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PODCAST 5

EXPORTED - When to take notes

Justin Skycak (00:00) don’t take notes when you’re learning. no point, just work exercises. the nuance here is that when there is information that’s not part of reference material, you can’t go look it up after, you’re brainstorming something with someone or a thought occurs to you, and you don’t want to miss it, write it down.

Write it down, because otherwise you don’t have the reference material. There’s a big difference between these two things.

EXPORTED - The maker and the manager: you need both

Jason Roberts (00:00) Paul Graham wrote great essay that the maker, has to just get in the zone and think really, really hard about something where it could take hours sometimes to really get into the zone. Whereas,

the manager is like the email and the phone call, the meeting, and let me look this up and check this and just lots and lots of little tasks, both of these things are important, right? In life

and in business, you don’t get to just like, I’m just going to build stuff and then I’m not going to do these other things. Cause you, you get nothing and you can’t, if you spend all your time, just set up meetings and coordinating and stuff like nothing serious gets done. it’s like, gotta have both.

EXPORTED - Find your complement, someone who makes up for your weaknesses

Jason Roberts (00:00) It’s really important you find someone who’s like a complement so like you make up for each other’s weaknesses and shortcomings as opposed to you’re both like the same person. You have the same strength. That tends to not work. Right.

And I think that’s what makes really good relationships of any kind and marriage business partnerships, is that you have this complementary skill set and you appreciate what the other person can do. You’re like, thank God you’re doing this. Thank God. you know, and then you respect it and then you appreciate it and then you just like, I got this, you got that.

EXPORTED - What happens when you get pulled out of deep work

Jason Roberts (00:00) Once I’m like in the deep work, I resent.

being pulled out of it I don’t want to do the meeting. I don’t want to do the paperwork. I don’t want to return these emails. And even other people I like, it’s interesting stuff. It’s like, I’m like, damn it, I’m in the zone, you know? And then it’s like, I can’t.

get myself to focus, I have like this ADHD and I can’t lock in on something. And it’s sort of like for me, it’s almost like a day thing. Once you get in a certain mode for a day, it can be really hard to switch. Now, sometimes maybe it’s like, well, you go to lunch and you have this like break in the day and maybe you can reset. And some people are probably better at this than others. I struggle with it.

EXPORTED - Finding your team takes luck

Jason Roberts (00:00) any successful endeavor requires a great team of people. And getting the right

group of people who not only are individually highly capable, that you all kind of like each other, work together, and trust each other, and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes it just comes together and you’re like, damn, we just did it. You what I mean? You run into people who, their roommates from freshman year in college are their best friends for life. You’re like, that is just luck.

Sometimes the girl you date when you’re in eighth or ninth grade and you marry, she’s like the most amazing girl. was like, that is just luck, man.

EXPORTED (w revisions) - You can't give somebody responsibility without giving them control

Jason Roberts (00:00) You can’t give somebody responsibility for something without giving them control. Right? That’s not fair. And it’s just, it’s not reasonable.

Justin Skycak (00:09) you want somebody who you can hold responsible for the output of the team, right? And the only way to have that person is to give them control over the team that they build. There’s no way otherwise. That’s the only way.

EXPORTED - Trying to solve tomorrow's problems today is usually a waste of time

Jason Roberts (00:00) You cannot solve tomorrow’s problems today because you don’t really understand what those problems are, and you don’t even know if they’re real.

It’s mostly a waste of time. I’m not gonna say you can’t think at all about what the future might look like, but you got to be careful not to get caught going down that rabbit hole and spending too much time thinking that you can make all these predictions because you’re probably going to be wrong.

Or at least you’re going to be wrong about the relative importance. You kind of like, okay, here are all these things.

that were interesting or could be important. Let’s figure out what’s really the most important one, and let’s just kind of do that, and then we’ll pick our head up and go, okay, based on what we’ve learned from doing that, now we can talk about the next thing.

We all want to avoid problems and catastrophe. You want to try and get ahead of some of these things, but you just got to be careful about overestimating your ability to really pinpoint what they are. Cause what’ll happen is you’ll over-engineer things.

You came up with this vastly complex solution to a non-problem, to an imaginary problem.

(short) The importance of complementary skillsets

Jason Roberts (00:00) I can pretty good at compartmentalizing and what I mean is living in a state of denial about things that have to get done. And you know that fire is burning. And you’re just like, I’m just going to pretend it’s not burning.

You know, and you’re kind of thinking, you’re wondering to yourself, like, I wonder how long I can let this burn. it’s not great, right? I’m lucky in that I have Sandy, my wife and co-founder, because she is very operational.

just get shit done. like, all right, make a list, collect the data, execute good enough, done, bang, bang, bang.

She treats me a little bit like the mad scientist, like, OK, you go to lab. I’ll take care. I’ll run interference. But I will call you every once in while. And you’re going to have to do certain things.

she’s so good at that And I think that’s what makes really good relationships is that you have this complementary skill set and you appreciate what the other person can do. You’re like, thank God you’re doing this. Thank God.

EXPORTED (w revisions) - The meta-work is not the work

Jason Roberts (00:00) what are you doing? meta work like on a corporate environment where you cover your ass to show you’re doing stuff. Like, well, I’m writing these briefs I feel like there’s just a lot of brief writing.

Like, why do you spend half a day writing a fricking document?

I’ve always to bureaucracy and bullshit and meta work.

And it doesn’t impress me. I don’t give a shit. In fact, I’m annoyed.

The meta work just overwhelmed the process. And I think you see it a lot of companies.

The focus becomes that because

the politics and bureaucracy and it’s like nobody’s doing like one guy who’s actually doing anything. Everybody else is just

talking about who’s doing what and the plan and when this is going to do. meetings and approval And I can only talk about something for so long before we actually have to do it.

EXPORTED - If you don't keep people focused on the thing they're supposed to be doing, there will be a compounding of misalignment

Justin Skycak (00:00) Everyone’s excited

but their excitement is leading them to go off in all these different directions. there’s the compounding of misalignment. And you gotta be constantly keeping people focused on the thing they’re supposed to be doing. And if you don’t do that, then somebody is one degree off course, two degrees off course, and you didn’t correct them

for the few days. And then you look up and you’re like, wait, where, where are you? Like, why are you all the way over there? It’s like, well, you let them go that far without pulling them back in.

EXPORTED - Predicting start-up revenue early on is nonsense

Jason Roberts (00:00) you know, like when startups would go and try and raise venture capital and they have these pitch decks and they’d like in our growth chart and we’re going to do this. everybody knows this bullshit. The venture capital ists know it’s bullshit. You know, it’s bullshit. They kind of have to go through it just to, it’s just, that’s just part of the.

Justin Skycak (00:12) Yeah, the projecting revenue

like couple of years out from zero. We have zero right now. We’re going to pick up this many customers. Like, really? You can predict.

Jason Roberts (00:16) And we’re going to make a billion dollars.

Everybody’s like, great, okay, sounds

great. It’s like, is a big enough market, and then the profit margin and the cost of the, There’s big opportunity here. That’s all you need to say. But it’s nonsense because there’s just so much between that has to be done that’s just gonna dictate what’s gonna happen. You can’t make these predictions.

EXPORTED - Keep it simple stupid

Justin Skycak (00:00) You do need to think hard about the stuff that you’re doing, but you don’t want to make it more complex. You want to think hard about how do I make it simple so that I’m not putting a straight jacket on

Jason Roberts (00:12) Buddy of mine in my first startup, used to say like, you better be careful what code you write because going to be supporting it for the rest of your life. That is going to be a thing that you have to deal with.

And if you’re solving problems that aren’t real problems, now you have all this extra code that you’ve got to lug around that are putting constraints on these other solutions. And now it takes five times as long to build. So there’s just so many reasons.

to try to avoid caught up building stuff that doesn’t really need to be built and just focus on the really critical stuff that you know how to solve now.

EXPORTED - Everything takes longer than you think

Jason Roberts (00:00) my inability to really imagine all the conditional levels of complexity that are involved in this thing that has to get done.

And I know this about myself and I’m still always underestimating how long it takes to do stuff.

Justin Skycak (00:09) Yeah.

is kind of funny because,

on one hand, you wanna just focus your field of vision on what you’re doing right now. But then at the same time, when it comes to like, actually like, okay, realistically, how much work is this? How much is it gonna take?

The way I kind of think of it is like, you don’t always know exactly what are the things that you’re going to do after what you see in front of you, but Like historically, maybe what you see in front of you is maybe the first 30%, 40%, 50 % maybe. like, just put a, put an extra two X or.

2.5x factor on there, even though you don’t know exactly what it’s representing, it’s gonna be there in some way. You’ll figure out what it is later, but it is there.

Jason Roberts (00:45) In my case, buyback.

EXPORTED - Entrepreneurs need to be self-delusional

Jason Roberts (00:00) Entrepreneurs have to be sort of self-deluding. It’s the only way that you can get started on an actual project because if you knew the actual, was really gonna take, you wouldn’t do it. It’s just, oh my God. You’re like, it’s gonna take me two months, three months, max,

and then you get going. And then, of course, it takes 18 months. In for a dime, in for a dollar, you made enough progress, you’re excited, okay. You need delusional people sometimes at the helm just to get everybody.

You distort reality around you because you believe so strongly that something is possible. And it’s not only possible, it’s possible in a relatively short period of time. And then you get everybody moving in the right direction. If you’re going to finish it, you’re going to have to do that. And then a lot of times, once you start making enough progress and learning enough, you get enough momentum and everybody’s, OK, yeah, yeah, we got this. It’s going to take more work, but we’re in it. So you’ve got to have

that level of self

EXPORTED - More features means more customer problems

Jason Roberts (00:00) Every time you build new features to allow more control, understand that you’re going to open up more

potential problems because you’ve made the system more complex because there’s a surface area of things that are happening to the system has increased, and they’re always going to be disappointed because they want to do more than what you’ve even added. You’re never gonna make everybody happy. But of course you add more control the more people get confused and then you get more email support and you’re just like, ⁓ man why are they even doing that, you know?

EXPORTED - If everything is a priority, nothing is

Jason Roberts (00:00) If I what are your life goals? You’re like, I got 100 life goals. Okay, so basically you’re gonna do nothing. Because you can’t do everything. So you say, no, my goal is this. Have one or two priorities, maybe three. You get beyond a few priorities and then you have to spread your time and effort among them all so much that nothing’s

An overly complex product will confuse users

Jason Roberts (00:00) It’s like looking at Photoshop. You’re like, pfft.

I gotta take like a semester long course to understand how to use this, even get started. I mean there’s tons of software like this AutoCAD and 3D modeling and rendering and they’re all like that and you’re just like oh my god.

Because every feature you add is putting walls down. It’s making stuff more complex. New users come in and are intimidated. They can’t even get started, and it’s just not a beginner product. So now you open up space for a competitor to come in and have a slimmed downed

version of what you do and say, well, we do the really important 80 %, it has 20 % of the features. It’s like something like we’re video editing. It’s like Cap Cut instead of Adobe Premiere. It’s super powerful, but like I need to just cut this video in like 15 minutes. Well yeah it’s probably not the thing. So it’s just it’s all trade offs.

EXPORTED - You gotta get people working together. Some type of synchronization is critical.

Jason Roberts (00:00) you got to get people kind of.

working together rowing, you know, it’s like, how hard is it to keep these guys all pulling together? smaller person in the front is like, pull, pull, whatever. It’s like, do they really need that? I guess, yeah. Cause if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have that person, right? Cause it’s extra weight.

Or conductor in orchestra.

I don’t really know what they’re doing, but apparently they’re keeping everybody moving together and doing their part until everything syncs up and creates its effect. This seems to be required in human nature when you have multiple people working together type is critical.

EXPORTED - It's hard synchronizing people who are all working part-time or remote

Jason Roberts (00:00) This seems to be required in human nature when you have multiple people working together type is critical. when you’re working with people who are all working part-time or remote, it’s even harder than if they all show up to an office

and they kind of sort of can self coordinate. When they’re kind of doing this 10 hours a week and they’re working, they’re taking grad classes or working on a dissertation. I mean, it’s so easy for them to be like, well, what are we doing? You know, like do this, come

EXPORTED - You better be careful what code you write because you're going to be supporting it for the rest of your life

Jason Roberts (00:00) Buddy of mine in my first startup, used to say like, you better be careful what code you write because going to be supporting it for the rest of your life.

