship: 20 Under 20. Visit <http://ingenic.com> to follow my progress.

</comment><comment><USER47> How many brick and mortar history teachers are doing a far worse job than Khan? Probably a lot.

Ok, so the content can be tightened up, but that's not why Bill Gates is excited here. Take the Khan concept, pick the worlds finest educators in respective fields, build the content, and distribute. That's the game changer here.

</comment><comment><USER48> I was at the Singularity summit in SLC this weekend and had the privilege of hearing Mr. Shantanu Sinha (president of Khan Academy) speak. One of the questions from the audience after his presentation was about how they plan to teach subjects that are more open to interpretation than math.

His answer (according to my notes) is that they are working on it, and it is a challenge to eliminate bias. He stressed that they have just recently grown to 8 employees thanks to the recent funding, and that they are doing their best.

Their overall vision is one of enabling true mastery of subjects by enabling students to proceed at their own pace, and expand upon on a topic only after mastering the prerequisites (switching from percent knowledge in fixed time to complete knowledge in variable time). The eventual goal is to change the in- class focus from data transmission to social interaction, learning interpersonal skills, communication, leadership, and teamwork.

I was sceptical about Khan academy, but I believe that with sufficient funding and attention they will be able to create a curriculum that is at least as good as what the average student gets now, and probably much better. They have also started experimenting with A/B testing using analytics on their 2 million students to find the most effective ways to teach.

</comment><comment><USER49> Khan Academy is mostly about math, and it shouldn't be judged almost solely on the basis of one history video. I have my 7 year old doing math well beyond what they've taught him in school using Khan Academy.

</comment><comment><USER50> It seems a bit strange that Mr Clemens [1] who is a English teacher that teaches online courses is commenting on issues concerning online teaching in history. Regardless he does bring up some very valid points that have plagued history scholars for centuries, but offers no real solution. I suppose the title "The Dangerous Mr. Kahn" that suggests that Mr. Kahn is dangerous to history education is a bit too sensationalist to suggest that he is any more dangerous than today's media, school teachers, disagreeing historians, and countless other attempts to present historical information in a categorical way. Everything is up to interpretation.

My interpretation of his overall point is that "no one person should control the messages of history". There is definitely some work to be done by Mr. Kahn in this regard and given his very open mind I don't doubt he already has considered this.

[1]- <http://www.mpcfaculty.net/david_clemens/default.htm>

</comment><comment><USER51> I was quite disappointed by his non-technical lectures as well, and hope they improve.

But, even if they are improved, almost every student watching that lecture will miss a big part of the humanities--being with peers, actively engaging in group discussion, and finding responses to questions by actively synthesizing information. Having an interesting discussion is like finally coding something interesting with a new programming language you just picked up. Learning the facts or the syntax isn't the point.

Khan has the vision that these videos will be used in conjunction with classroom teachers, but with roles reversed from the current school system-- students will watch lectures on their own time, and in class, they will engage in discussions and doing practice problems. This seems to be the part that was missed in the article, and much of the discussion here. If that symbiosis is executed correctly (and the lectures are improved), this could be powerful.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't think he gets that Khan isn't the big idea. The market can select for history teachers that are better than Khan. The big idea is that many won't need universities moving forward.

</comment><comment><USER53> From the article, Khan lectures on things he knows nothing about. Is that the revolution in education everyone is so excited about? Getting teachers that don't know the subject matter? His background is math and engineering, his history knowledge he gets from movies and his biology, he gets from pondering. Charlatan, definition of.

Khan on history of D-Day: "if you've ever seen Saving Private Ryan it starts with this and it's probably, you know, I've never been in, never been on . . . never stormed a beach, but I can imagine it is probably the most realistic re- enactment of what it was like to storm the beach at Normandy"

Khan on Entropy: In a recent talk he explained how he prepared for his lecture on entropy: "I took two weeks off and I just pondered it, and I called every professor and everyone I could talk to and I said, Let's go have a glass of wine about entropy.

<comment><USER54> _and his biology, he gets from pondering..._

 _Khan on Entropy: In a recent talk he explained how he prepared for his lecture on entropy: "I took two weeks off and I just pondered it, and I called every professor and everyone I could talk to and I said, Let's go have a glass of wine about entropy."_

I'm sure you realise that entropy is not a concept from biology, but it isn't clear from your comment.

Since he has a background in engineering, and therefore a reasonable physics and chemistry grounding, I would guess that he had his "glasses of wine" and pondering to make sure he covered all the bases, and thought of a helpful way of explaining it.

Have you watched his lectures on entropy? Is there anything wrong with them? I'm sure constructive criticism is better than calling him names and picking on his research methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I think the Khan methodology works very very well for elementary math, and I'm a huge fan of the automatically-generated practice problems. These are more valuable than the videos IMHO.

It's valid to point out that other subject matter may not be well presented by this kind of approach.

On the other hand, it's early days. So fast-forward 20-years when you can download a video-game from Khan Academy that will teach you about Vietnam or the Korean war that is exhaustively researched and curated by a hobbyist and veteran (from both sides) community.

Imagine downloading an interactive demo that shows that even if you target an airstrike to within 1m in an urban area, fragments will travel 500 m into neighbouring apartment blocks.

