Life In 19x19

Kind of like trying to say somebody is "1d at being funny" - how do you measure that?

Some pros (stand-up comedians) actually measured how many laughs from the audience, per minute, from various performers.
They did it to see how they compare with their colleagues/competitors.
( The top people could average something like 7 laughs per minute -- I forget the exact number -- for an hour or more -- that's very difficult to achieve, and a ton of work. )
Comedy stores would know who to book.
Naturally, you get some sort of distribution curve.
Re: Comedian,
Darrell Hammond's book
For movies, there's the gross from the box office, and online sales.
People can be quite ingenious to come up all kinds of measurements,
in their respective fields.
Most of the top people (comedians, at least) work very hard to get there.

There have the problem in a nutshell! Language training is suffering from just this at the moment. Companies want to be able to MEASURE the progress that students make (even over 20 or 30 hours of classes). In order to try to do that, they invent metrics (like the TOEIC test) to measure levels before and after the course. In order to show progress, the teacher needs to get them to practice the things that will be tested....EVEN IF that's not what people need to learn for theirjob (the whole reason for the classes!).

Take something very complex like language learning...and if you formalize it too much, the very essence of it slips away.

Maybe the same with Go?

Shako wrote:There have the problem in a nutshell! Language training is suffering from just this at the moment. Companies want to be able to MEASURE the progress that students make (even over 20 or 30 hours of classes). In order to try to do that, they invent metrics (like the TOEIC test) to measure levels before and after the course. In order to show progress, the teacher needs to get them to practice the things that will be tested....EVEN IF that's not what people need to learn for theirjob (the whole reason for the classes!).

Take something very complex like language learning...and if you formalize it too much, the very essence of it slips away.

Maybe the same with Go?

That is exactly what has happened to high school education in the USA!

EdLee wrote:

Kind of like trying to say somebody is "1d at being funny" - how do you measure that?

Some pros (stand-up comedians) actually measured how many laughs from the audience, per minute, from various performers.
They did it to see how they compare with their colleagues/competitors.
( The top people could average something like 7 laughs per minute -- I forget the exact number -- for an hour or more -- that's very difficult to achieve, and a ton of work. )

There was a post Civil War Congressman known as Private John Allen, who was known for his wit. His initial speech in Congress, in favor of establishing federal fish hatcheries, lasted around 2 1/2 minutes. According to the Congressional Record, it was interrupted by "Laughter", "Renewed laughter", and "Great laughter" 26 times.

Shako wrote:Take something very complex like language learning...and if you formalize it too much, the very essence of it slips away.

Maybe the same with Go?

Mrs. Edward Craster wrote:The centipede was happy quite, until a toad in fun
Said, 'Pray which leg goes after which?'
That work'd her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in a ditch, considering how to run.

With go we hardly know, as go teaching has hardly been formalized. Over the past two centuries or so, some aspects of go have been partially formalized, but they are generally considered advanced topics.

Bill Spight wrote:

Shako wrote:Take something very complex like language learning...and if you formalize it too much, the very essence of it slips away.

Maybe the same with Go?

Mrs. Edward Craster wrote:The centipede was happy quite, until a toad in fun
Said, 'Pray which leg goes after which?'
That work'd her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in a ditch, considering how to run.

With go we hardly know, as go teaching has hardly been formalized. Over the past two centuries or so, some aspects of go have been partially formalized, but they are generally considered advanced topics.

Oh GOOD! I didn't start playing too late then...phew!

DrStraw wrote:Not true. I was never a DDK. I did not get a rank at all until I entered my first tournament, about 10 months after starting to play. Before then I just played three game kadobans against each regular opponent as the club without thinking about rank. I only needed to be assigned one to determine what level I should enter the tournament as. Even after that I did not think about rank until the next tournament because we all returned and continued our kadobans.

You gave me an orgasm of an idea Kadobans seem to be more suitable for club play than the kyu-dan ranking system; this system works best in a school setting where there are instructors to supervise closely the student's progress. However, some school instructors may instead prefer to rate student's progress using a numerical averages system. In the case of Go said system can determine progress based on wins & losses and average margin of each victory or defeat.

I'll propose kadoban to my club president and see what he says. I am sure that he will accept, if he has not done so already.

tentano wrote:About Afrikaans, I just can't help but love a language which contains words like "hijsbakkie". It's a disrespectful and completely accurate description of what an elevator does. It's beautiful pragmatism.

"hoisting box" is so much easier to understand than "elevator", which only makes sense to people who know Latin.

Germanic languages tend to describe modern concepts in this manner. For instance, the German word for television, fernsehen, literally means "to see (from) far". Had English continued retaining its Germanic roots to the same degree as the other Germanic languages - instead of taking on a large Latin-based lexicon after the Norman invasion of 1066 - today television would be known by the word Feorrsīen, or " the Far-seeing".

Perhaps "liftcar" and "hoistbasket" are good alternatives to the word elevator in English.

tekesta wrote:

tentano wrote:About Afrikaans, I just can't help but love a language which contains words like "hijsbakkie". It's a disrespectful and completely accurate description of what an elevator does. It's beautiful pragmatism.

"hoisting box" is so much easier to understand than "elevator", which only makes sense to people who know Latin.

Germanic languages tend to describe modern concepts in this manner. For instance, the German word for television, fernsehen, literally means "to see (from) far". Had English continued retaining its Germanic roots to the same degree as the other Germanic languages - instead of taking on a large Latin-based lexicon after the Norman invasion of 1066 - today television would be known by the word Feorrsīen, or " the Far-seeing".

Perhaps "liftcar" and "hoistbasket" are good alternatives to the word elevator in English.

And we might call go steinclicken.