19 year-old Stanford Ph.D. dropout Andrew Hsu is Changing Education

http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/07/28/19-year-old-stanford-ph-d-dropout-andrew-hsu-is-changing-education/

by jmtame • 15 years ago

90 59 15 years ago

startupsopensourced.com

glimcat3• 15 years ago

TIL grad students who have second thoughts about their PhD program are the new college dropouts.

edwardy20• 15 years ago

Yeah it seems a bit of a stretch to call someone with 3 degrees a dropout...

dstein2• 15 years ago

It's probably a marketing thing, since people with PhD's aren't usually the entrepreneur-type.

hugh34• 15 years ago

You'd be amazed by how many entrepreneurs have PhDs.

Alex39175• 15 years ago

"In college, there’s far less social pressure to maintain popularity, and you’re actually valued for your intelligence. [...] The major difference to me in high school vs. college is the work in college–for me at least–is actually challenging and intellectually interesting."

I think Andrew's view of college is overly shaped by the fact that he went to an elite college at age 12. Had he matriculated at 18 he probably would have been bored as fuck. Especially if he was at a real college, i.e. one where the education and social dynamics were actually representative of the experience of the vast majority of college students.

Also, does he have any actual knowledge of the research that's been done on education? If he does, this interview certainly doesn't hint at it. Not to be overly critical, but I'm really not sold based on this interview.

shareme• 15 years ago

I agree the interview does not get to the gist..

some new theories and applications to learning are coming out of neuroscience but I am unsure if Andrew specialized in that area at least from the interview.

The older neuroscience stuff we are already aware of that humans remember in 3s, 5s, and 7s of items, several channels used at once such as visual audio increases info percentage retained more so when skills re-used, etc.

Alex39175• 15 years ago

Even if he did specialize in that area of neuroscience, it's largely irrelevant. Sociology and psychology are much more important for understanding how to do education right, followed by anthropology and cognitive development. There are definitely a few good insights from neuroscience, but it's not really a field that's produced many game changers, at least not yet. Even history is more important than neuroscience at this point.

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

> several channels used at once such as visual audio increases info percentage retained more so when skills re-used

I'm not sure if you're refering here to the so-called "cone of learning" ("we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, ..."), but if so, then from what I know this idea was debunked; it turns out to be a multiple-level iterative misinterpretation of a research paper on a completely different topic. I wrote about it some time ago; sorry for Google Translate, but I currently blog in Polish only:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...

//EDIT:

More details: http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/05/people_remember.ht...

jmtame2• 15 years ago

I'm confused on whether you think that quote is from me or Andrew. I was asked to clarify just in case: that quote is coming from my own personal experience (and I updated the page to reflect that).

Andrew's not targeting college students, he's looking at younger children. He was still in public school up until 4th grade, where he was having attention problems. I would assume today's 4th graders are equally attention deficit when it comes to learning.

Alex39175• 15 years ago

oops, I must have misread it, my bad.

hugh34• 15 years ago

OK, this guy sounds very impressive, but his educational experiences were so very atypical that I'm concerned whether he'd have any real grasp of how normal people learn.

I get the feeling that going to his classes would be like getting swimming lessons from a mermaid.

neoveller• 15 years ago

And why shouldn't I want to take swimming lessons from a mermaid? Sounds like a dream.

hugh34• 15 years ago

I originally wrote "merman", I should have stuck with that. Yes, if you want to look at boobies then learning swimming from a mermaid is a good idea, but if you want to learn to swim it's non-ideal.

"OK, now thrash your tail"

"I don't have a tail!"

"Oh... uhhh, so do those leg things move independently or what?"

dools• 15 years ago

Success through atypical educational models is something we desperately need to counteract the overwhelming failure of the typical ones.

eeperson• 15 years ago

Weird, I think I went to college with him.

crocowhile• 15 years ago

You don't remember if a 12 yo was in college with you?

johnrob• 15 years ago

This person is very smart, but (as far as I can tell) he's never instructed everyday students before - is that a problem?

grandalf2• 15 years ago

I think most people on HN could have completed high school academics by age 12 or 13 with sufficient discipline and focus. This is not all that remarkable intellectually, but it's rare that a child that age has the will (or opportunity) to make it happen.

jackpirate2• 15 years ago

I think the same thing. The question is, should we?

