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Hi all-
I sent John D's remarks about Feynman to a colleague who was once
Feynman's TA. Here are John's remarks followed by my friend's comments:
John wrote:
It has been reported that Feynman looked up his IQ based on childhood
When he was working problems at the blackboard, he
didn't just show the solution. He commented on the
method of solution as he went along, which is where
this story makes contact with the subject of this
message. He would often say "At this point, you
may be tempted to try XXX, but that's a trap. You
can recognize traps of this sort by noticing ....."
I was quite struck by that. It was not even a case
of RPF "remembering" what it was like to be a student,
because he was so $#@! smart that he had probably
never in his life fallen into the sort of trap he was
discussing.
This is not unlike the way Feynman's teacher, John A. Wheeler, described
__________________________________________________________________
The comment:
yes, of course, discussion and method are even superior to the actual
solution
to the problem in the first place...... after all, the problem itself is
there
to teach you methodology, and not the answer....
the scientific method....
as for feynman, i'll disagree: much of the time he was talking to himself,
or
some alter ego of himself,
around 11 yrs old, or his son, etc.... so he did not second guess the
naivete
of
his freshmen,
smart as he was: he Became a little kid in method acting and did ask all
the
naive and stupid questions
himself, fast and cleverly to be sure, but he asked them, and got
confused, and
got back, and
kicked himself and asked again, and backtracked and asked even more basic
questions.....
totally genuinely, and not as part of a pedagogical show.... and that's
what
stays with you if
you watched him: that it is OK to buzz and jump and backtrack and explore
improbable alleys,
mostly blind, but sometimes pure feynman paradoxical!
Regards,
Jack