And if you’re solving problems that aren’t real problems, now you have all this extra code that you’ve got to lug around that are putting constraints on these other solutions. It’s like, oh, jeez, but there’s the thing, and it’s going to impact this thing. And now it takes five times as long to build. So there’s just so many reasons.

to try to avoid caught up building stuff that doesn’t really need to be built and just focus on the really critical stuff that you know how to solve now.

EXPORTED - Smart people can invent an infinite number of imaginary problems

Jason Roberts (00:00) there’s just so many reasons.

to try to avoid caught up building stuff that doesn’t really need to be built and just focus on the really critical stuff that you know how to solve now.

smart people can invent an infinite number of problems themselves. They can really and they can make a great job convincing you and themselves that this absolutely has to be done. and I think sometimes smart people struggle

setting limitations, constraints on their own hubris and their ability to just think through anything. you just have to remember the times that you did that and you screwed it up

It's a fantasy to believe that kids will naturally fall in love with school

Jason Roberts (00:00) of the problems is is there’s a little bit of a fantasy that parents and some teachers play into. It’s like, just want them to fall in love with the subject.

Little kids or younger kids are enthusiastic about most things, especially if their parents are excited about it too and engaging with them. But you’re talking about middle school and up. It’s just not, it’s not a reliable thing.

Justin Skycak (00:18) Most of the time, that’s not going to work. If you are being held to account for kids learning the material, that’s not the strategy to lean

Like try to make that happen

for the kids who are receptive to it, but just understand that most kids are not going to be like that. So you have to actually focus on the mechanics of incentivizing people to do work. And a lot of kids maybe they go into software and later realize, Hey, math is actually pretty cool. They, might realize this later downstream. And they’re going to have to go through a little bit of, I don’t love it at the moment.

in order to get to a place where they do have a greater connection to it.

Jason Roberts (00:49) Yeah, it’s just

Gamification gets kids excited about drills and practice

Jason Roberts (00:00) I would try and gamify everything that I did when I would teach and coach. So I remember when I would my son Colby when he was five, six, seven years old in soccer,

I want to take advantage of every minute because we only practice like once a week or maybe twice a week like for an hour. So what are you gonna get done? It’s hard to get anything done.

I want a ball at everyone’s foot the entire practice. We’re going to be doing stuff. I’m going explain as quickly as I can to get it across, and then I’m going to quickly turn it into a game to make it fun. And I would come up with a cool name like Zombie Attack.

And they would, I want to play Zombie Attack, right? You give it a cool name, and it worked. And it was a great way to get the most out of them. So it’s make things as fun as and as engaging as you can.

Incentives can work overnight to correct kids' behavior

Jason Roberts (00:00) So I remember in second grade, we get a conversation or something from his teacher.

He walks up and he says, you know, Colby is really having a hard time and he’s really being disruptive or he’s not following directions. And so then he goes, so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna send home like a

behavior card where it’s like seven categories and I’m gonna rank them a one through five and so the first few days it’s like threes and twos. And Sandy’s like, okay if it’s all fours and fives, I’ll give you a dollar.

Within the week,

He’s racking up a dollar almost every day. And then it’s like a month or five weeks go by and then we didn’t get the card I’m like, what’s going on with the card? And so with the teachers, they’re walking the kids. So he kind of came up to us and he’s like, no, it’s good. It’s fine.

No need anymore. That was end of it. But that incentive system made all the difference

A little gamification goes a long way

Justin Skycak (00:00) It’s funny how minimal these incentives and gamifications have to be to work.

Like kids have imaginations, right? You can say something and they will run with it. And it’s just the idea of framing the thing that you’re doing. So when it comes to math,

Jason Roberts (00:08) It doesn’t take

Justin Skycak (00:14) when we talk about gamifying, we don’t mean you have to make everything into like an actual video game where everything is on the screen. Like you have a joystick and stuff doing math. You just need a little dose that makes it kind of interesting in that sense. Right.

Jason Roberts (00:30) You’re

framing it as a game. This is supposed to be fun. They’re like oh, so it isn’t work. It’s a game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a game. They’re like, oh, OK, game. And as long as it’s gamey enough, then it’s a game. It may not be the best game, but it’s a

When you train for speed, you get fast

Jason Roberts (00:00) When Colby and the original cohort of Math academy students

in seventh grade,

I was teaching calculus.

I would introduce a concept, do a couple on the board, and then everybody on the board. And everything was through a competition.

And it was about speed as well as getting it. And immediately they loved it.

They love being up at the board because they didn’t have to sit down. They’re all like move around and

you know, doing the thing. And of course, they enjoy competing.

We had a lot of people would come visit cause couldn’t believe it. I tell them and they’re like, you’re doing what?

I said, yeah, seventh graders are doing calculus. They’re like, And I remember this friend of mine, Gary, who was a mathematician at Caltech.

And he’s watching it and afterwards he’s just like, that was incredible.

But what’s really amazing is how fast they are. And I said, well, Gary, when you train for speed, you get fast.

The incentive structure was about winning the game, and they got really, really good and really, really fast.

High school is a pressure cooker

Jason Roberts (00:00) middle school, kids can be really motivated, really excited to do things. There’s a lot to just do almost anything. Seventh grade, eighth grade, it starts to wane. You get to high school, they’re really…

And One of the problems that was really frustrating about high school is how the system is set up. They have a lot of pressure on them In the US, it’s about like,

you got to take advanced courses or AP courses and you got to get A’s because you got to have this great GPA. Because if you don’t have that, there’s no way you’re going to get into a decent college.

And then you gotta be in all of these extracurriculars and you can’t just be in them, no, you gotta be the student class president.

The thing is though, that creates a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. And then it becomes, I just got to get through this stuff. I don’t have time to love anything anymore.

Because any time there’s stress on you, or pressure on you, it’s hard to enjoy stuff.

It just takes the fun out of everything. Once you get to high school, it really gets to that.

Parenting reality: motivation, incentives, and follow-through

Jason Roberts (00:00) For younger kids who are not

wanting to do Math Academy every day or you know as frequently,

you need to create incentive structures that they feel okay

Find what they’re excited about and set a nice carrot for them.

You find something that’s personally important to them, that they want, and you use that as an incentive to get them to doing it. Because they’re kids, they’re like, I wanna play band, and then by a month in, they don’t wanna practice anymore.

Or I want to be on soccer, but they don’t want to go to soccer practice because they want to play video games with their friends. Like, no, you’re on the soccer team, you got to do soccer practice. Even things that are fun, that they said they wanted to do, their motivation starts to flag because they’re kids.

As parents, you don’t always get to just be like Mr. Nice Guy. You have to say, like, no you’re doing this.

Now you can try and make it as painless as possible by setting up incentives. Like they have to understand, I pretty much have to do this anyway. But now I got this other incentive. You kind of got this sense of a stick

in the background. I mean, I’m going to have to do it, but I have this little carrot I’m excited about. So let’s focus more on the carrot.

Playing the game: when students chase easy A's instead of challenging themselves

Jason Roberts (00:00) of the problems that was really frustrating about high school is just how the system is set up. They have a lot of pressure on them

to get into a decent college.

Their stress is too high for them to be able to fall in love with some of this stuff.

I remember talking to some parents before Math Academy was in the high school, and I was

talking about, we could do a whole science thing and this and they’re like, listen, Jason, these kids have all these AP classes, they have all this stuff and they don’t have the time for all that.

And that started happening to me in the Math Academy program in the high school. We started to see kids who were good at it and liked it. It was just the pressure because their Math Academy classes were typically their hardest were like, what AP classes can I take to get an A? We had some kids who would switch out of Eurisko and just take AP Computer Science for the second semester because it was a joke, comparative they could just get an A.

They weren’t going to learn would get an easy A. And these are a couple of kids who went to MIT and stuff. They’re just like, I’m playing the game, man.

The most mathematically gifted student I ever worked with still needed to be pushed to learn calculus.

Justin Skycak (00:00) The most gifted kid that I’ve ever worked with, he was actually resistant to learning calculus around seventh or eighth grade.

had kind of learned a lot of arithmetic on his own and I had found some puzzles online that he wanted to work on.

And was a good use of time at the time. Eventually, you get to a point you’re not really progressing a whole lot in your mathematical development. I mean, you’re

way ahead compared to grade level, but like at some point you gotta make the leap.

Like there’s levels of math that you have to climb in order to just get further along in the talent domain in order to unlock new things for you to do.

Adults think like that. Kids don’t think like that cause kids don’t have the longer perspective. They don’t know what the long game is. They haven’t seen the long game play out.

And so what ended up pushing this kid over into okay, fine, I’ll learn calculus was that

he wanted to go take college level math courses, like in ninth grade. And so I was talking to him and his parents like, yeah, he can totally do that.

Problem is though, if he doesn’t know calculus, then not only is he going to struggle in these courses,

they’re not even going to let him into these courses if he doesn’t have the five on the AP Calc BC exam.

The big thing was getting his parents on board with it because if the parents on kid’s going to be on board one way or another.

The interesting part is once he learned all the calculus stuff, calculus became one of the things that he really enjoyed.

And now today, I still ⁓ work with him every other week.

He’s gotten through a lot of undergrad math, and so he’s actually sinking his teeth into research,

working university mathematician.

And there’s like bunch of derivatives being tossed around.

And it’s in this area that he was resisting back in seventh or eighth grade, and he’s having the time of his life right now. And if we had not pushed him through this segment of the journey that he was resistant to, he would not be doing what he’s doing right now.

Short 20 - Schools maximize for bureaucratic convenience

Jason Roberts (00:00) A lot of public schools, if you get a D or an F in a school, they will still promote you to next course. I couldn’t believe when I first heard that when I was talking to a high school math teacher in the

Pasadena school district. It’s just like, what’s the point? If they don’t know Algebra 1, why are you sending them to Algebra 2? It’s just bureaucratic convenience. Move them along. Kid can’t read in first grade, move them to second grade. Still can’t read, the third grade. They just do it.

Bureaucracies really maximize convenience. And they’re just things that work out on their their plan, or whatever. And now if you come in and you say, my fifth grader should be doing algebra or whatever.

They’re going to be, uh no. What they won’t say is that’s a massive headache for us, and we don’t want to do it. So we’re going to come up with whatever reason we can to prevent that from happening because we don’t want to deal with the headache.

They do not want to do extra work. Nobody really wants to do extra work, but I tell you, the schools really don’t want to do it. And the teachers themselves, they got like my union, I don’t have to do this. And the principal’s like, I can’t make them do because the union and the bureaucratic and it’s a nightmare. So even if you could come to them and you say,

Well, can my daughter test into algebra? But if your daughter scored like a 97%, they’re like, oh, they did miss 3%. Don’t mind the fact that we promote people with an F to the next grade. They don’t know 3%. I’ve heard that. It’s like 93%, 95%, and they would not allow them.

Every once in a while you run into one teacher, one principal, school who’s like really open to it, but that’s super rare. It’s really frustrating.

The most important thing that parents can do is encourage their kids to find what they're good at and lean into it

Jason Roberts (00:00) The great thing about life is we’re all different, and we all have our things that come easy for us. We get some things for free and then we get stuff we have to work for. And part of life is figuring out what those things are.

It’s tough when kids are not really particularly stand out in anything, and they’re trying to figure out who they are. And it’s kind of tough because I don’t have anything to build an identity on that I can be really proud of. It doesn’t always have to be a competitive thing, but it’s just something.

The most important things that parents can do is encourage their kids to do stuff, to try things, especially things they think, I think you would like this. I think you might be good at It’s kind of scattershot when they’re really young. They just do everything up through 11 or so.

And they eventually kind of will find something.

and become skilled and leveling up in something and developing a sense of pride and a sense of accomplishment and success.

Kids need adults to keep them on the rails towards their goals when the going gets tough

Jason Roberts (00:00) That’s why it’s so important for adults who can look ahead and say, look kid, I know you want to mess around this thing, but I know where you’re going, and I know what it takes to get there. And if you just guide the student to that point, they’ll be

vastly happier, vastly more successful, really realize their potential.

