[r-t] Blue Line Difficulty - an orthographic observation

[Glenn Taylor]

I can’t let it pass without comment!

 

I think I can say with complete honesty that I have never previously seen an example of the correct use of the diaeresis in an email – but perhaps I need to stay in more! My hat metaphorically goes off to Don (q.v. his email sent today at 15:39).

 

Glenn

 

 

 

 

 

From: ringing-theory [mailto:ringing-theory-bounces at bellringers.org] On Behalf Of Don Morrison
Sent: 29 August 2017 15:39
To: ringing-theory at bellringers.org
Subject: Re: [r-t] Blue Line Difficulty

 

​On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 8:25 AM, Mark Davies <mark at snowtiger.net> wrote:
> What Graham is trying to achieve should probably be described as "a
> measure of blue line difficulty with the assumption that the method
> and its work is not familiar".

That's still not well defined. I ring with a fellow who learned Cornwall before Cambridge or Yorkshire; in fact, while he's rung several peals of different surprise major methods, he's still never rung one of a Cambridge-above method. What he reports finding more or less difficult is noticeably different than many others do, even when not related to anything he's already rung. We all have contexts, and they make a huge difference.

It is telling that at lower stages, after a certain point in our ringing careers we typically don't learn individual methods any more, we learn larger collections of them in parallel. How does that fit into a metric of difficulty?

I think what you have to aim at is "a metric of how difficult a method is as measured by exactly this metric." As you note, not necessarily a worthless thing, but I think we need to keep our eyes open about what it really measures.

> How many bits do we need to represent it? This must have an analogue
> in the number of brain cells required to remember it.

It all depends upon how you chunk it. Which is going to vary by individual taste and inclination, and by the individual's past experiences.

That said, I work with lots of folks who have spent their whole careers worry about things like list learning--I'll ask around and see if anyone has any useful insights. I suspect they do.

And no, I don't think what we can remember and number of brain cells has quite the relationship you are implying. It works differently than that. It's still way, way, way, horribly overly naïve, but if you insist on a simplistic, reductionist approach it might be better to think in terms of the number of possible connections. While there are many wonderful things to be said about Von Neumann machines, "being a faithful model of human cognition" is not one of them.

> In addition to this, it is I think necessary to give weight to factors which ringers find subjectively difficult:
>
> 1. Frequent changes of direction
> 2. Wrong hunting
> 3. Non-PB leadheads

Why not symmetries, as well? I don't think they just fall out by worrying about the entropy: I'm pretty sure glide symmetry contributes just as much redundancy as the usual palindromic symmetry, but I'm guessing most ringers find the latter considerably more helpful to learning a method (because it's what they're used to--I'm pretty sure that's the main reason Non-PB leadheads raise the difficulty). And symmetries don't necessary just make things easier: I think some classes of error in ringing are probably driven by "this bit is a lot like that bit, and I got confused between them"--symmetries sometimes give us more opportunities to make these sorts of errors.

How does lead length fit into the metric? How should Bastow, Little Bob, Plain Bob, Crayford Little Bob, Gainsborough Little Bob, Wellington Little Bob, Kent Treble Bob, Oxford Treble Bob, Albion Treble Bob and Rivendell Treble Bob rank against one another? And stage? Is Kent Max harder than Kent Minor--in some ways it's easier, isn't it? Same can be said for Cambridge or Stedman.

And even those properties that contribute to difficulty depend upon their contexts. I think the big, double dodges in Buckfastleigh constitute "Frequent changes of direction" but they are not what, I think, most ringers find difficult in remembering the method. The difficulty is the nasty little bits in the middles of the rows between the sets of big dodges (and long Stedman turns on the ends). Those, too, have frequent changes of direction, but at about the same rate, or perhaps even a little slower, than those in the big dodges. Hmm, speaking of "chunking," that's exactly what that description was doing, where "nasty little bits" refers to "really hard to chunk".



-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
"Cognition is at least as complex as the weather."
  -- Ken Forbus, keynote address to the 2015 ACT-R Workshop

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