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Re: bogus questions



Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
The burden of making a question clear is on the asking person.

That's going too far.

1) In the real world (as opposed to academia) you simply cannot
expect the boss or the customer to walk in and ask the
exactly-right question. If you want to survive, you'd better
get good at dealing with imperfect questions.

Oftentimes there is a process of negotiation. You go back
to the questioner and say "This question doesn't make sense
for the following eleventeen reasons. Would you like to
restate the question? Can you tell me what is your real
objective, i.e. what led you to start asking questions?"

2) I find the same thing is true, perhaps more true, with
my students. I get a fair number of off-the-wall questions.
Sometimes I ask for a clarification, and sometimes I say
"I'm not understanding the question. Let me tell you a few
things about the general topic ... perhaps your question
will get answered along the way, or perhaps it will help
you rephrase the question."

It often helps to know where a question is coming from.
Sometimes it is based on something the customer saw on
X-Files or Fox News, in which case the answer is easy:
don't believe everything you see. Sometimes it takes a
lot of digging to find out where the question is coming
from, and sometimes you never find out. That's OK; you
just teach the right idea and let the innumerable wrong
ideas quietly wither.