Justin Skycak (00:16) Let them find the things that they’re interested, don’t necessarily like push them like hardcore into things that they have no interest or no gift. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jason Roberts (00:24) that always backfires that always backfires

and the kids just give it up with piano or something your parents made him do it and then as soon as they’re old enough you’re like I am done I’m ever touching piano the rest of my life you know

Justin Skycak (00:33) Yeah.

But if your kid gravitates towards something that they really like doing net positive in their life.

and especially if they show a gift for it, they have some kind of like big advantage where this could really be a massive thing in the rest of their life.

Like you can’t let them quit at the slightest sign of difficulty. Kids sometimes will do that or like they love this thing until it gets a little hard and then they’re like, ah, I just want to stay in easy land. Part of supporting the kid means helping them get through those phases of the journey

that may not be the most enjoyable.

Don't let kids quit at the slightest sign of difficulty

Justin Skycak (00:00) if your kid gravitates towards something that they really like doing net positive in their life.

and especially if they show a gift for it, they have some kind of like big advantage where this could really be a massive thing in the rest of their life.

Like you can’t let them quit at the slightest sign of difficulty. Kids sometimes will do that or like they love this thing until it gets a little hard and then they’re like, ah, I just want to stay in easy land. Part of supporting the kid means helping them get through those phases of the journey

that may not be the most enjoyable.

PODCAST 4

EXPORTED - What you cannot create, you do not understand

Speaker 2 (00:00) In software, just importing a solution from the library and saying I imported this model and I ran it. “now I’m a machine learning researcher engineer.” Like, no, no, no, you can’t just use the off the shelf. Like you can’t just use the, the theorem and wield the theorem and say, “now I am all powerful.” You actually have to go code from scratch, re-derive the result

from the bottom up to really understand the mechanics of what is it. It’s not enough to just take it off the shelf and use it. You need to know what went into building this thing.

EXPORTED - Don't let talent become a crutch

Speaker 2 (00:00) You don’t want to let your natural gift or talent turn into a crutch. The moment you just rely on it and stop developing other parts of your game, that’s the moment when you start hitting like a really sharp asymptote, right? It reminds me of, in the original Pasadena program, oddly enough, sometimes it was the sharpest

sixth graders who could do the most work in their head, who would struggle the most a year later because they were so resistant to writing anything down. They were like, no, I don’t need pencil and paper. I just do all this in my head.

Their outsized working memory capacity became a crutch. They can only solve problems that they can immediately, like entirely fit in their working memory without usage of paper and pencil. That came back to bite them really fast.

EXPORTED - SAT problem solving skills can be enumerated and practiced

Speaker 2 (00:00) Problem solving is like this, nebulous thing that everyone says it’s on the SAT. Like you got to get the kids to, think critically, to problem solve their way. how do we teach that? But once you, once you start drilling down into

what do the kids have to do? You realize that it all comes down to these skills that you can enumerate explicitly. And what’s more, you can arrange them in a knowledge graph. as a course. It’s a body of well-connected knowledge, hierarchical, just like anything else. so when people

refer to like, ⁓ the kid needs to learn problem solving, need to learn to think critically. just, there’s this whole body of knowledge that they just haven’t gotten, but it can be enumerated exhaustively.

The knowledge graph trades student work for instructor work

Speaker 2 (00:00) The knowledge graph,

it’s this trick that allows you to trade off student work for instructor work. Instead of having the student go through this hodgepodge of problems and hopefully infer all the structure, and just have them grind through a large enough volume that they can infer. What you do is have the system,

figure this all out behind the scenes. It doesn’t mean that there’s less work that has to happen, but there’s less work for the student. We have to do more of the work, but that’s the trick. And we can do our work at scale.

Strengthening your weak points is a force multiplier

Speaker 3 (00:00) I came in very, very little engineering background.

I had a strength in mathy coding, but until then I had just leaned into that so much that I never developed the rest of my coding abilities. And that was a severe weakness. But the silver lining of these severe weaknesses is once you shore them up, then you become so much more capable on so many more fronts.

It wasn’t fun realizing just how lacking I was on the software engineering side of things as opposed to the quant. But once I just dug in and leveled it up, suddenly there’s all sorts of things that became available to me that I was able to start working on that I wouldn’t have anticipated.

If you can't figure out a test problem in minutes, you're toast

Justin Skycak (00:00) When you’re actually talking about solving concrete problems in the format of like a math test standardized test competition test,

justin 4 1 (00:00) When you’re actually talking about solving concrete problems in the format of like a math test standardized test competition test,

Justin Skycak (00:08) you have to be familiar with this class of problems that you’re trying to solve. Cause there’s just so much contextual information about that specific kind of problem and what type of methods will unlock it. you’re not going to invent them on the spot in a minute or two minutes or five minutes

justin 4 1 (00:08) you have to be familiar with this class of problems that you’re trying to solve. Cause there’s just so much contextual information about that specific kind of problem and what type of methods will unlock it. You’re not going to invent them on the spot in a minute or two minutes or five minutes

Justin Skycak (00:28) Yeah. You don’t have the time to approach it like a, like a research problem.

justin 4 1 (00:28) Yeah. You don’t have the time to approach it like a, like a research problem

Justin Skycak (00:32) or even like a take-home If you can’t figure it out in a couple of minutes, you’re

justin 4 1 (00:32) or even like a take-home If you can’t figure it out in a couple of minutes, you’re

You can explain anything if you break it into small enough steps

Speaker 2 (00:00) You can explain anything if you break it a small step, to do too much. It’s usually they’re trying to take too big of a jump and then people just fall off. It’s like, you know, I used to rather than stairs, I used to think of it as like rocks placed across like a creek or something. And it’s like, okay, well, if they’re, three inches apart than grandma can do it. If it’s like eight inches, it’s like, well, you know, my mom and dad can do it. Okay, now it’s

a foot and a half, it’s like, well, I can do it and stuff. But now it’s good point where it’s like, well, my son can do it. Three feet, you know, it’s like, that’s what happens. It’s like, only super gifted, brilliant people can do because the pedagogy is so bad and the jumps are so big, you need to need someone who could do a standing broad jump of nine feet to make And it’s like, OK, why rather than writing textbooks that have these

six and eight and 10 feet jumps every two or three pages. And it takes them incredible mathematical aptitude to make those jumps. Otherwise they’re just like, man, I just, I don’t know. I’m like falling into the river and I’m floating down the creek and like, wait, this

Building courses at the world-class level

Speaker 2 (00:00) One thing that I always, would say, this is what I think we need out of this course is

it needs to be at the level of what you would see at Harvard or MIT or Stanford or whatever. You don’t want someone to say, well, you know, that thing at Math Academy, I mean, you know, it’s just not bad. mean, it’s just kind of And so, you know, one thing I’d ask you to do when I we first created our

university level courses, linear algebra and multivariables, like go look, what can you find? What are they doing? If you can see any published final exams or syllabi from these institutions, what are they covering?

What’s the superset of the commonality, right?

So we always say like, we can reinvent a lot, but we do not exist in a vacuum. We exist world

where things are done a certain way and people have certain understandings and expectations. And if you drift too far off that, then people just do not know how to think about what your product is or what you’re doing. And it just becomes so much ⁓ friction in crossing that, it’s just, it can cause the product to fail.

You don't learn robust code until it fails

Justin Skycak (00:00) What’s really funny, the learning curve happens, then you deploy something and it blows Yeah. All of sudden all these errors start happening down, emails are coming. And then that was a whole nother learning curve of how to write bulletproof code. Because stuff blowing up.

justin 4 2 (00:00) What’s really funny, the learning curve happens, then you deploy something and it blows Yeah. All of sudden all these errors start happening down, emails are coming. And then that was a whole nother learning curve of how to write bulletproof code. Because stuff blowing up.

Justin Skycak (00:15) It’s so stressful. It’s such a horrible experience. All these emails, nobody’s got tasks, this thing’s And so then you start going through the process of learning how to write code that won’t fall down, that’s logging everything. Cause then like what happened?

justin 4 2 (00:15) It’s so stressful. It’s such a horrible experience. All these emails, nobody’s got tasks, this thing’s wrong. And so then you start going through the process of learning how to write code that won’t fall down, that’s logging everything. Cause then like what happened?

Justin Skycak (00:28) are how to alert us.

justin 4 2 (00:28) are how to alert us.

Justin Skycak (00:30) you don’t realize things like cascading failures one thing fails, it causes another thing to fail. You don’t realize the magnitude of a screw up that can happen just from one small thing. And so you think like, well, I’ll just make things not break

justin 4 2 (00:30) You don’t realize that there’s things like cascading failures like one thing fails, it causes another thing to fail. You don’t realize the magnitude of a screw up that can happen just from one small thing. And so you think like, well, I’ll just make things not break.

Justin Skycak (00:45) And that’s the first step, but then there’s another step like, okay, what if something does break? we need to limit the breaking and its scope, cause just something’s going to break at some point, even if you’re as careful as possible.

justin 4 2 (00:45) And that’s the first step, but then there’s another step like, okay, what if something does break? we need to limit the breaking and its scope, cause just something’s going to break at some point, even if you’re as careful as possible.

Justin Skycak (00:58) or somebody is gonna run into some scenario that you just never thought would have ever happened, or somebody’s data is gonna be corrupted and then you gotta make sure that that doesn’t screw up with other people. so there’s just lots I guess more and more advanced sort of error handling and writing this kind of robust code.

justin 4 2 (00:58) or somebody is gonna run into some scenario that you just never thought would have ever happened, or somebody’s data is gonna be corrupted and then you gotta make sure that that doesn’t screw up with other people. there’s just lots I guess more and more advanced sort of error handling and writing this kind of robust code.

Justin Skycak (01:15) I mean, that’s why it’s good to start small and then like organically. Cause then the, these skills and tools and processes and everything can evolve over time so that

justin 4 2 (01:15) mean, that’s why it’s good to start small and then like organically. Cause then the, these skills and tools and processes and everything can evolve over time so that

Justin Skycak (01:28) when you do have a larger scale, it’s not like, no, what do we do now? It’s like, it’s just % bigger than it was.

justin 4 2 (01:28) when you do have a larger scale, it’s not like, no, what do we do now? It’s like, it’s just % bigger than it was.

The biggest growth happens when someone trusts you with something

Justin Skycak (00:00) the biggest growth happens when somebody says, here, you take care of it. And you’re like, oh, shit. yeah. was much right. I kind of felt like you just gave me code baby, this robot to take care of. And you’re like, don’t kill it. Like, trust you.

justin 4 2 (00:00) the biggest growth happens when somebody says, here, you take care of it. And you’re like, oh, shit. yeah. was much right. I kind of felt like you just gave me code baby, this robot to take care of. you’re like, don’t kill it. Like, trust you.

Justin Skycak (00:18) I mean, I did not study computer science in college. So I didn’t really have any sort of background in this. So was just learning the hard way, right? School of hard knocks. just, all right, crap, code blew up. Well, I guess they don’t really teach that a whole lot in computer science programs production code is where you learn.

justin 4 2 (00:18) I mean, I did not study computer science in college. So I didn’t really have any sort of background in this. So was just learning the hard way, right? School of hard knocks. just, all right, crap, code blew up. Well, I guess they don’t really teach that a whole lot in computer science programs production code is where you learn.

Skip bottom-up learning and you’re just cargo-culting machine learning

alex 4 2 (00:00) With this machine learning course, want people to do gradient descent by hand so it really gets under their skin.

Justin Skycak (00:00) with this machine learning course. want people to do gradient descent by hand. So it really gets onto their skin.

alex 4 2 (00:05) you actually come to code something like that, you know exactly what’s going on. It’s very easy to sort of look at a formula, create like a Python script, which is like 30 lines long. It kind of gives you an answer. It’s like, don’t really know what’s going on here.

Justin Skycak (00:05) you actually come to code something like that, you know exactly what’s going on. It’s very easy to sort of look at a formula, create like a Python script, which is like 30 lines long. It kind of gives you an answer. It’s like, don’t really know what’s going on here.

alex 4 2 (00:18) You know, people kind of the top down method of becoming machine learning engineers and never really did the bottom up part. So they kind of vaguely know what gradient descent is, but not really. And that’s not a good position to be in if you really want to make kind of like cutting edge or pushing the boundaries on things.