That would be better than kids learning their military history from CoD.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think this article points out a weakness that has a rather simple solution: Khan should bring experts in other fields with a knack of teaching well into the academy.

Also, sometime in the near to mid-future, the platform should open up to allow anyone to submit their own video lectures.

</comment><comment><USER57> I agree that there are some valid points however history books have also been written by someone or a group of people with a certain viewpoint. Facts are sometimes suppressed in support of their viewpoints.

</comment><comment><USER58> Kahn's videos are what magazines are to books.

It's much more accessible/enjoyable to read a PC magazine than read a technical document. They expose topics to a much broader audience.

I loved the French Revolution videos.

</comment><comment><USER59> The entire success of Khan Academy rests on providing simple quick introductions to different topics. If Khan made the videos longer or went into more details the students would get bored and it might as well be a History channel documentary or a NOVA science show (fun for certain people but unlikely to capture the interest of many 8th graders).

As to this specific video I actually thought it was very good - <USER2> because of Khan's conversational breezy style that managed to keep my interest even though I was quite familiar with these events. A longer lecture would have me closing the tab pretty quick and I imagine the same reaction from the target audience.

Lastly, Khan Academy videos in their current form are probably not going to replace the entire educational system, but if you want to get a quick introduction to a certain topic they seem to be effective. For example I just watched this video a few minutes ago and approximately doubled my knowledge of diabetes: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPLjSY00JlE> and I would guess some of the viewers have similar increases in their knowledge in other topics. THAT is where Khan Academy currently excels and it is a perfectly worthwhile contribution.

</comment><comment><USER60> When presented with '1 + 1 = 2', some people will be interested enough to ask why, and others won't give a fuck. Same goes for 'Hitler invaded Poland'. It doesn't mean one person is better or worse than the other, they're just different.

The real problem will arise when people stop being interested. And when that happens it won't be the fault of the Khan Academy or wikipedia or the Internet or TV or video games or religion or <insert favoured target here>.

</comment><comment><USER61> One of the author's gripes:

       Unfortunately, he does not explain what a Bolshevik
       is nor how or why the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian
       empire, nor why it matters but no dilly-dallying, just
       fast forward and bingo...

This is a limitation of the 1-way set in stone nature of video. It could be addressed by augmenting the lecture with an interface similar to an interactive-movie-game at the arcades circa 1993 called Dragon's Lair (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_Lair>). A concept similar to "pick your own adventure" books but with video.

For instance, if some lecture L is about ideas A, B, C, D, and there is another lecture B+ in the library that specifically targets B in detail, then there could be an option presented to the user around the timestamp B to divert to B+ in depth, then come back to C. The important part is that the material is relevant as decided by the user. If they decide B+ isn't what they wanted, they could cut right back to C immediately.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think the problem is bias.

Math can be taught without bias, as numbers can only be seen as numbers. There are only a few ways you can teach maths. When you teach history, it brings in a plethora of views, opinions, and bias. There will always be someone saying "hey wait a minute, you forgot <fact>.", and I'm not sure there's a way around that. At least not in history.

</comment><comment><USER63> Entertaining read.

I agree with the assertion that The Khan Academy, via brief video clips, may be a terrible place to learn history (though it is GREAT for other subjects).

But as others have noted...who cares? The internet is filled with opinions and falsities, far more "dangerous" than anything on Mr. Khan's site, that pass themselves off as "history". It's just a matter of degree.

</comment><comment><USER64> "Imagine the consequences if his videos did become the DOS or Windows of education: tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of young minds, all fed by Mr. Khan's fizzy version of history. Not only would all students absorb the same value judgments, goofy comments, and cultural relativism, they would also conclude that Mr. Khan's factoids constitute knowledge of history. "

Isn't the simple solution to this problem is to hire other teachers than just having Mr. Khan do everything? In addition to Mr. Khan, hire some Japanese, Germany, and Russian history teachers so we get another perspective in addition to an American one.

Perhaps Khan Academy should become the universal platform for teachers from around the world to deliver their curriculum. Then we would have a much richer education system with a plethora of perspectives--which would even beat our current system of one teacher teaching everything in a classroom.

</comment><comment><USER65> The postmodern approach of teaching history as a perspective is flawed in that this perspective should be developed by the student and not fed to them by the teacher. How can a student develop perspective without knowledge of facts? How is this different from dogma?

</comment><comment><USER66> Uh. Would citing sources of information with pop-ups in the videos help? Perhaps links to online books or wikipedia articles (which I realize potentially creates a loop of false references, but whatever)

</comment><comment><USER67> I looked up the author of the article. He is a professor , I wanted to see what his great book course was about, I could not access it and Khan academy offers me Instant access , this is something that the people in academics like him do not seem to understand why kids love khan academy. BTW here is the course and I am definitely not interested in it [http://www.mpc.edu/academics/Humanities/GreatBooks/Pages/Gre...](http://www.mpc.edu/academics/Humanities/GreatBooks/Pages/GreatBooksCourses.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER68> Oh no, a 15 minute summary of the history form WWII to Vietnam isn't thorough Well, I, never!

In all seriousness, I am not sure what the author's point is. Summaries lack detail? Short things are short?

