I wrote recently how programming is a great tool for learning because you haven’t really understood something until you can explain it to someone else (and in programming that someone else is the computer). Well yesterday in teaching my Skillshare class I got a good dose of that myself. I managed to completely botch my initial explanation of Bayes Theorem. How come? Because while I understand it reasonably well, I don’t understand it with every fiber of my brain and when I got myself into some pressure I melted. Part of that pressure was external because we were trying to video tape the class. Part of it was internal because I tried to quickly sketch a second example in addition to the one I had prepared and didn’t set up that second example properly.
While frustrating at the moment it was also a tremendously helpful experience. It’s always good to have a humbling moment as long as you can then turn that into energy for digging deeper. For those of you reading this who attended the class, I have posted corrections and updates on Skillshare (these will make somewhat less sense if you weren’t there). It was also a great reminder of just how hard teaching is, which is good to keep in mind as I am meeting some of my kids teachers tomorrow to talk about programming.