Justin Skycak (00:18) know, people that kind of went the top down method of becoming machine learning engineers and never really did the bottom up parts. They can’t vaguely know what gradient descent is, but not really. And that’s not a good position to be in. If you really want to make kind of like cutting edge technology or pushing the boundaries on things.

alex 4 2 (00:35) So yes, it is a necessary evil to kind of go through those painful calculations by

Justin Skycak (00:35) So yes, it is a necessary evil to kind of go through those painful calculations by

alex 4 2 (00:42) It’s like, dude, like now, you know, what I know you didn’t love it, but now you’ve mastered it. You know, intuition through repetition.

Justin Skycak (00:42) It’s like, dude, like now, you know, what I know you didn’t love it, but now you’ve mastered it. You know, intuition through repetition.

alex 4 2 (00:49) That’s where you learn. You develop that intuition and then you can get the abstractions stuff all fall into place. But if you try and skip the concrete examples, skip the repetitions, and go straight to the abstraction formulas, you’re like cargo cult

Justin Skycak (00:49) That’s where you learn. You develop that intuition and then you can get the abstractions stuff all fall into place. But if you try and skip the concrete examples, skip the repetitions, and go straight to the abstraction formulas, you’re just like cargo cult

math, you’re just parroting stuff. It’s like, they can’t really solve anything.

alex 4 2 (01:04) math, you’re just parroting stuff. It’s like, they can’t really solve anything.

Why you need to do gradient descent by hand

alex 4 2 (00:00) With this machine learning course, want people to do gradient descent by hand so it really gets under their skin.

you actually come to code something like that, you know exactly what’s going on. It’s very easy to sort of look at a formula, create like a Python script, which is like 30 lines long. It kind of gives you an answer. It’s like, don’t really know what’s going on here.

You know, people kind of the top down method of becoming machine learning engineers and never really did the bottom up part. So they kind of vaguely know what gradient descent is, but not really. And that’s not a good position to be in if you really want to make kind of like cutting edge or pushing the boundaries on things.

So yes, it is a necessary evil to kind of go through those painful calculations by

The knowledge graph makes sure students are ready to learn each new topic, minimizing friction

Justin Skycak (00:00) The great thing about having a knowledge graph is that it’s a very strict implementation of mastery learning. We don’t let you do topic X unless you have mastered or at least proficient in all of the prerequisites for topic X. You have to have demonstrated that. Now, as curriculum designers, especially when we’re looking at some of these test prep topics.

justin 4 1 (00:00) great thing about having a knowledge graph is that it’s a very strict implementation of mastery learning. We don’t let you do topic X unless you have mastered or at least proficient in all of the prerequisites for topic X. you have to have demonstrated that. Now, as curriculum designers, especially when we’re looking at some of these test prep topics.

alex 4 1 (00:00) great thing about having a knowledge graph is that it’s a very strict implementation of mastery learning. We don’t let you do topic X unless you have mastered or at least proficient in all of the prerequisites for topic X. you have to have demonstrated that. Now, as curriculum designers, especially when we’re looking at some of these prep topics,

Justin Skycak (00:21) where I think is really powerful is it allows you to kind of include all those really subtle prerequisites that could easily slip under the radar. But if you’re just analyzing these problems really carefully, so that’s a really important prerequisite. I’m gonna make sure that that is a prerequisite of this topic, which means you know the student is prepared with all the necessary prerequisites before they even see the topic.

justin 4 1 (00:21) what I think is really powerful is it allows you to kind of include all of those really subtle prerequisites that could easily slip under the radar. But if you’re just analyzing these problems really carefully, so that’s a really I’m gonna make sure that that is a prerequisite of this topic, which means you know the student is prepared with all the necessary prerequisites before they even see the topic.

alex 4 1 (00:21) what I think is really powerful is it allows you to kind of include all of those really subtle prerequisites that could easily slip under the radar. But if you’re just analyzing these problems really carefully, so that’s a really I’m gonna make sure that that is a prerequisite of this topic, which means you know the student is prepared with all the necessary prerequisites before they even see the topic.

justin 4 1 (00:45) Another thing, of course, just by simply enumerating all the prerequisites, you can say to yourself, well,

alex 4 1 (00:45) thing, of course, just, just by simply enumerating all the prerequisites, you can say to yourself, well,

Justin Skycak (00:45) thing, of course, just, just by simply enumerating all the prerequisites, you can kind say to yourself, well,

alex 4 1 (00:50) hang on, this topic has got 15 prerequisites. That’s way too much. That’s cognitive overload. Huge issue right there. This needs to be split up, organized in a different way. So having that information just in front of you allows you to take all the things we know about the science of learning into account, incorporate all those sort of subtle prerequisites so that the student is not struggling at any point.

Justin Skycak (00:50) hang on, this topic has got 15 prerequisites. That’s way too much. That’s cognitive overload. Huge issue right there. This needs to be split up, organized in a different way. So having that information just in front of you allows you to take all the things we know about the science of learning into account, incorporate all those sort of subtle prerequisites so that the student is not struggling at any point.

justin 4 1 (00:50) Hang on, this topic’s got 15 prerequisites. That’s way too much. That’s cognitive overload, huge issue right there. This needs to be split up, organized in a different way. So having that information just in front of you allows to take the things we know about the science of learning into incorporate all those sort of subtle prerequisites so that the student is not struggling at any point.

Superficial knowledge of a topic can get you quick wins, but you will eventually hit a wall

Speaker 1 (00:00) One sort of temptation of the top down is, is it gives almost like a perception of expertise, a perception of skill, of familiarity with the problem that you can talk a good game.

I’ve been fooled a number of times by people because like, I want to believe that they’re good. Cause I don’t want to want to spend all this time digging in and testing them. And I was like, Oh yeah. So, you know, this and they, they use all the right buzzwords and they talk about the right methodology and the right libraries and the right frameworks. And that they talk knowingly and as if they have battle scars or whatever know, how you develop complex systems and quality software. and it’s, really like talking good game.

Because you You read some thought pieces by the area, right? So you get this sort of vibe or the sort of the language of the domain, who and what’s what and what’s cool and what’s not, what are people excited about? What are the important results? And, you could talk to somebody who’s an expert for 20, 30 minutes, like, oh, this guy knows his stuff.

Yeah, yeah, we should talk to him. It turns out it was an inch deep. But it gives you a quick payoff, It impresses people around you. might get you job. might get you grant maybe or research support or whatever environment you’re But then again, you run out gas. being able to make progress.

The Cognitive Limit on Topic Prerequisites

alex 4 2 (00:00) We have direct prerequisites, which are, in the knowledge graph, they’re sort of like, you know, like it’s like one edge connecting the topic to its its prerequisites.

Justin Skycak (00:00) we have direct prerequisites, which are in the knowledge graph. They’re sort of like, you know, like it’s like one edge connecting the topic to its its prerequisites.

justin 4 2 (00:00) we have direct prerequisites, which are in the knowledge graph. They’re sort of like, you know, like it’s like one edge connecting the topic to its its prerequisites.

alex 4 2 (00:07) in terms of direct prerequisites, I usually say that three or four is probably I start getting feeling uncomfortable when it’s anything more than that.

Justin Skycak (00:07) in terms of direct prerequisites, I usually say that three or four is probably I start getting feeling uncomfortable when it’s anything more than that.

justin 4 2 (00:07) in terms of direct prerequisites, I usually say that three or four is probably I start getting feeling uncomfortable when it’s anything more than that.

alex 4 2 (00:14) It’s like, this is, this is feeling like cognitive overload.

Justin Skycak (00:14) It’s like, this is, this is feeling like cognitive overload.

justin 4 2 (00:14) It’s like, this is, this is feeling like cognitive overload.

alex 4 2 (00:18) You know what’s interesting is that you said three to four prerequisites. I mean,

Justin Skycak (00:18) You know what’s interesting is that you said three to four prerequisites. mean,

justin 4 2 (00:18) You know what’s interesting is that you said three to four prerequisites. mean,

alex 4 2 (00:23) when you look working memory literature, somebody can hold about chunks of information in working memory. about your capacity.

Justin Skycak (00:23) when you look working memory literature, somebody can hold about chunks of information in working memory. about your capacity.

justin 4 2 (00:23) when you look working memory literature, somebody can hold about chunks of information in working memory. about your capacity.

The SAT’s Vast Possibilities and Narrow Reality

Speaker 2 (00:00) Based on the SAT, based on all these foundational skills, they can be pulled together in so many different You can do the calculation. Let’s say you have like 100

subskills, 200 subskills, and you’re computing how many different combinations of three or four of those subskills, and you get an astronomically large number. Well, there’s no way that we’re gonna hit all of these combinations. But once you actually look at the exam and you see these combinations that show up over and over again, it’s a much, much smaller space.

It’s not this astronomically large number. It’s a large number, but like you can do it. If you’re willing to put in some elbow grease can take even a student who’s not particularly mathematically

gifted, can get them to fill in a lot of these gaps that a lot of genius students are just kind of inferring on the fly. You can make that explicit for them and scaffold them through that process and get them on that.

PODCAST 3

The importance of "force of will"

Jason Roberts (00:00) Anytime you wanna do something that’s outside the system, that doesn’t already have sort of a infrastructure and a thing in place, it really comes down to a force of will.

Because whatever idea you have, like, this is going to be this cool new thing, and here’s all the benefits. And that may be true, but there going to be so many obstacles. And frankly, people that are going to try and slow you down stop you. They’re going to try to derail you.

Try to pull people along with you

Jason Roberts (00:01) doesn’t mean you’re a blunt, instrument, Cause that doesn’t work. That just pisses people off. And then you get, instead of passive resistance, you get active resistance. You create direct enemies, people who hate you. You want to avoid creating enemies, cause they can do a lot of damage.

They may not come to your face and yell at you or something, but they will be sabotaging. They’ll be blowing up bridges and stuff in the middle of the night, right? You know, figured it out.

Justin Skycak (00:27) Yeah, because once somebody

hates you, then they just get pleasure out of opposing you no matter what it is. go from a state from like, okay, initially people are resistant to just like new stuff and stuff that makes more work for them. But once people hate you, like they might resist it just because they hate you, just to oppose you and get satisfaction out of it.

Jason Roberts (00:44) Right.

So you don’t want to offend people, demean people, make them feel bad. You want to try and make it as easy for them as and you want to help them get credit for it. Say, hey, let’s do this thing. This is going to be really cool. I’ll do the heavy lifting. And so you keep them in the loop. You keep them updated. Hey, just want you know, I’m this person. I think we can do this. What do you think? You kind of try and.

pull them along and make them feel as good about it as possible.

You want resisting you to be the hardest thing they're gonna have to do

Jason Roberts (00:00) You want resisting you to be the hardest thing that they’re gonna have to do. Not because you’re their enemy but just because They’re just gonna hey, I like what he’s trying to do. It sounds kind of crazy it’s work, but Okay, fine,

and you just try and make them feel good about it. You’re pulling them along on this journey, Like Lord of the Rings, they’re a hobbit. You gotta come on this journey with me, right? They don’t wanna do it. They’re in their hobbit hole and they’re like, You kinda inspire them and they’re like, all right, it’s easy to go on this journey with Gandalf than it is to resist him. You kinda have to create that dynamic.

Gifted/advanced education is necessary because not everybody wears a size-medium shirt

Jason Roberts (00:00) they did not quite realize the level of resistance that was going to come from the principals and superintendents and chief academic officers who just, they don’t believe in gifted education or advanced, they want everyone to just be at grade level, does everything at the same pace.

Also just makes our life easier too. Conveniently, right? You’ll notice that doing less, making everybody do the same thing, it not only makes them feel good in some ways, but just makes their life easier and it makes less work for them, right? Everyone wears a size medium shirt, now this is easy.

I don’t have to measure, oh, you’re extra small and you’re a large, extra large, you’re double X. Oh gee, we got all these different size shirts and how many of them we order of each and who’s wearing what size shirt? They don’t want to deal with that. Everyone wears a size medium shirt. You know, like, wait, you know, my daughter is really small. It’s kind of like a dress for her. You know, just cinch it. You know what? You know, it’s really a medium. And you’re just like, and my son, who’s actually big, it doesn’t even cover his stomach. They’re like, well, it’s like air conditioning. You know what mean? Just like, it’s bullshit, right?