<comment><USER69> One of the author's points is that the essence of history is "who & why", not "what & when," and that Khan is completely omitting that essence in his summaries.

<comment><USER70> The whole point of a Summary video of history, and what is tested in class for most students, is the what and when - not the who and why.

Also, from reading the original scare-mongering article based on a single video viewed by the author, i didn't get the feeling that he was complaining about the lack of 'who and why' but rather libruls like Khan and Gates are taking over the world and throws in a irrelevant point about personalization engines in google and facebook.

<comment><USER69> Yes, the article read like something produced by The Heritage Foundation; but that doesn't mean it cannot have some valid points along the way.

As to your first sentence, one of the largest weaknesses of the entire essay is that most every criticism being applied to Khan could be applied equally to traditional education; the fact that something is tested for in class certainly doesn't make it the best thing to be learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Completely and totally off topic, but I find the popularity of the "filter bubble" concept fascinating.

It's not as if the vast majority of us didn't already manually create deeply effective filter bubbles, after all; but now that we can blame it on algorithms rather than our own nature, it's much easier to talk about.

(( Once upon a time I thought the internet would be a cultural/ideological melting pot, but it was clear a decade ago that it was having the opposite effect.... ))

<comment><USER71> Is it a bad thing that people are diverging into a greater multitude of more varied filter bubbles than ever before? It should be fine, as long as you can easily travel among bubbles. Back when filter bubbles were more geographic and cultural, it wasn't so easy to poke your head out and see really different worldviews. With the internet, it's easy.

People use the phrase "melting pot" like it's a good thing, but I don't _want_ to be melted in a pot.

<comment><USER69> > it wasn't so easy to poke your head out and see really different worldviews. > With the internet, it's easy.

That doesn't really matter if nobody does it -- and it turns out to be even _easier_ to find (& stay in) communities that simply echo & reinforce your worldview.

As for the rest, I think you're just being contrary for the sake of being contrary. It seems fairly obvious that one of the least intellectually healthy things out there, from individuals all the way up to societies, is to be surrounded solely by people who agree with you. Isolation breeds ignorance and extremism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> It is a lot easier to write an essay critique than it is to sit down and fix the problem by recording your own set of video lectures that teach people what you know.

</comment><comment><USER73> I like to think of Mr Khan efforts as something similar to those of the mentor in Sophie's World. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophies_World> He can teach the audience on how to think about subjects, but I doubt he can be deep on all of them. This is very helpful but is not scalable. I wonder how this effort will become mature if it continues to get funded and promoted.

</comment><comment><USER74> While I think that the criticisms in this piece were misplaced, its very possible that there are better free history resources out there. I've very much enjoyed the History According to Bob podcast series, for instance, but those would probably be too in depth for teaching kids, except the overview episodes. <http://www.summahistorica.com/index.htm>

</comment><comment><USER75> Math and hard science learning can be reasonably measured by the kind of objective testing that KA does, however that is inadequate for subjects like history. Knowing about a bunch of events says nothing about the "lesson". I wonder how KA plans to address that, if at all.

IMO, it'll be good if KA focuses on the hard basics like mathematics. (By "hard" I don't mean "difficult" btw.)

</comment><comment><USER76> I watched a few of the Khan Academy videos. They're fun and entertaining and you may even learn a little, but they don't cover anything beyond the surface of a topic. I think the Open Yale videos where you can watch a full semester of a Yale professor's class are far more informative: <http://oyc.yale.edu/>

</comment><comment><USER77> I went there expecting teachers whining about a new teaching model, but seeing what the videos really are like, and the things said, I fully agree with the article. I think having a full video based classroom for everyone would be good, but Mr Khan seems to be doing a rather sloppy job filling every topic in the world by himself.

</comment><comment><USER78> It seems like teaching how to research and read about history would be better than short narratives about various periods.

</comment><comment><USER79> Uh oh, Mr. Khan is not reactionary enough for the tastes of someone like Clemens:

 _Here Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia's standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence._

</comment><comment><USER80> After reading the article I feel it 'attacks' Sal individually and not the KA as a whole, quoting vocabulary used by him. "Historical velocity is achieved through words and phrases such as "essentially," "fast forward," and "as you can imagine."

</comment><comment><USER81> Khan's physics videos are no better. Excerpts below from my series taking a critical view of Khan Academy: <http://bit.ly/khancritic> ...

Ironically, Khan's TED talk is in stark contrast to two previous TED talks:

* Dan Meyer - Math Curriculum Makeover <http://bit.ly/DanMeyerTED> * Sir Ken Robinson - Do Schools Kill Creativity? <http://bit.ly/SirKenTED>

According to Dan, today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect (and excel at) paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. How does Khan Academy foster problem posing and creativity?

If your philosophy of education is sit-and-get, i.e., teaching is telling and learning is listening, then Khan Academy (and flipping) are more efficient than in-classroom lecturing.

But why lecture at all? TRUE progressive educators, TRUE education visionaries and revolutionaries don't want to do these things better. We want to DO BETTER THINGS.