I wonder how many people who go on to do Nobel-quality work were in college at the age of 12? My intuition is very few. I think something very important is lost when bored 12-year-olds don't learn how to experiment on their own. Essentially 100% of the pioneer hackers cut their teeth this way.

Of course, I'm probably just jealous that I didn't matriculate early and have 3 BS's by 19.

grandalf2• 15 years ago

I agree. In an ideal world people with these capabilities would be able to spend their childhoods in an environment tailored to very bright children their own age, with materials and curriculum tailored to their strengths and with attention paid to cultivating passion and minimizing overspecialization.

MisterMerkin• 15 years ago

I was wondering how he had 3 B.S.'s and was a drop out. And then I saw the next line. He dropped out of the Ph.D. program. At 19.

...

Hats off.

rkon• 15 years ago

- Labeled as a “genius” from IQ testing at 6 years old

"I think genetics play a small role. I’m naturally smart and I have the ability to absorb information pretty quickly just by reading. But that only counts for a small part." - Andrew Hsu

I guess all the brainpower in the world can't magically cure arrogance or grant humility. I don't doubt that he'll be very successful in something, but he's so comically out of touch with the reality of public education that I doubt he'll ever have an impact there.

jmtame2• 15 years ago

It didn't feel like I was talking to an alien who had no understanding of the problem with education today when I interviewed him. He started having attention problems in 4th grade (which is the age he's targeting), and all of the problems he described to me lined up with my own beliefs.

I know it reads as blatantly bragging, but from my interactions with Andrew (having met him at his office personally and then having done the interview over Skype), he didn't come across that way. It sounded to me like he had explained it many times before and was trying his best to succinctly give a straight answer. He seemed pretty normal by social standards, and I have some engineering friends who are sincere assholes with an ego much larger than Andrew's, if that's how you perceive him. I think most hackers and especially programmers have some amount of that cockiness though, that's not something we're all immune to. Even the CS professors admit that CS students walk around feeling more entitled than liberal arts students (and it's scribbled on the bathroom stalls: "Liberal arts degree dispenser below" right above the toilet paper roll in an engineering building on the campus I went to). Anyway, that wasn't the vibe I got from him, although I can see how you could read it that way.

It's an interesting point brought up: has he had enough painful experience with education to build a solution to it all? I don't know. I don't think it takes much to fix education; it's so broken that any young person today with an appreciation for gaming could probably figure out something better than what exists now. But I'm really interested in seeing what his team comes up with, and if someone wants to work on education, I'm more than supportive of those efforts because that whole process sucks right now.

Hyena2• 15 years ago

"I don't think it takes much to fix education; it's so broken that any young person today with an appreciation for gaming could probably figure out something better than what exists now."

Why so?

smokeyj• 15 years ago

> It didn't feel like I was talking to an alien who had no understanding of the problem with education today

Sounds like a bunch of haters insecure about their cognitive abilities. Questioning his humility is pretty low.

intenex2• 15 years ago

Another Fellow here. Andrew's totally normal.

epidemian• 15 years ago

> I guess all the brainpower in the world can't magically cure arrogance or grant humility.

I didn't think he sounded arrogant at all actually. He stressed that he thinks genetics play a small role. He then explains much more thoroughly the systematic approach he used to maximize his studying proficiency. I, in fact, think he was quite humble about his merits.