What "willing something into existence" means

Jason Roberts (00:00) what does willing something into existence mean? It means giving everything you got, marshaling all the resources refusing to give up and then just putting continual pressure on something until your goal is achieved. That’s what willing into existence is. It is not lying in bed at night trying to manifest it, thinking, I just really want this to happen for me.

It’s actions all the way down. Actions, actions, actions, actions. has to be something you really want because it’s not going to come easy. that’s what it takes.

Teaching tip: communicate with parents early and often

Jason Roberts (00:00) communicate early and often. You almost cannot over communicate with parents. The error is, you talk to them and then two, three months go by and you don’t talk to them and they’re kind of out of the loop.

Justin Skycak (00:02) Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts (00:11) kids falling off and then you’re like, this kid has spent the last six weeks doing nothing and it’s a whole problem.

Justin Skycak (00:17) Can’t let it like grow to be that big of a problem. Cause then if you do, then like everyone just digs in their heel. Like the problem is just too big to accept so everyone just wants to say like, no, you’re, you’re crazy. Your expectations are way too high. it makes it.

harder and harder to get things back on the rails because now there’s like some momentum in being off the rails. The kid is used to not doing a whole lot of work in class. Whereas if you catch that at the beginning, get it early, communicate with parent, the parent will catch the kid up that evening. If there’s only a deficit of 30 XP, 40 XP, guess what? The parent’s just going to make the kid do it that evening.

and then the kid’s going to come back, they’re fine. They’re on the rails the next day. We’re all good. Now we just maintain, maintain. But yeah, if the kid has racked up a deficit of thousands of minutes worth of learning that they didn’t do,

once things get to be that bad, it’s just like, it just becomes a bad explosive situation that you just, but the solution is just don’t let it get into that state. Cause that’s you never win.

Jason Roberts (01:27) Yeah,

The typical dynamic between parents and schools: parents act like sports agents

Jason Roberts (00:00) When I was in high school, teachers didn’t meet with parents.

ever. but now because parents lobby through a barrage of emails to the teacher to the principal to the whatever and then just make everything really painful

The parents are acting like an agent. It’s like a sports agent. what they want, a lot of them want is their have like great grades so they can go to whatever college they want to go to, But they also want their kids to learn a lot, but they don’t want their kids to do a lot of work.

Right? And kids aren’t going to learn much unless they put in a fair amount of work, unfortunately, that’s how the world works.

no, you actually gotta do work. So, but parents, they, you know, they can, they wanna do less work. want my life, I want there to be low stress at home, but I want my kid, yeah, I my kid to be really educated, but I also want them to get great grades. Okay, well, the kids, there are some kids who like work really, really hard by default. Most of them don’t. there’s a whole spectrum.

But anyway, the parents at the end of the day, once they realize that, my God, my kid’s gonna get a C, or is he gonna get some Bs when I tell them they’re not gonna get A’s and they’re like, my God, this is really, they’re not gonna get to go to Harvard or whatever dream they have. And so then they serve as this, they wanna lobby the school. And so they do, and so that has helped lower the standards, I think, especially these private schools, right?

paying 30, 40, 50, $60,000 a year and, and, and, and, know, and my kid works really hard in this. these, these costs and the, and the superintendents and the head of school and stuff, they’re like trying to keep the parents at bay. Cause that’s what pain for the pain for the schools, for the administration and the teachers are parents, parents P for pain.

The effect of extreme parental lobbying in education

Jason Roberts (00:00) so I used to coach this men’s soccer team for years and all these guys who were these ex college players and I’m a bunch of them would coach these sort of elite academy level club soccer teams, you know, under 12, under 14, under 16. And I’d be like, I asked him like, how do you like that? Like, oh, it’s great. The kids are great. He’s like, but the parents are a nightmare. I’m like, really? He’s like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. It’s like.

Why didn’t my kid play left? They should play the right side. And why isn’t he starting? And they use it, you know, and it’s just a constant lobbying for the parents. It just ruins the experience for the coach. The coach is trying to, you know, not saying every coach makes good decisions or is fair, whatever, but it’s the parents. Parents equal pain for

coaches and teachers and administration. They’re trying to everything they can to limit said pain. And a lot of the changes you see in the curriculum, well, there’s no gifted class, accelerated classes. We don’t do a lot of homework. We have makeup tests and makeups on the makeups and we have all this stuff. It’s to the complaint, the agents, parents from…

lobbying and creating all this endless cycle of pain. so then you get this situation you have now. so the teachers are just like, whatever, man. I mean, just make it really easy.

If nobody's checking the homework, how's the kid going to learn?

Justin Skycak (00:00) if nobody’s checking the homework how’s the kid gonna learn? Because the kid doesn’t know how to do these problems correctly. The parents almost certainly don’t know how to do these problems correctly. the only kids that get through are the kids who have somebody in their life or whose parents can bring in somebody into their life who can effectively do what

the teacher is supposed to be doing. You’re right, yeah.

Jason Roberts (00:19) Or they’re at the 99th percentile. They’re just super

high aptitude and they’re really into it. And so they’re going to all these extra resources because they’re a physics nerd or whatever. Cause this is what they want to do. But that’s like that, that’s the one out of a hundred kid. everyone else is like, I don’t know what’s going on. Right. And you have a couple of kids who are drafting off that one kid. He’s helping his or she’s helping her little.

Justin Skycak (00:35) Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Roberts (00:45) a few couple friends and they’re kind of figuring it out, but everybody else is just like, what’s happening?

Justin Skycak (00:47) Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, exactly. And very quickly, it gets just so out of hand that like, even if you had a tutor sit with the kid and help them work through the homework problems, like they wouldn’t get a whole lot out of it because the problems are now so far ahead of their ability.

Parents are not aware of how little their kids are learning

Jason Roberts (00:00) parents are not aware of actually how little their kids are learning. Whatever you think your kids are learning, in most cases, they’re learning a lot less. They know less, they’re doing less work, they have fewer skills, less understanding. You know, it’s bad. know, especially…

Things in math and physics and stuff like that that.

Justin Skycak (00:22) foundational for other skills that you might need to do. And also it’s a hierarchy

Jason Roberts (00:26) is it just takes a lot of hard, consistent work to keep making progress. It’s just that the standards have to be higher, they have to be more rigorous, they have to be quantitative. ⁓

That’s just is and if you’re not going to do it and going to make everything mushy and fluffy and we’re just going to have group discussions and projects then guess what? Everybody’s going to do less work. Kids, teachers, everybody. And then at end of the day, people come out and nobody knows anything other than like that one, two kids who were sort of were mostly self-taught and you know.

That’s it. That’s how it rolls.

Math is so poorly taught at the undergraduate level

Jason Roberts (00:00) most undergraduate math majors, We’re playing this little game of pushing symbols around, but nobody really has a great intuitive grasp of the subject itself because it’s not really taught. not really structured in that way.

pushing symbols around without concrete examples is just a really inefficient way to go about things. they just skip the concrete examples

And so you just do the theorem proof theorem and then so, so poorly done at the undergraduate level, almost without exception. There are probably a few, probably like 2 % of math professors in the undergraduate university level who take the pedagogy seriously and are really trying to teach them the rest just show up lecture, problem set, whatever.

Good luck.

Get your fundamental skills in before jumping into research

Justin Skycak (00:00) discovery learning, like, save that until you’ve got your fundamental skills. it takes so much time

to go through and make a discovery. Like, how about let’s save that for when like making the discovery actually yields like serious results.

Jason Roberts (00:12) get more out of it. If we want to get more out,

we can get more from these reps if you have the component skills in place. we’re thinking of like, what’s the most efficient way from go to A to Z?

Justin Skycak (00:18) Yeah.

Jason Roberts (00:22) the total hours put in, if you try and do stuff too early, then there’s a great inefficiencies, you brought some stuff forward that you would have learned later, but in aggregate, spent more hours getting to Z because you’re not getting as much out of it. And you could have spent that time getting these really important requisite skills in place, you know.

Justin Skycak (00:43) Yeah,

exactly. And the end result of your discovery, even if you manage to make the discovery, like, guess what? Nobody gives a shit because like, it’s not real new, it’s new knowledge to you. You did research, relative to your own knowledge base, but humanity has more knowledge. It’s not like a publishable result mathematically. when you’re going to like invest a lot of time and effort into a project,

Jason Roberts (01:01) Stuff in there, yeah.

Justin Skycak (01:07) make sure it’s something that’s like actually like impressive.

Rookies gotta make rookie mistakes

Jason Roberts (00:00) rookies got to make rookie mistakes. And part of rookie mistakes is they don’t listen to senior people, right? No, was old people. They don’t know stuff, right? I just want to do it. Okay. Rookie. See you at the end. I’ll see you at the finish line. You know, how’d that go for you? You know what I mean?

The world attempts to maintain homeostasis

Jason Roberts (00:00) The human body attempts to create homeostasis, like keeps everything the same. So whenever you want to change it, say get in better shape.

become more muscular or something. Well, guess what? Your body’s going to resist that. So you have to work hard to change your body. You have to go and lift heavy weights consistently, over a period of time and your body will change.

constantly have to be hammering away with intention.

The world is like that in a way too. There are all these sort of moving parts and these systems and these vested interests and people are just, they found a place in this world. This is my job or this is my department or this is my thing that I do and they don’t really want it to change typically.

and then somebody wants to come in and go we’re gonna change stuff they’re just like what

people don’t want to adjust. They don’t want to change. Right. Even if you can make a strong argument that this thing you want to do is going to be an improvement. It’s going to help kids or whatever. It’s easy for people to rationalize fighting against it or resisting it

The universe will bend

Jason Roberts (00:00) If you just can every day, you just keep doing what you’re doing, you just keep executing and keep improving and you just never give up and you keep pushing… the universe will bend.

Okay? The universe will bend. It cannot sustain that kind of continual pressure, the continual effort. The world will just say, all right, fine. Fine!

Math is better than video games

Justin Skycak (00:00) calculus just felt like a video game

because climbing up this math ladder, there’s infinite progression. There’s no beating the game and having to go on to a new one. It’s an infinite game. And you know, like everything that you do in this game, you can take with you later in life. This is a game that actually matters. And it’s a game that your parents are actually like really, like they’re proud of you for spending like eight hours just like holed up in your room playing this game.

Jason Roberts (00:07) The infinite game of math, yeah.

You’re

playing eight hours playing Eve online or EverQuest or World of Warcraft. What are you doing? Like, I’m in my guild! And you’re like, what? Get outside. This is terrible.

Justin Skycak (00:28) Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

And everybody’s like super impressed when you come out like, wow, my kid taught himself calculus over the summer. And it’s so funny how similar it is to just like, my kids spent the summer like playing eight hours a day of Call of Duty and ⁓

Jason Roberts (00:51) You’re not telling

people that unless you’re just complaining like my kid only plays Call of Duty. I don’t know. I’m worried they’re going to become deranged. You know, what do we do about this? It’s the opposite.

Justin Skycak (00:57) Yeah, exactly.

Yeah,

right. It’s it’s seen as a problem. But you just change it to like calculus or math. And suddenly, the perception just does a complete 180. But the experience is the basically the same. So yeah, so I was hooked on this. I’m like, I Yeah.

Jason Roberts (01:15) you were having more fun. was more fun than playing Call of Duty or Eve Online.

Justin Skycak (01:20) Yeah, so I beat the calculus game basically, and I’m like, okay, what are we doing next? I’m like full on addicted at this point. I can’t make it through the summer without more math.

You want resisting you to be the hardest thing they're gonna have to do

Jason Roberts (00:00) You want resisting you to be the hardest thing that they’re gonna have to do. Not because you’re their enemy but just because They’re just gonna hey, I like what he’s trying to do. It sounds kind of crazy it’s work, but Okay, fine,

and you just try and make them feel good about it. You’re pulling them along on this journey, Like Lord of the Rings, they’re a hobbit. You gotta come on this journey with me, right? They don’t wanna do it. They’re in their hobbit hole and they’re like, You kinda inspire them and they’re like, all right, it’s easy to go on this journey with Gandalf than it is to resist him. You kinda have to create that dynamic.