Rather than instructing students with Khan's videos, teachers should be inspiring them to figure things out on their own and learn how to create their own knowledge by working together. For example, instead of relying on lectures and textbooks, Modeling Instruction in Physics emphasizes active student construction of conceptual and mathematical models in an interactive learning community. Students are engaged with simple scenarios to learn to model the physical world. In comparison to traditional instruction, Modeling is extremely effective — under expert modeling instruction high school students average more than two standard deviations higher on a standard instrument for assessing conceptual understanding of physics.

Watch one Modeling class in action: <http://bit.ly/ModelingPhysics> . In the clip, the teacher says, "I don't lecture at all. Instead, I create experiences for the students either in the lab or puzzles and problems for them to solve and it's up to them to try to figure that out." I've often wondered why this type of teaching hasn't gotten more attention in the media. Maybe because the teacher is using simple things like whiteboards and bowling balls rather than shiny iPads and SmartBoards?

While Khan argues that his videos now eliminate "one-size-fits-all" education, his videos are exactly that. I tried finding Khan Academy videos for my students to use as references for studying, or to use as a tutorial when there's a substitute teacher, but the physics ones aren't very good. They don't use a lot of the multiple representations that are so fundamental to learning. Concept development is minimal, and he unknowingly plays into student misconceptions. His videos do not align with proper Physics Education Research. Teachers improve via reading up on pedagogy and getting feedback from mentors & students. Where is Sal's feedback? Where's the pedagogy?

The research that Khan chooses to ignore is summarized in this one book, now available as a free PDF: "How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom" <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126>

<comment><USER3> 2 million unique students are viewing our videos every month by choice (as opposed to being forced to attend class by the state). Read any of the thousands comments on our YouTube or Facebook page and the underlying feedback from students is that they are finally getting the "why" at the Khan Academy as opposed to the "memorization-paint-by-numbers-what" in their classrooms. Do we think we're ideal? No, we're constantly using data and feedback to iterate on our content (and unlike traditional lectures and textbooks, we actually have data on usage and comprehension).

If you truly believe you have a far better way to teach physics, you really should let the world see how you do it. Make Youtube videos and point us to them. We're looking for other great teachers that are consistent with our mission and resonate with students.

<comment><USER81> Hi Sal,

The whole point is not who can make better video lectures. The point is why lecture at all?

I wish the world would see my YouTube video about Modeling Physics (and resources) here: <http://bit.ly/ModelingPhysics>

I wish the world would see my 13 other videos showing Modeling Physics in action: <http://vimeo.com/channels/modelingphysics>

I wish the world would read my post on pseudoteaching: <http://bit.ly/MITpseudoteaching>

I wish the world would read my posts on standards-based grading, which allows my students to show growth and mastery in physics: <http://bit.ly/SBGposts>

One of my pseudoteaching posts talks about how forward thinking universities like MIT (your alma mater) are switching from lecture-based physics to a more interactive model like Modeling. The research on Modeling is there, please don't ignore it: <http://modeling.asu.edu/modeling/Mod_Instr-effective.htm>

More research --> The 3 key principles from "How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom" are:

#1. Engaging Prior Understandings - "If students' preconceptions are not addressed directly, they often memorize content (e.g., formulas in physics), yet still use their experience-based preconceptions to act in the world.

#2. The Essential Role of Factual Knowledge and Conceptual Frameworks in Understanding - "What novices see as separate pieces of information, experts see as organized sets of ideas."

#3. The Importance of Self-Monitoring - "Appropriate kinds of self-monitoring and reflection have been demonstrated to support learning with understanding in a variety of areas. In one study,15 for example, students who were directed to engage in self-explanation as they solved mathematics problems developed deeper conceptual understanding than did students who solved those same problems but did not engage in self-explanation."

You can read the entire book for free: <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126>

Modeling Physics does all 3. Your videos are 0 for 3. Badges do not count as "self-monitoring" in any meaningful sense.

You also have no hard data (as of yet) as to the effectiveness of your videos. Just anecdotal comments from students. You have no controlled studies. In fact, controlled studies show that video lectures are rather ineffective. See Derek Muller's video abstract and research: <http://bit.ly/KhanEffectiveness>

I'm not trying to be mean. I think your videos can be a resource for some teachers/students. But using video as the primary method for content delivery is ineffective.

We should not have to "flip" lectures and HW in order for students to be more interactive in class. When inquiry is done right, the interaction is already built in.

I'll stop there, before this gets too long.

Thanks for your time, Frank Noschese (aka torque2)

<comment><USER82> _In fact, controlled studies show that video lectures are rather ineffective._

I would assume that studies comparing a competent physics teacher to a video instructor would show the former being more effective.

However, there is a shortage of competent physics instructors. There is a (possibly bigger) shortage of competent maths teachers. I am speaking from my more extreme experience in South Africa, where most of the teachers are abysmal. Expensive video-based instruction helped me achieve a respectable mark in physics/chemistry, most of my peers lacked that privilege and did very poorly. Even at university, things like differential equations, linear algebra and calculus were not particularly well taught - most professors are not really good at teaching, and in my case, they were teaching in a second language (Afrikaans speakers teaching English speaking students). The Khan Academy would have helped me even at the undergraduate level.