But if that's not the case, I wouldn't blame him either. He's human after all. So he is conditioned by his environment as much as we are. If I would be labeled as genius at 6, have 3 B.S. degrees by the age of 16, and pretty much everyone agreed I was "special", I think it's pretty expectable that I might end up believing that.

xyzzyz• 15 years ago

It is not easy to grow up being labeled as a genius. One day you realize that most of the people of your age are so far, far below your ability it's just sad. You try to help them, but everyone know it's not easy at all. All the work you've done to get to this level seems to be very natural for you after all these years, and you have no idea that most of the kids were not doing _anything_ in their childhoods. Then you got this feeling that all your "genius" skills came undeservedly and it's really depressing, because they constitute your person, and you really would like to believe that you got there by your own work, cause it does not feel fair otherwise.

To work out this cognitive dissonance, you start to look what you did differently than your peers and you notice that you were doing math (or cs, or electronics, or biology or whatever) as early as you remember, while your averagely performing mates from university only started doing something serious in university classes or maybe in high school. This feels like a pretty good explanation, especially when one takes into account a 10 000 hours rule, but being a rationalist (who you surely are), you cannot discard the impact of your genes, but as long as it is not measurable, you can believe it's small.

That's how you come to the state of mind when saying things similar to the quoted ones seems pretty natural and not at all out of touch with reality.

(I say this from my own experience, so it's easy for me to sympathize -- I'm not as brilliant as the guy from the article, but I'm getting two bachelors (math and cs) next year, by then being 20.)

palish2• 15 years ago

As a genius, I can attest to the fact that this is spot-on. Every time I look around, I go "Man, those poor people. Don't they realize what they've missed? They could have been doing math!"

Ok, tongue out of cheek. In all seriousness, I've repeatedly felt that whatever (minor) financial success I've had is pretty undeserved. I have a fairly nice career as a graphics programmer, and I worked on an extremely popular online videogame. And why did I get that opportunity? Well, as far as I can tell, dumb luck. I happened to decide in ~5th grade that I wanted to learn programming. By 9th grade, I was sleeping through class every day, then going home and teaching myself game/graphics programming all afternoon and all night. For years.

I happened to find it interesting. And people happen to currently value my experience from it. But it feels less like I'm a genius and more like I just got lucky. But my friends and family all have the impression that I'm some kind of genius or something, and if I had an ego, I'd probably start thinking of myself as one. But I know I'm not. I'm just a hard worker who was interested in a field that turned out to be valuable.

I occasionally play a certain online game, and I've been friends with someone on there for a couple years now. He's about my age, still lives with his mom, and isn't really doing anything with his life. But I can tell you for a fact he's just as intelligent as me, and just as capable. I feel so bad knowing that the only thing he probably has to look forward to is a job in construction.

Conversely, it's hard not to be... condescending... of certain people I see every day. They believe their opinion is so perfectly accurate, and that they're so capable, when every objective measurement would show the opposite. And so you wind up getting into a strange state of mind, where you feel you're somehow "better" than them. I try to resist feeling that way.

blackboxxx• 15 years ago

Andrew is stating a fact. I didn't catch even a wisp of arrogance in that statement. He's merely telling the truth.

mahyarm• 15 years ago

If someone has a great interest in something, finds the work energizing, has a goal, is organized and people around him always set the bar a little bit higher and are there to help, I can see how that can bring you most of the way there to finishing high school by 12. I can become a genius violinist if I had an all consuming drive to become one. It's that bloody motivation issue.

temphn• 15 years ago

He's trying to be self-deprecating there, and saying (I think incorrectly) that genetics plays only a small part. Genuinely curious, what do you think he should have said?