Parents are not aware of how little their kids are learning

Jason Roberts (00:00) parents are not aware of actually how little their kids are learning. Whatever you think your kids are learning, in most cases, they’re learning a lot less. They know less, they’re doing less work, they have fewer skills, less understanding. You know, it’s bad. know, especially…

math and physics and stuff like that

if you’re going to make everything mushy and fluffy and we’re just going to have group discussions and projects then guess what? Everybody’s going to do less work. Kids, teachers, everybody. And then at end of the day, people come out and nobody knows anything other than like that one, two kids who were mostly self-taught

PODCAST 2

(Short) How Would You Teach if Your Life Depended On It?

Jason Roberts (00:00) I used to play, this game with myself. I would imagine myself as if I were the tutor for this bloodthirsty king for his kids. And he really cared a lot about the education for his kids. And he had already executed the previous two tutors.

You’re the new tutor and you have these two kids and you know there’s a decent chance that after the session’s done, he’d be like, come here, what’d you learn today? And then he starts to quiz them on.

this thing that they said they learned. And if he was unimpressed, he was gonna have your head taken off. Okay, so if you’re in that situation, how would you teach? You’re like, my God, okay, so I’m teaching them how to solve linear equations or something. You’re like, okay, am I going to just talk at them for an hour? No.

with no practice. They’ll totally, because if he asks them to do some, some linear equations and they can’t solve it, I’m dead. So I’m like, okay, here’s what I’m gonna do. Here’s what a linear equation is. This is what it represents. Here’s how you solve it. Now let’s, I’ll go through a couple examples, then I’m gonna have you guys do a couple of examples. And then I’m going to give you progressively more.

challenging ones, negative numbers or fractions or whatever, and we’re gonna kind of build on it, progressive them, we get a lot of practice, but I’m gonna keep raising the level. But it’s always going to be you going through, as a student going through the process, the procedure of performing the skill that I’m trying to get you to acquire. This would be the same situation we go on of your tennis lesson or.

learning how to play the violin or whatever, you know, you’re the coach, the instructor, the teacher is going to have you performing the skill and giving you feedback on what needs to be improved, what you got right, what needs to be adjusted to correctly execute the skill. And so that’s what I did. and, and of course, when you take that attitude and sort of, it’s a way of defining, of describing in a sort of elaborate.

in maybe somewhat bizarre deranged way of extreme accountability. If your ass is on the line, your life is on the line, how are you going to do this thing? Well, you’re probably going to be a lot more serious about it. And you’re probably going to do it a different way than if it just didn’t really matter.

(Short) Find Your North Star

Jason Roberts (00:00) when people make decisions purely for the money.

it often leads you in the wrong direction. You end up in a place like why am I so dissatisfied with my life? Why am I so frustrated? It’s like, you’re not doing what you really, really want to be doing. I mean, this stuff can be overplayed. mean, obviously you have to make a living. You have to be realistic about what you can do to actually pay for, rent or mortgage or, you know, get by. but it’s important to just, to really always be thinking,

Justin Skycak (00:03) Yeah.

Jason Roberts (00:30) you know, looking at your North Star like, what is it that I really, really want to do? Go do that.

Justin Skycak (00:35) again, it just comes down to playing the long game, right? need to be making some progress in the short-term, but your goal is not to optimize the short-term outcome of salary, of prestige or whatever.

Do the short term well enough that you can continue playing the long game. That you don’t like run out of money or like you’re on the street or whatever. the long game, that’s what you always want to be optimizing towards. Even if it feels slow in the short term or there’s some pain in the short term, it’s like, whatever, as long as you’re making progress towards the long game, ⁓ then you’re good.

Jason Roberts (01:09) Yeah, well, yeah, 100%.

The thing about it is you get too distracted with the short term and you can lose sight of the long term goal, right? And you get these short term dopamine hits, hey, I made some, I made more money or whatever. Right. And then you look up a year or two years, 10 years later, and you’re like, where am I? And it’s like, well, I mean, you’re making pretty good money and you got a pretty good situation, but you don’t, you’re not really happy with it.

Justin Skycak (01:20) It’s like shiny object syndrome, all this.

Yeah.

(Short) Getting “Inside The Trade”

Jason Roberts (00:00) you got to get inside the trade. what that means is I came from a world of high frequency trading.

What would happen is some of these companies would hire really highly educated, smart people with PhDs in physics and computer science and math they would get a group of these people and they would say, here’s our, here’s our, massive historical database of historical time series data of all the trades that happened every minute or every second or every hundred over the second for the last 10 years, go write some algorithms that can predict

what’s going to happen, where the price is going to go in the next 30 seconds or minute or 10 minutes or whatever. And they were almost doomed to fail. typically what would work better is if you’d have a professional trader who would spend years and years trading this stuff manually and understood how you made money.

with a particular kind of trade. It’s like, look, when you’re trading this, when you do this kind of trade, these are the factors to consider. These are the forces that are at play. These are the things you’re to watch out for. This is how you can lose a lot of money. that’s this hard, hard won experience from a lot, from winning and, losing on a lot of trades and learning and understanding. And an emotional instinctual reaction to, yeah, I would not buy at that point.

my experience has been, if you have been the domain expert yourself, you understand exactly how this works.

get inside the trade. Don’t, don’t just automate it. Like do the thing and to understand what the hell is going on. Really understand it. Have, emotional scars from it. Then automate it.

Justin Skycak (01:16) Yeah, and I remember the…

There is some.

(Short) Efficient Learning Techniques are Obvious if You Think About Athletics

Jason Roberts (00:00) version one is the expert just demonstrates the thing over and over and over and talks about it. And the student doesn’t get any practice on it. That’s a fail. ⁓

Or two, I’m not going to tell them how to do it. I’m to just say, go and do this stuff. and they’re just flopping around. That’s highly inefficient.

Justin Skycak (00:16) Yeah, and it becomes so obvious when you think of it ⁓ in terms of sports, Like, imagine you sign up for lessons with a tennis coach and the whole time they’re just, they’re showing you all these techniques and stuff. And then like, and then it’s done. Hour passes, like you haven’t, you’re just holding your tennis racket the whole time. You haven’t hit a ball or anything. You haven’t even swung it.

the other failure mode is they just say like, okay, you two versus you two, go play each other and I’m going to go run an errand. I’ll be back in an hour.

Jason Roberts (00:45) This is a dereliction of duty. This is not doing your job. Right? So why in a math class would we expect the situation of the teacher just talking the lecture, right? Which, know, from universities in particular, but typically most schools have done with this sort of a lecture teacher gets up and just talks. Sometimes they cold call on people.

and if they assign homework, it’s like, okay, I’m gonna give you, I’m gonna talk about tennis for an hour and then I want you to go practice by yourself.

You know, and maybe I’ll have you take a video of a couple things, I’ll give feedback. Like that, no, that is stupid. anyway, anyone who has actually tried to acquire, seriously tried to acquire skills in something, sports, music, art, anything like that, where it was important to develop these skills.

They understand that this is basically how it’s done. I mean, there’s a little variation. You can change things up a little bit and whatever, but that’s the core of what a super efficient learning process would be.

Justin Skycak (01:44) guided instruction with rapid feedback cycles of explicit direct instruction on what the student is supposed to be doing.

what’s the proper technique, followed immediately after where the student is actually going and hitting the ball, going through their reps, getting really solid on the skill. They do that on some more skills. The next session, they pull some of those skills together, compound movements.

(Short) Enjoyment is a Second-Order Optimization

Justin Skycak (00:00) Enjoyment is a second order optimization. First is performance improvement. Like, get that right. And then without lowering your rate of improvement of progress, just try to make it as enjoyable as possible.

Jason Roberts (00:12) when a parent is spending their own money, or an adult if they were doing it themselves, and you’re paying for guitar lessons or something.

Like that money matters, right? Like the accountability, if it’s not working, you’re going to be like, this is bullshit.

extreme accountability means you’re focused on a result. And, and the result, is a combination of two things. It’s getting better at the thing, but also not making

it’s so painful that the kid or the adult doesn’t want to do it anymore.

If you hire a trainer to get you in shape, the trainer’s thinking, okay, well, I need to keep you consistent, making progress, showing you that you’re making progress and closer to the goals and making it so that it’s not so painful you don’t want to come back tomorrow or next week. Right? Now, if either of those things are false, if it’s too painful, it’s a fail. They’re going to stop coming after a week or two or three or depending on how much…

pain they’re willing to take or how much suffering they’re willing to endure or how stubborn they are. But eventually it’d be like, uh, or two if they, there’s like, man, I’ve been working out with this guy for like three months and I think I’ve lost a pound.

this isn’t moving things in the right direction for I don’t know why I need to find someone to get some results because it’s got a lot of money. It’s a lot of time, you know, whatever. And even if it’s fun, he’s like, oh, he’s like funny guy. All these crazy seal stories from his time at the seals. And be like, are you getting any stronger? No, you lose your weight? No. OK, well.

Justin Skycak (01:35) So it’s like it.

you can’t have that and not have performance improvement. You can have performance improvement and not really have so much enjoyment. And it’s like, it’s a real thing. People will benefit from it.

but you’re gonna increase your surface area if you focus on the enjoyment part after. But the enjoyment part is like the icing on the cake there.

Jason Roberts (01:58) 100%.

(Short) Effective Teaching Puts Business First, Fun Second

Jason Roberts (00:00) You optimize too much for the fun and then you’ve taught the students that things are fun and they can’t really be hard.

Justin Skycak (00:00) Yeah.

Jason Roberts (00:10) you gotta be all business.

keep them focused, listening, taking their homework seriously, you know, whatever. you can’t go from being this lax teacher that the kids don’t respect,

You can’t say, right, now I’m serious. I come back from Christmas break, like maybe the principal came down and said, look, I mean, I’m looking at these tests. This stuff doesn’t look good. You got to bang, bang. then the teacher’s like, OK. You’re like, teacher, you’re like, decided you’re to be a hard ass or something.

Justin Skycak (00:37) Yeah,

there’s a directionality to it. You can’t recover from being a pushover. Once you’re a pushover at the beginning and then you become a hard-ass, like, they just hate you more. Yeah.

Jason Roberts (00:45) The kids are like, yeah, right. They just rolled around. I had

happened to me when I was in high school. I can’t remember this teacher. And she, she was like, started out like that. And she’s like, she then she realized she was a young teacher, a first year teacher or something. She just graduated from college and she was going to be our friends and didn’t take her seriously. And because she wasn’t a serious person, you know, and so we didn’t respect her. didn’t like hate her. And then when she started to be like a hard ass, then we hated her. Right.

And she was one of our biology, there were two biology teachers. The other biology teacher who was older, she was all business. There’s no messing around with Susan Radford was her name. She was all business and you’re like, pay attention, you did what you’re supposed to do. And she would lighten up a little as year went on. And then she could lighten up and then you loved her.

Justin Skycak (01:14) Yeah.

Jason Roberts (01:36) Because the most important thing for a teacher is not that they love you, is that they respect you and they do what they’re supposed to do and they take their work seriously. That’s the important thing, especially like middle school and high school, because then kids testing boundaries and they’re 15, 16, you don’t want to be in school. You want to go mess, you want to do anything but sit in your fricking biology class. Right? Even if you’re a good student, you’re like, I don’t want to be here. Right? So that model.

Justin Skycak (01:57) Yeah.

Jason Roberts (02:03) And any really good teacher understands this fundamentally. Not that you can’t do some fun things, but you have to instill respect from day one. I understand you are not to be messed with. And then you can lighten up over time. But there are boundaries, there are expectations, and there are consequences, and there are rewards.

So if you, if you, transpose that onto a learning app and you’re like, we’re fine. And this and dance and baloney and, know, and the kids are like, ⁓ you know, whatever. then you’re like, all right, now we’re going to start learning hard. The kids are like, this is stupid. I it used to be fun. No, it. You know, but.

Justin Skycak (02:43) Yeah.

Jason Roberts (02:47) We can go from the teacher that was a hard ass, and we can lighten it up a little bit. People are like, oh, think my daughter likes it a little more. It’s kind of fun. That’s how it’s going to go, I think.

[short] Get Closer to Doing The Thing That Makes You Happy

Jason Roberts (00:00) if you really want your life to be an A, you’re like, I want my life to be awesome. And even if you don’t have an absolute specific plan, get closer to doing the thing.

that makes you happy or that you feel aligned or whatever, what terminology you want to use. Like this is the thing that I like, I enjoy doing.

Justin Skycak (00:14) Yeah.