I have posted to HN in a related thread about video instruction in South Africa [ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2351100> ]. People have been doing it for years here. I would recommend a controlled study in South Africa using KA, or The Learning Channel videos by William Smith (NOT run in an elite private school, but at an average township school) before we write off video based instruction as "ineffective".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Of course Khan lectures are not all encompassing just like his lecture on IPOs aren't but they provide a great deal of entry level knowledge.

If the author ever imagined that WW2 could be explained in one short Khan Academy video his expectations were wrong not Khan Academy itself.

Personally, I believe he is a spiteful fool afraid of a revolution in education.

<comment><USER10> _Personally, I believe he is a spiteful fool afraid of a revolution in education_

Please refrain from name-calling.

On one hand, you're rightly pointing out that one fifteen-minute video by one guy can never be an all-encompassing summary of thirty years of world history. And you're right.

But then you're talking about the Khan Academy as being some kind of "revolution" in education, even though the Khan academy still consists of fifteen-minute videos by one guy. This is the article's point -- there's some pretty serious limits to what we can expect out of a Khan-Academy sort of model. He's done a great job with introductory mathematics, but there's a _crapload_ of work that would need to be done to make it an adequate source for other subjects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> My own thoughts on this issue along these same lines:

[http://www.kerryob.com/2011/06/08/concerns-on-khan- academys-...](http://www.kerryob.com/2011/06/08/concerns-on-khan-academys- goals/)

</comment><comment><USER85> I think the conventional "educators" are feeling threatened because concise education in tolerable chunks is looking more attractive than toiling in lectures and massive tomes for hours over minor details. The Internet age has destroyed verbose teaching finally.

Facts are important. Details are for the interested.

</comment><comment><USER86> David Clemens (the author of the article) should read the text books presented in American high schools.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

</comment><comment><USER87> Haters</comment>


Simple Python implementation of a Bayesian multi-armed bandit algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://peterroelants.github.io/posts/MultiArmBandit/ <comment><USER2> I should open source my cobbled together implementation for react.

I will add that a couple great things for a dashboard using MAB are

1\. Pairwise variant comparisons: i.e., P(A>B) for each pair. [http://www.evanmiller.org/bayesian-ab- testing.html](http://www.evanmiller.org/bayesian-ab-testing.html) is an amazing resource on that.

2\. Time-to-Confidence estimates: how long until we will have a credible interval of 5%? 1%? 0.5%?

These can help you cull variants and experiments. Sure, it's optimized so you don't have to for the sake of the test, but code cleanliness is nice to have.

<comment><AUTHOR> The evanmiller blogpost is indeed a great resource, I should add that that to further readings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Python code might be simple, but the math jargon ain't.</comment>


Dating Ancient Papyri - <AUTHOR> https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/dating-ancient-papyri/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but with a few photos this would be even more interesting. (See for example the post from [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medievalbooks.nl](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medievalbooks.nl) )

</comment><comment><USER3> The reason that methods of papyri dating have become of interest lately is the controversy over the so-called "Jesus' Wife" fragment. The question of its authenticity is right in Hurtado's wheelhouse, so to speak, and he has addressed it in several posts:

[https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/?s=wife](https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/?s=wife)

<comment><USER4> I'm still amazed at how such a blatant forgery was not called out more strongly, given the obvious flaws, not the least of which was its provenance from the same mystery source as another known fake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading recently that humans started dating documents relatively late in history, and that even as late as in the Renaissance most people wouldn't have been aware of the current calendar year. [Ong 1982] Given that paleographists estimate how old ancient papyri are by means of dated documents I wonder:

Where these documents explicitly dated or are datings mostly extracted from the context (e.g., names of rulers / geographical references)? Are "documentary" papyri always reliable for comparisons?

In any case very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> _" But, as with all such judgement-activities, experts can disagree, often by several decades, even a century or so, and sometimes even more."_

That sure escalated in a hurry! Decades... Century... More than a Century. Still, I get it, when the next best tool (radiocarbon dating) deals in millennia.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _" carbon-14 testing can't really do more than offer a certain probability > for a timeframe of approximately a century or so: about the same timeframe > that palaeographers can offer"_

The main takeaway is that the scale of both methods is essentially the same, and will rarely span more than 100 years, for the time frame of interest to papyrologists.

<comment><USER6> I find it oddly comforting that the most sophisticated dating techniques are no better than what amounts to academic consensus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Hmm… Yep, it's ancient."

</comment><comment><USER8> Now that's a weird fetish. I obviously don't have anything meaningful to add to the discussion.

<comment><USER9> I wanted to say "Are ancient papyri fun to date?"</comment></comment>


Taskbar Latency and Kernel Calls - <AUTHOR> https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2019/09/08/taskbar-latency-and-kernel-calls/ <comment><USER2> Summary: Windows Explorer's right-click menu took 700ms to open, author investigated why</comment>


RentWap – general property and item rental and booking marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://rentwap.com <comment><AUTHOR> RentWap is a general property and item rental and booking marketplaceRe. if you are looking to spend some time in Nigeria (or African soon). RentWap is the ideal place to get a good accommodation or tools that that fits your budget and guarantees your comfort.

for locals and investors, RentWap Lets your spare & empty rooms and properties make you money. Rent it out on RentWap and make free money!visit [https://rentwap.com](https://rentwap.com) to get started</comment>


Intel X86 Encoder Decoder - <AUTHOR> https://intelxed.github.io/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this was released due to Xen's recent x86 instruction emulation bugs.