SkyMarshal• 15 years ago

What I wouldn't give for a TLDR. All I want to know is how his strategy for improving education diffs from Khan Academy, who I think is the frontrunner right now in that endeavor, without wading through the author's rant and a discussion on some kid's gaming habits.

dweekly• 15 years ago

This dude is my mentee as part of 20 under 20. He is super sweet, super humble, and super curious about the world in a way that is refreshing to see for someone so accomplished at his age. This "Zen mind is beginner's mind" mentality is a harbinger of success IMHO. <3

mvzink• 15 years ago

You know he's looking toward the future when he calls the Khan Academy videos "archaic" :P

seagaia• 15 years ago

I'm sure (if he hasn't already) he could definitely go to a few public schools (some of the rather worse ones, say in urban L.A. or something) to see how they work out. Might give him good ideas. It's a vital step to experience that stuff first hand.

zackattack• 15 years ago

Education is mostly about emotional communication. If you can communicate Emotional Space and Respect to someone and you can give them a compelling Emotional desire for why to learn something, and you consistently exemplify the skill, learning is very automatic. It happens in the animal kingdom all the time.

emit_time_n3rgy2• 15 years ago

Gaming has been addressed for years by others as it pertains to learning and the future. There are also others working in areas that are proving very useful.

(one of the best videos I've seen)

http://www.phibetaiota.net/2010/09/video-visions-of-the-game...

"Serious games"

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/imgd404x-c11/playable.ht...

http://www.gamesforchange.org

Child-driven education

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...

http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/

Music + hands-on creative work

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_543015...

There's an incredible story (inspiring & practical) of a boy without healthy legs gaining access to salvaged computers and free software to apply his graphics skills to pull his way out of the slums....it's less than 3/4 of the way through this speech by Eben Moglen called "Before and After IP: Ownership of Ideas in the 21st Century" http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/audio/DSG-CUNY-BeforeAndAfter...

I've been collecting a ton of related links and posting them at http://re-configure.org/drupal/node/33

emit_time_n3rgy2• 15 years ago

Russian president calls for World of Warcraft-like game for Russian history - http://dvice.com/archives/2011/07/russias-prez-wa.php

ap22213• 15 years ago

I worked in 'educational technology' for years trying to solve 'issues' in education, training, and general Human learning. We called the field advancing Human Potential.

During this time, we tried out all sorts of concepts, worked with world leaders and world class theorists and researchers. We built all sorts of systems, and products, simulators, interactive games, expert systems, individual tutors, and other things of blended nature. These products were built for governments, research institutes, and commercial companies. Some of the 'products' had empirical results that surprisingly showed that they were 'useful', too. However, there weren't ever any revolutions in education or learning or educational theory, while I was there.

I eventually dropped out from this field from burnout. Why? Because of the people. This area of interest seems to attract people with very similar personality traits. Reading this article and the subject reminds me of the type of people who want to 'solve' education. It is not at all unusual to work with people in this field who complete advance degrees while still in puberty. I worked with a guy who ended up the chair of mathematics at world-class university before he was 20. These are all 'geniuses', as they have been taught and trained to think. And, interestingly they all seem to clamor around this tall flag of solving education.

I believe the failure of this field is actually that most of these people running it are very 'left brain' analytical thinkers. They think that they can solve these very dynamic, chaotic educational systems by decomposition and reductionism. It's kind of funny actually. Smart people get addicted to being smart, and they want to encourage the use of the systems that gave them the personal 'high' to begin with.

sireat• 15 years ago

On one hand, I admire the guy for tackling such a worthwhile problem and also having accomplished so much so young.

On the other hand, I wonder if this may be the case of being extremely book smart and not so streetwise.

Why not wait till you finish your PhD at the young age of 22? You will be more mature by then and know quite a bit more.

If you already had built a working prototype(doesn't even have to be MVP) and experienced some sort of positive feedback, sure drop out.

Otherwise, continue working on your ideas in your spare time. Bill, Larry and Sergey only dropped out when they had something happening.

For those already in the workplace example of patio11 is very admirable.

The interview mentions that they are just getting started and are at least 6 months from a prototype. Unless Andrew has some sort of edge from his studies, this venture doesn't have any inherent advantages.

Disclaimer: I dropped out at 19 partially because I heard the PhD guys I was writing software for complaining so much about their progress. It took me 15 years to get back into school.

19 year-old Stanford Ph.D. dropout Andrew Hsu is Changing Education

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