[short] We're trying to create the ultimate online learning system

Jason Roberts (00:00) We’re trying to ultimate.

online learning system, basically what that would do is replicate the effectiveness of the best possible human tutor that you can imagine that has almost superhuman abilities to understand exactly what you know and don’t know and what you should be working on. Okay, if that’s what you’re trying to do, then you need to continually keep that person in mind and try and mimic.

their behavior in that situation. And this is a long process and we’re getting closer all the time, but still we have a lot we can do, but you know.

[short] You don't really learn it until you start performing it

Jason Roberts (00:00) you don’t really learn by watching somebody else. You can become familiar with something, but you don’t learn it until you actually start performing it.

[short] Enjoyment is a second-order optimization

Justin Skycak (00:00) Enjoyment is a second order optimization. First is performance improvement. Like, get that right. And then just, without lowering your rate of improvement of progress, just try to make it as enjoyable

Maximize progress subject to constraint that pain is less than quitting threshold

Justin Skycak (00:00) Maximize progress subject to the constraint that the pain is less than the quitting threshold. And you just run that over and over. And the quitting threshold, that can vary over time too. Once you start seeing progress, you’re much more willing

endure some pain for even more progress

Don't lose your soul and become corporate

Jason Roberts (00:00) you have to be careful when you make the transition that you don’t lose soul and become corporate. you can’t sacrifice or give up the essence, which when things become about the money,

and you’re just trying to make everybody feel good, can turn into that. The money will come if you deliver value for people. It’s as simple as that. And since we don’t have any outside investors, we can make that choice, that conscious choice. So we’re not going to give in to…

easy shortcuts and things to just make it nice for, but that while sacrificing results, quality of the education.

Project-based learning can be taken way too far

Jason Roberts (00:00) The whole project-based learning can be taken way too far. Projects are built on a foundation of skills. You can’t do projects without skills and have it be efficient at all. mean, you can. It’s just going to be incredibly inefficient because the students don’t really know what they’re doing.

Kids are finger counting in 10th grade

Jason Roberts (00:00) we’ve heard from a lot of families tutors and teachers that kids

have not mastered their math facts. They don’t know the multiplication tables. They’re finger counting. Not finger counting in fourth or fifth grade. They’re finger counting in 10th grade. And if you can’t do, you know, even multiplication, if you don’t know multiplication tables, you’re gonna really struggle even with basic algebra.

The benefit of learning math with coding applications

Justin Skycak (00:00) a lot of people realize later, who go into software engineering, like they don’t really care about math in school, And then eventually they build up the foundations of coding and then they realize…

that if they just knew all their math, then they could be doing so much more. the earlier you make this happen, somebody gets interested in coding, sees how important math is to doing non-trivial coding. in life the get the motivation to skill up on both fronts. just imagine a kid graduating high school.

not only do they know pre-calculus with like coding applications but also calculus linear algebra multivariable calc and differential equations basically your core engineering math all the coding applications and they come into college and they’re just blowing the socks off of

anybody who gives them an opportunity to do some research, an internship, they already get the basics of everything. They’re ready to actually make serious impact. It’s so rare to see in an undergraduate researcher or an intern, right? you can’t count on them You just like throw them a toy problem.

whatever, but like if you can actually make a serious impact at a young age, because you have the skills to do so, then you can just compound that into a massive compression of time and figuring out what you’re interested in and everything.

You only realize growth in hindsight

Justin Skycak (00:00) I’m doing a hard thing and I’m not sure I’m able to do it at the beginning, but then we actually get through reasonably quickly and now I can do it and that’s really cool. But also do things ever stop getting hard? Like when’s it going to become easy? what they see is the short game.

And the short game is on loop, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard. They don’t always see the compounding so what I would have to do sometimes is I show them like the next assignment and they’re just like, that looks hard.

then I show them do you remember back when we did logistic regression, breadth first search and you had that same reaction right there. What’s your reaction to this now? And they’re like, no, I could that’s a component of this. could, I could code that up in 10 minutes. what’s the big deal? Like, no, no, no. Remember you were saying just like three or four months ago that you were, you were groaning in the same exact way. And I guarantee you.

three or four months from now, this back propagation, this Dijkstra’s algorithm, whatever, you’re have the same reaction. gonna be muscle memory. You’re gonna have new superpowers and you’re not gonna realize that you have them until I show them to you.

It's important to tell younger people the truth

Jason Roberts (00:00) it’s important when you’re in a position where you know how things work to tell younger people, this is the situation. This is the level of talent, the level of skill you’re gonna have to have if this is the thing you want to do. Now if you don’t wanna do it, that’s fine. There’s a place for everyone, everyone has a place. Not everybody has to be a math genius. Not everybody has to learn abstract algebra.

But if you want to do the things that you say you want to do or from this list, then okay, let, let us lay out a plan to help you be on schedule to get that. So you don’t find yourself in a situation where you’re getting blown out of the water

You better know what the game is

Jason Roberts (00:00) You need to understand. look, there’s a lot of things you can do in life that are just not super competitive. It’s not that hard and just kinda go in and just do your thing and it’ll be fine. But there are other things that are just super, super hard. And there’s a lot of competition.

So you better know what the game is.

We're trying to increase optionality for kids

Jason Roberts (00:00) we’re trying to increase optionality for kids. when they’re 12, 13, 14, even 15, 16, they don’t really know who they are what they want to do.

But you want to keep those options open. As an adult, as a parent, or even as a teacher, you’re trying to help kids keep as many doors open as possible so when they get a better idea of who they are what they want to do, that they can get through the door.

(teaser) Either you make decisions, or decisions get made for you

Jason Roberts (00:00) If you don’t make the decisions, the decisions get made for you. That’s just how it is. Either you go into the world and you make decisions to make things happen, or decisions be made, and they will happen to you.

Turns out if you make things happen, you make intentional decisions, make things happen, you tend to get something that’s much closer to what you really want.

(clip) Kids are finger counting in 10th grade

Jason Roberts (00:00) heard from a lot of families tutors and teachers that kids

have not mastered their math facts. They don’t know the multiplication tables. They’re finger counting. Not finger counting in fourth or fifth grade. They’re finger counting in 10th grade. And if you can’t do, you know, even multiplication, if you don’t know multiplication tables, you’re gonna really struggle even with basic algebra.

PODCAST 1

What Happens When Students Don't Know Their Math Facts

speaker-1 (00:00) You know, and I hear from teachers and chief academic officers and tutors, and they’re just apoplectic about the situation because you get kids who are in sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth grade. Finger counting.

don’t know the multiplication tables, it’s like, how the heck are gonna factor quadratic when you don’t know the multiplication tables? Can’t do it, not really. And then guess what? Now we can’t factor quadratic, now can’t do algebra.

speaker-0 (00:27) And if you do manage to grind through, ⁓ just figuring out these factors on the fly, it’s gonna take you way, way, way too long. It’s gonna take you like 10 minutes to factor.

speaker-1 (00:37) Which some kids can do in their head and be like,

10 seconds. So you’re not going to want to do any proms. It’s through, yeah, teacher gave us four factoring problems and it took me all night, you know? And you’re just like, dude.

speaker-0 (00:42) Yes.

When you get to calculus, if you’re taking 10 minutes to factor a quadratic, that’s only one component of a calculus optimization problem. You’re going to be spending half an hour on this problem that should take you two minutes.

The Secret To Success in Life is Consistent Effort

speaker-1 (00:00) The secret to success in life is consistent effort. You don’t have to, whether it’s exercise or learning math or learning a language or whatever the heck it is you’re trying to do. It’s like you don’t have to do the superhuman effort thing. Just get started and then make a consistent push every day, even if it’s only 15, 20 minutes.

Intuition is Earned Through Repetition

speaker-1 (00:00) cause people are like, ah, I don’t want to do so many problems. just want like a conceptual thing. I want an intuitive understanding. It’s like, it’s repetition. Intuition is the

of repetition. You have to do reps. That’s where the intuition comes from. Me or anybody explaining something to you that feels intuitive. You don’t have the intuition. You have to earn intuition. Intuition is earned through pain.

through failure, through suffering, through trial and error. That’s where your intuition comes from. You don’t wanna suffer, well you don’t get intuition. so, and that’s something that we, you know, obviously you wanna limit the suffering, like let’s just do the things and go through repetitions and say, okay, trial, okay, okay, right, I made a mistake there, right, okay, right, I see how this works. You do enough of the reps, whether it’s shooting free throws or…

you know, or doing math problems or whatever, it’s like you have to, you have to get the reps in, you get the intuition. But then when you get the intuition, then you can really understand how this stuff works and you can actually solve challenging problems. Because until you have the intuition, it’s hard to really see your way through innovative solutions. There’s just nothing to work with.

One of the Worst Mistakes You Can Make While Studying

speaker-0 (00:00) One thing that I have seen ⁓ students, even adult students do a lot is look back at the reference too often, like thinking that it’s free to look back at the reference. When in reality, if you are trying to recall something from your head

and you look back at the reference instead of trying your best to lift that weight off of your, long-term memory. If you look back at the reference, you’re basically just letting the spotter lift the weight.

speaker-1 (00:26) Yeah, so you’re weightlifting and you’re like, I can’t get it and the guy behind just lifts it up for you like, okay. He didn’t really lift the weight.

speaker-0 (00:31) Well, yeah.

Sometimes people will ask for the spotter’s help before they even get to the point of trying really hard. It’s like just the moment that it stops becoming super easy, they’re like, okay, look back at the example. When in reality, that is the moment when you are getting the most bang for buck out of recalling the information.

speaker-1 (00:52) The struggle during the active recall process is when you are strengthening the memory.

speaker-0 (00:58) Like, don’t look back at the reference right away. Like I want you to try to pull this from memory.

Coach the student not to actually look back at the reference unless they absolutely need to. Because that is a way that sometimes students kind of shoot themselves in the foot. ⁓

speaker-1 (01:13) They

shortchange the learning process. They shortchange it, right?

speaker-0 (01:17) Yeah. Or if they have like the, worked example up in another tab and then they’re looking at that while solving the problem. Like, is, that is the worst. Never, never do that.

(Short) Breadth-First Development

speaker-1 (00:00) It’s painful, but sometimes it’s good to do sort of a breadth first search instead of just like, hey, we’ve got some of the work, so let’s just build on that. We’re like, let’s go tackle these other things that are really, really different. That’d be a ton of work, but it forces us to generalize, to solve those concrete problems and then generalize it and pull it into the model, pull it into the UI, pull it into the user, the student experience, and so it all makes sense because.

If you go too far down the line and you have lots of users and lots of customers and your stuff, you just can’t break things again and go back. It’s it’s hardened. Like that’s where you put the road, that’s where the road is, right? Well, it’s like, well, it goes like, it’s too hard to like, you know, we’re gonna create a new highway through these, you know, through this subdivision. It’s a nightmare. So you just kind of try and figure that out early. the way you do that is you say, well,

here are all these things that we think we might want to do, or we do think we know we want to do, they’re different, it’s going to be painful, but let’s just bite the bullet and do it now. And it slows down visible progress, so perceivable velocity, product velocity, but like, why is it taking so long? like, cause we’re tackling all these really hard, massive projects that is going to pay off and we’re going to be able to release all these things. But.

speaker-0 (01:19) Playing the long game. We are just going in all directions that we think is worth pursuing.

speaker-1 (01:21) Play the long game.

You get a lot of things that are like between 60 and 90 % done. They’re just sitting there and you’re like, God, we just can’t finish with these other things because you do have emergency things going on. You do have bugs, scalability problems. have, you know, just like really important features have to roll out for a user segment. You know, like we, you know, the schools have been coming on and wanting all this stuff. It’s like, know, there’s so much stuff. You just can’t.

You can’t just blow it off. You gotta deal with it. And then it’s like, well, why isn’t this done? It’s like, you know, yeah.

How and Why to Become The Smart Kid

speaker-0 (00:00) We talk about the benefits of pre-learning the material before you go into a normal college course. Cause, it’s a roll of the dice, whether you’re going to get a decent instructor or not.

speaker-1 (00:08) There’s so much variance in the quality of instruction. You’re going to get some people,

great research mathematicians, but horrible pedagogues. it’s you and your group of study mates on these impossible problem sets. It’s more like a

framework for making you teach yourself as opposed to providing a real scaffolded learning experience.