[http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-9932](http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-9932)

[http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-9383](http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-9383)

<comment><USER3> Those CVEs are private. Could you provide a public source?

<comment><USER4> Relevant Xen Security Advisory

[https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-200.html](https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-200.html)

[https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-195.html](https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-195.html)

All XSA

[https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/](https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like this would make one able to write the object-code codegen phase of a compiler at a rather higher level (at least if you're only targeting x86, or are willing to write similar libraries for your other arch targets.)

Or, to put it another way: looks like a good library for adding "just a bit of JIT" to an interpreter, without going full LLVM.

</comment><comment><USER6> "As new instructions are made public"? WTF does that mean? We're not even allowed to know the full instruction set of an X86 CPU?

<comment><USER7> Not allowed yet.

Ex-Intel here. It takes years to gestate new instructions. First specs are in controlled documents available to Intel employees only. Eventually, when things are nailed down, preliminary specs are available under an NDA where a VP approves/signs the Intel side of the NDA. Tool vendors will get those specs. Finally, when the chip is announced the previously NDA documents become public. I was a CPU designer at multiple companies, and everyone follows a similar process.

<comment><USER5> You're just talking about the design phase of a new ISA extension. I think the parent was under the impression that there were instructions _in released processors_ that were undocumented.

<comment><USER6> That was exactly my impression. I don't have a problem with new instructions in new processors being undocumented at first, but purposely undocumented instructions are troubling and would push me away from Intel for new designs.

<comment><USER7> So, you are the decision maker for whether or not Intel CPU's get designed into your product? If so, I'm sure several Intel salespeople have you on speed dial.

The 286 had purposely undocumented instructions, of this sort: "Ooops this is b0rk3d. It will always be b0rk3d. Let's pretend it didn't happen." So for generations there were holes in the op code map that people tip-toed around. Especially since Intel (meaning the internal grey-beard collective) also forgot exactly what those opcodes were and what they were supposed to do. You care, why, exactly?

It's not like the NSA slips extra opcodes into executables that you compile with your own compiler in order to spy on you. They have much easier ways to spy on you.

Also, it's not like it is that hard to throw unused opcodes at the decoder and see which ones give you the illegal instruction exception, and which ones do something else. You now have a homework assignment. Have fun, let us know what you find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome. I thought it's closed source. I wonder how close it is to the hardware.

Can I assume that whatever is parsed by XED is going to be parsed in the same way by real CPU's?

<comment><USER9> XED author here...

That's one goal certainly. Not claiming it is perfect. I have been working on it a long time and _many_ cycles have been run on it between Pin, Intel SDE and some internal simulators that boot OSes, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does this compare to ARM's VIXL?

[1] [https://github.com/armvixl/vixl](https://github.com/armvixl/vixl)

</comment><comment><USER11> About time they open sourced it. Funny how it is Python according to github :)

<comment><USER12> Why is that funny? Python seems like the perfect language for this kind of thing. You can see the logic with minimal noise.

<comment><USER13> It's funny since it's not very accurate: the Python is used to generate C code from tables describing instruction encodings (that's my understanding, haven't cloned this and built it). But there is plenty of actual C code in there too, and the resulting "thing" is a C library.

Python would _not_ be as suitable as the full implementation language, since C is much more easily accessed from other languages, which is a good property for a library like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks handy. Thanks for posting, Dan.

</comment><comment><USER15> Something that is universal is not remarkable. People will not make as much use of an unremarkable opportunity as they will of a remarkable one.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does an ALL caps sentence looks angry or screaming? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This is purely cultural.

Roman engraving were written in all caps, I don't think that Roman readers thought they were yelled at.</comment>


The steroid era of startups is over–here's what 8 top VCs think will happen next - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-happens-when-tech-boom-turns-to-bust-2016-5 <comment><USER2> If the VCs know what's going to happen next, where were their predictive skills when they were pumping all of this money into companies with bad financials/business models in the first place?

<comment><USER3> They could not care less about that at the time, as long as long as acquisitions at crazy valuations got them their exits...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's particularly telling about how absolute fucking bullshit these "Top VC" explanations are is that fact that virtually every single one of their comments is in this abstract, passive voice-- they're all talking about some other company, some other fund. It's never their problem or their mistake. It's full of qualifiers. Be an adult and take responsibility for yourselves!

Examples:

\- "the price of oxygen has increased..."

\- "the VC's have been saying..."

\- "the venture community has realized..."

\- "investors are largely to blame..."

\- "I won't name [the company], it's one we're not in..."

\- "to make the business work you have to go deeper into the muscle..." (I don't have enough WTF's for this one)

\- "A number of companies will fail..."

\- "I would say will end in unhappy outcomes..."

\- "There are good businesses..."

\- "I've heard of companies..."

\- "Companies have and are doing certain things..."

\- "you can say that as values get more rational, things will get better..."</comment>


Excerpt from Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/06/how-i-sold-my-company-to-twitter-went-to-facebook-and-screwed-my-co-founders/ <comment><USER2> The book is ok — it has plenty of interesting stories about Facebook during its heady IPO ish era. And a bunch of great startup-y tales.