There’s a problem set do it or not or don’t do it.

Grader might grade it, you might get it back two or three weeks later.

You can end up for some real crash and burn situations. If you already know it all, then it’s like, ah! All right,

speaker-0 (00:41) Not only does the pre-learning minimize your risk of that bad situation happening, but if you are blowing the class out of the water and interacting with the instructor, that’s setting you up. You get a, like amazing rec letter, guess who is up for whatever

opportunities that professor has in mind.

speaker-1 (00:57) you should apply for. We got a summer program. whatever. They’re like, ⁓ I got a kid. I got a

speaker-0 (01:02) You just

get a reputation for being the smart kid and it doesn’t matter if you’re being smart in real time or if you’re smart because you’ve already built up a large knowledge base. You’re just you’re a smart kid either way and you get the smart kid opportunities and that can compound into a virtuous cycle.

speaker-1 (01:18) I mean, that’s an incredible position to be in because, for any of us who’ve been like a math or physics major, and especially if you went to a place that had a lot of top-notch students,

you’re learning stuff for the first time and they are going at a breakneck pace and they are not playing games and they don’t get retakes and there are no study sessions, you know, it’s just boom, here you go. And then the average score is a 27 on the midterm. It’s like, jeez, you know, it’s brutal. And then you find out that like a bunch of the kids had actually, oh yeah, I took this at the state university when I was in high school. And you’re just like, what?

What, you guys, wait, half you guys already taken this? This is bullshit. You know, it’s like, we’re in a Spanish class and you got like a bunch of the kids who actually speak Spanish at home. You’re like, why are you in Spanish one? Your Spanish is, I don’t really write it.

speaker-0 (02:09) It’s like you get gaslit into thinking you’re dumb and everyone’s just like learning so much faster than you and then the glass shatters you realize they already came in.

speaker-1 (02:19) Oh, you guys all got the cheat codes? Oh, great. The cheat code is learn the material before you take the course.

speaker-0 (02:23) Yeah.

The point of learning ahead of time is not to sit there bored in class. It’s so that you can actually grapple with the hardest problems and actually extract learning out of those in an efficient way. You can be the go-to person for everyone needs help with the class. You’re that person. You’re getting reps on teaching this material to your friends. You’re making connections You’re the,

front running for any opportunities that the professor has in mind, whether it’s research with them, one of their buddies, internship with a company they have a relationship with a fellowship, you just you never know what it’s gonna be. But if you’re the go to person for the subject knowledge, you just get pulled into all these interesting

advantageous opportunities that just compound one thing into another. Guess what? Got a great internship? Well, your next is probably going to be even cooler because now you have this experience that nobody else has.

speaker-1 (03:21) the it’s snowball effect. The compounding effect.

speaker-0 (03:25) Exactly. And this really buys you a lot of time to figure out what want to do.

You get ahead, you get opportunities, you have time. I can afford to go like, my soul is not connecting with this job. I’m going to go try this other thing that I’ve interested in. Do that for a bit, eventually things merge together into your little niche. And it just

buys you more time to find that because if it takes you too long to find that, then you never actually do find it because you have to pick something.

speaker-1 (03:50) Gotta pick a major, gotta pick a job, you know.

(Short) The Cheat Code is Learn The Material Before You Take The Course

speaker-1 (00:00) The cheat code is learn the material before you take the course.

speaker-0 (00:05) The point of learning ahead of time is not to sit there bored in class. It’s so that you can actually grapple with the hardest problems and actually extract learning out of those in an efficient way. You can be the go-to person for everyone needs help with the class. You’re that person. You’re getting reps on teaching this material to your friends. You’re making connections You’re the,

front running for any opportunities that the professor has in mind, whether it’s research with them, one of their buddies, internship with a company they have a relationship with a fellowship, you just you never know what it’s gonna be. But if you’re the go to person for the subject knowledge, you just get pulled into all these interesting

advantageous opportunities that just compound one thing into another. Guess what? Got a great internship? Well, your next is probably going to be even cooler because now you have this experience that nobody else has.

speaker-1 (00:57) the it’s snowball effect. The compounding effect.

speaker-0 (01:00) Exactly. And this really buys you a lot of time to figure out what want to do.

You get ahead, you get opportunities, you have time. I can afford to go like, my soul is not connecting with this job. I’m going to go try this other thing that I’ve interested in. Do that for a bit, eventually things merge together into your little niche. And it just

buys you more time to find that because if it takes you too long to find that, then you never actually do find it because you have to pick something.

speaker-1 (01:26) Gotta pick a major, gotta pick a job, you know.

(Short) What Most Online CS Courses Don't Teach

speaker-0 (00:00) quite a courses leave off versus the level that you have to be at to implement the stuff. It’s not an absurdly high level, but it’s just you need to be comfortable with some of this programming logic, not just the syntax.

speaker-1 (00:14) have to have a certain automaticity with it. It’s one thing it’s like, well, I listened to a lecture and I watched a video and I did a 15 minute project with dictionaries. great start, but you’re not, you have not even come close to reaching problem solving level automaticity with these skills.

(Short) Math Facts are like Free Throws

speaker-0 (00:00) helpful more practice math facts like bring them out of the problem solving context and drill them more frequently. Kind of like if you’re in athletics, you don’t just exercise your skills by playing games

There are some skills that you just have to be really, really solid on like shooting free throws. You don’t practice like shooting free throw during a game No, you actually go to the line and practice doing that. That’s kind of like, ⁓ math facts, automaticity practice.

(Short) Lots of Kids Don't Know Their Math Facts

speaker-1 (00:00) lot of students come to us in pre-algebra and algebra and they don’t know their multiplication tables. And they’re not very good at fractions. And that is very common. Schools not doing a very good job of that.

they’ve drank some cool aid. like, we don’t have to memorize anything anymore. It’s like.

speaker-0 (00:16) Yeah, that’s totally false.

speaker-1 (00:17) That’s a whole nother discussion. It’s totally wrong. It’s like, you don’t have to practice your free throws. You’ll just like, you just know it, you know, just go play basketball. It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s so dumb.

(Short) Instructional Quality is a Roll of the Dice

speaker-1 (00:00) so variance in the quality of instruction. even if you go to an elite school, You’re going to get some people,

great research mathematicians, but horrible pedagogues. really it’s you and your group of study mates and that who kind of go, hey, let’s all work together on these impossible problem sets. you basically teach yourselves, It’s more like a

framework for making you teach yourself as opposed to a real scaffolded learning experience.

(Short) Getting Gaslit Into Thinking You're Dumb

speaker-1 (00:00) for any of us who’ve been a math or physics major, and especially if you went to a place that we had a lot of top-notch students,

you’re learning stuff for the first time and they are going at a breakneck pace and they are not playing games and they don’t get retakes and there are no study sessions, you know, it’s just boom, here you go. And then the average score is a 27 on the midterm. It’s like, jeez, you know, it’s brutal. And then you find out that like a bunch of the kids had actually, oh yeah, I took this at the state university when I was in high school. And you’re just like, what?

What, you guys, wait, half you guys already taken this? This is bullshit. You know, it’s like, we’re in a Spanish class and you got like a bunch of the kids who actually speak Spanish at home. You’re like, why are you in Spanish one? Your Spanish is, I don’t really write it.

speaker-0 (00:49) It’s like you get gaslit into thinking you’re dumb and everyone’s just like learning so much faster than you and then the glass shatters you realize they already came in.

speaker-1 (00:59) Oh, you guys all got the cheat codes? Oh, great. Okay, okay, okay. Now I get it. I get it. But anyway, the cheat code really is you’re saying, what’s the cheat code? The cheat code is learn the material before you take the course.

speaker-0 (01:02) Yeah.

(Short) The Point of Learning Ahead of Time

speaker-0 (00:00) The point of learning ahead of time is not to sit there bored in class. It’s so that you can actually like legitimately grapple with the hardest problems and actually extract learning out of those in an efficient way. You can be the go-to person for everyone needs help with the class. You’re making connections You’re

front running for any opportunities that the professor has in mind, whether it’s research with them, research with one of their buddies, whether it’s internship with a company they have a relationship with a fellowship, you just you never know ⁓ what it’s gonna be. But if you are the go to person for the subject knowledge, you just get pulled into all these interesting

advantageous opportunities that just compound one thing into another. Guess what? Got a great internship? Well, your next internship is probably going to be even cooler because now you have this experience that nobody else has.

speaker-1 (00:49) it’s snowball effect. The compounding effect.

The Secret To Success in Life is Consistent Effort

speaker-1 (00:00) The secret to success in life is consistent effort. You don’t have to, whether it’s exercise or learning math or learning a language or whatever the heck it is you’re trying to do. It’s like you don’t have to do the superhuman effort thing. Just get started and then make a consistent push every day, even if it’s only 15, 20 minutes.

(Teaser) Intuition is Earned Through Repetition

speaker-1 (00:00) cause people are like, ah, I don’t want to do so many problems. just want like a conceptual thing. I want an intuitive understanding. It’s like, Intuition is the

of repetition. You have to do reps. That’s where the intuition comes from. Me or anybody explaining something to you that feels intuitive. You don’t have the intuition. You have to earn intuition. Intuition is earned through pain.

through failure, through suffering, through trial and error. That’s where your intuition comes from. You don’t wanna suffer, well you don’t get intuition. you know, obviously you wanna limit the suffering, like let’s just do the things and go through repetitions and say, okay, trial, okay, okay, right, I made a mistake there, right, okay, right, I see how this works. You do enough of the reps, whether it’s shooting free throws or…

you know, or doing math problems or whatever, it’s like you have to, you have to get the reps in, you get the intuition. But then when you get the intuition, then you can really understand how this stuff works and you can actually solve challenging problems. Because until you have the intuition, it’s hard to really see your way through innovative solutions. There’s just nothing to work with.

One of the Worst Mistakes You Can Make While Studying

speaker-0 (00:00) One thing that I have seen students, even adult students do a lot is look back at the reference too often, like thinking that it’s free to look back at the reference. When in reality, if you are trying to recall something from your head

and you look back at the reference instead of trying your best to lift that weight off of your, long-term memory. If you look back at the reference, you’re basically just letting the spotter lift the weight.

speaker-1 (00:25) Yeah, so you’re weightlifting and you’re like, I can’t get it and the guy behind just lifts it up for you like, okay. He didn’t really lift the weight.

speaker-0 (00:30) Well, yeah.

Sometimes people will ask for the spotter’s help before they even get to the point of trying really hard. It’s like just the moment that it stops becoming super easy, they’re like, okay, look back at the example. When in reality, that is the moment when you are getting the most bang for buck out of recalling the information.

speaker-1 (00:51) The struggle during the active recall process is when you are strengthening the memory.

speaker-0 (00:57) Like, don’t look back at the reference right away. Like I want you to try to pull this from memory.

Coach the student not to actually look back at the reference unless they absolutely need to. Because that is a way that sometimes students kind of shoot themselves in the foot. ⁓

speaker-1 (01:12) They

shortchange the learning process. They shortchange it, right?

speaker-0 (01:15) Yeah. Or if they have like the, worked example up in another tab and then they’re looking at that while solving the problem. Like, is, that is the worst. Never, never do that.

What Happens When Students Don't Know Their Math Facts

speaker-1 (00:00) You know, and I hear from teachers and chief academic officers and tutors, and they’re just apoplectic about the situation because you get kids who are in sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth grade. Finger counting.

don’t know the multiplication tables, it’s like, how the heck are gonna factor quadratic when you don’t know the multiplication tables? Can’t do it, not really. And then guess what? Now we can’t factor quadratic, now can’t do algebra.

speaker-0 (00:27) And if you do manage to grind through, ⁓ just figuring out these factors on the fly, it’s gonna take you way, way, way too long. It’s gonna take you like 10 minutes to factor.

speaker-1 (00:37) Which some kids can do in their head and be like,

10 seconds. So you’re not going to want to do any proms. It’s through, yeah, teacher gave us four factoring problems and it took me all night, you know? And you’re just like, dude.

speaker-0 (00:41) Yes.

When you get to calculus, if you’re taking 10 minutes to factor a quadratic, that’s only one component of a calculus optimization problem. You’re going to be spending half an hour on this problem that should take you two minutes.

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