But what kills the reading experience for me are the constant metaphors/analogies/similes/parentheticals/whatever the author keeps making. It's funny if it's done sparingly, but he just interlards every passage with them. Like so:

"After my day of interviews, I had imagined that MRM and Facebook would get along about as well as a Berkeley hippie and a Marine scout sniper, and I was right."

It's funny, but imagine an entire book (that's otherwise a good read) filled with these sometimes successful attempts at humor. It gets tiring after a few chapters.

Just 50% less of it would've made the book waaay better IMO. Plus humor like that usually lands better if you use it sparingly.

<comment><USER3> I have to disagree. I enjoyed the use of metaphor, and actually highlighted several on my Kindle.

# "Zuck had once famously derided [Twitter] as 'a clown car that drove into a gold mine'"

# "One of the Harvard mafiosi got into the habit of theatening engineers that he'd "punch them in the face" if they messed up. Quod licet Bozi, non licet bovi. Gods may do what cattle may not."

# "Eventually, Russia, India, Brazil and parts of Africa will fall into the Growth team's patient ministrations. Then, Mark Zuckerberg, like a young Alexander the Great at the Indus River, will weep for having no more world to conquer."

<comment><USER2> It's like eating a cake made purely out of frosting -- fun at first, but then it just becomes too much after a hundred pages or so.

<comment><USER4> I wish I could upvote you twice for the irony

<comment><USER5> Need to ask for that meta-upvote feature

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always have a hard time with books that seem to be trying to create a second wave of success on "Hey, look what an asshole I was."

If you've realized that you've been a jerk, you owe it to yourself to recognize that and keep quiet about it, not try to turn the fact that you were a jerk into your next big opportunity.

<comment><USER7> This requires quantities of humility and empathy some people don't have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I bought that book a while ago and never opened it. Never will now, that was just very poorly written and uninteresting. Felt like reading a fake story about Silicon Valley on a high school kids Tumblr.

<comment><USER9> I did read the book and your impressions are correct. The narrator comes off as very immature and a total jerk. A few examples:

\- After getting let go from Facebook he describes peeling out of the parking lot and speeding on campus

\- He has a whole chapter on a sexual encounter he had with a colleague at work that had no bearing on the story

\- He doesn't even bother naming the woman who bore two of his children, referring to her only as "London Trader". Even a pseudonym would have been appropriate if he wanted to keep her anonymity. His whole relationship with her was cringey and the author was not the least bit self-aware.

<comment><USER10> All this bragging and assholery speaks volumes about their pronounced narcissistic traits. Unfortunately our culture makes for this type of behaviour to thrive because making money and bragging about it is what sells.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _In October 2010, a mother in Florida had shaken her baby to death, as the baby would interrupt her FarmVille games with crying. A mother destroyed with her own hands what she'd been programmed over aeons to love, just to keep on responding to Facebook notifications triggered by some idiot game. Products that cause mothers to murder their infants in order to use them more, assuming they're legal, simply cannot fail in the world_

Everything you need to know about everyone involved in this.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I wasn't sure if he was going for dark humour there, but it just read as though he is a despicable human being.

<comment><USER13> Someone without morality or guilt or shame or a conscience can't really be called a human being. Someone who displays the same sociopathic traits and narcissistic love for their traits as Chaos Monkey's author seems to would've made a fine Nazi commander.

<comment><USER14> People who do horrible things are absolutely still human beings.

The test is your genome, not your actions.

If your life philosophy does not account for that, it needs to be replaced.

Dehumanizing people does not stop them from mistreating others - it encourages more of the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I read the book when it came out. It is an interesting snapshot of a particular period in technology history but, as in any memoir, it comes with heavy dose of the author's personality. I finished the book because the time period is interesting (social media maturing, Facebook and Twitter both growing, the start of "SV bro" Culture etc).. but I found parts of the book incredibly, teeth-grindingly irritating. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found the book pretty enjoyable. The description of advertising technology could be more lucid, the portion on Facebook seemed a tad long, and the romantic intrigues were pretty tame to be mentioned. Still, there's alot to like: I enjoyed the autobiographical tour from quant to startup employee to startup founder to grown-up startup employee to unemployed, particularly the description of the AdGrok acquisition talks. It's always difficult to ascertain what might or might not be true in these kinds of books, but I was left feeling like a friend of Martinez, him pulling back the curtain a bit and letting slip a few secrets, me discovering cracks in the Silicon Valley blend of meritocracy and 'we're changing the world' companies.

Recommended read, though the meat of the book is in the first 1/2 to 2/3\. Tone is pretty polarizing, though clearly I was a fan.

</comment><comment><USER17> I read this last year. The story was interesting, but the author comes across as abrasive and irritating.

Here are my notes on the useful takeaways:

[https://mtlynch.io/book-reports/chaos-monkeys/](https://mtlynch.io/book- reports/chaos-monkeys/)

</comment><comment><USER18> NYT "Review of 'Chaos Monkeys', Silicon Valley tell-all"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003912)

85 comments

<comment><USER18> "I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA."

[https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5b4tqe/i_am_antonio_g...](https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5b4tqe/i_am_antonio_garcia_martinez_a_tech_entrepreneur/)

and

"I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads (theguardian.com)"

131 comments [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14250910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14250910)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Needs a "(2016)" in the title. The article, like the book, is years old.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is still surprising to me all these stories that sound like science fiction and create heroes and villains that drive so many people motivations.

I wonder how this small bubble will be seen in 500 years

<comment><USER20> > I wonder how this small bubble will be seen in 500 years

How much do you know about the movers & shakers in steel production in AD 1520 Toledo? Same, but spice trade merchant-empires in Italy? How many people know more than like 5 names and a couple events or anecdotes (which may or may not even have actually happened) from _all of US industry_ 1880-1930?

There you go. No one but specialists will remember it at all. A couple names might survive but almost nothing about them, and little of it true.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is actually my point.

Knowing what greediness brought to human history seems a good reason to try to change things to better.

And I am not talking about this specific case but the whole Silicon Valley phenomenon and the fact of concentrating this amount of wealth in such small community.

BTW I am the OP and what caught my attention, besides its veracity, is precisely how this kind of stories have interest in the tech scene that sometimes seem to be totally disconnected from a much broader reality

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Contrary to folks here, I found the story of negotiating with Twitter and Facebook to be quite fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER22> The writing is so immature "try-to-be edgy" that I cannot even finish reading this crap article.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great book for SV outsiders. And reflective of what I have read on here and in tech media.

<comment><USER24> Doesn't that mean this could be complete fiction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Upvoted because it was interesting, not because I like the behavior.

</comment><comment><USER26> i tried to read it but found it unreadable

</comment><comment><USER27> He vastly improved twitter's deal and did it at half price

Nobody's THAT generous ;)

"His team mates turned back to their code, without a word. Crying at the thought of his noble sacrifice and departure"

</comment><comment><USER28> I like the thumbnail. It's quite accurate.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems like the personality you have to have to want to work at Facebook. Money uber alles.

</comment><comment><USER30> more discussion on this book review from back in (2016), when this was news

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003912)

</comment><comment><USER31> I read it and found it interesting. -Country Bumpkin

</comment><comment><USER32> Uninteresting book, to be honest. Not the worst story, though, but uninteresting.

</comment><comment><USER33> tldr: Twitter offered $10 million for startup with CEO and co-foundes. CEO would rather work at Facebook without co-founders. Company sold for $5 million.

<comment><USER34> Facebook wanted the CEO.

Twitter wanted the developers minus the CEO for 5 million.

<comment><USER35> The way the author comes off, I'm not surprised Facebook and their insane frat culture only wanted the CEO.</comment></comment></comment>


How Ray Dalio built the world's richest and strangest hedge fund (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/25/mastering-the-machine <comment><USER2> It seems to me that the continued debate over whether or not the market is random (or whether it is not), is very similar to the debate of nature vs nurture.

My instincts, and my conclusion is that there is an element of both randomness and non-randomness in the market. I would expect then that there would be both successful and non-successful actors who succeed/fail due to random and non- random factors. My gut further leads me to believe that having insight or knowledge of the market coupled with a very large bankroll would allow you to ride the random events/waves with prudent mitigation strategies. A hedge, if you would. My expectation also would be then you could measure almost any fund on some arbitrary timeline and argue that the traders either knew or didn't know what they were doing, and that because of random event XYZ they either failed to correctly predict market movement ABC over period IJK. Let's not even get into the MNO or DEF parts!

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever "culture" of radical honesty they have does not translate at all to other workplaces. My first experience with an ex-BW manager left me crying at the coffee machine all afternoon. just my n=1 anecdote.

<comment><USER4> I think they understand this. See the first minute of this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABB1pfi3ZpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABB1pfi3ZpE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ray Dalio has a 30 minute YouTube video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0)

</comment><comment><USER6> Great place to work.

</comment><comment><USER7> All investment funds are a charade. The probability that a firm like Bridgewater exists with higher than average returns is not zero. Nothing about Bridgewater would indicate that they somehow 'get it' whilst the other funds don't. It's strictly probability, or more accurately, it's strictly a bell- curve.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure why you got downvoted. Survivorship bias is a well-known phenomenon. I would be interested in distinguishing between hedge funds that do well because some "necessarily must" and those that actually have some kind of advantage with their algorithms. But how can you actually tell which is the case?

<comment><USER7> I don't think you can. If on every trade you flip a coin, but intelligently limit your losses and ride your wins, you will beat every fund-manager on the planet. Nothing to do with smarts or algorithms. And even if you have good risk management, if you trade long enough, there will always be the perfect- storm 'meltdown' scenario. However, as I originally said, it's all probability and there will be a small group of managers who will never experience the meltdown (or the meltdown is waiting in their future).

<comment><USER9> > _If on every trade you flip a coin, but intelligently limit your losses and > ride your wins_

What does this mean? Sounds like gambler's fallacy combined with a Martingale system

<comment><USER7> Flip a coin... heads you go long, tails you go short. Limit your losses and ride the wins. You'll kill the market (until a perfect-storm meltdown event, of course). Nothing to do with Martingale.

<comment><USER10> Could you elaborate on "Limit your losses and ride the wins"? Do you assume that market is trending upwards (until meltdown)? Do you suppose to make money this way in flat market?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>