Hi people,
This thread has gone in a lack of direction as many others in this list.
Is Math (at its higher levell) iimportant to be taught to people wanting to be designated as designers? Should Math be part of Design schools and Design programs, at its higher levell? Or are the people wanting to be designers prepared or willing to learn Math at its higher level? These were more or less the questions raised by Terry and responded by Ken. 10000 h counting is irrelevant for this matter and exemplifies very well why sometimes science and journalism agree in idle topics by persisting in adressing them.
One thing seems clear to me, if you spend 10000 hours doing something repetedly and you don't master it, there is something wrong with you, even if you are a Lemur. If you master it before 10000h there are great chances that you are not a Lemur but you never know...
The main question remains, will we change design education to make designers more able to make decisions based on mathematics (and at the cost of what)? Would that in fact change design education for better? In the end, is that kind of efficiency what society wants from designers, assuming that society is allocating resourses to educate some people as designers? And even if society thinks so, wouldn't it be wrong? Think of Economics education for instance where the highest Maths are present since ever. Didn't economists failed to predict, and by the way understand, the present economic crisis... In advance? Wwe had Design education for 200 years, or 500 years acording to another perspective, without that kind of maths. Look around... Is it the world that we may call designed by designers world so bad? Are Eames' chairs that bad? Or illustraded books? Or ikea tableware? Are these useful, sometimes beautiful and practical stuff being offered to us, contributing to enhance or humanity also, so bad, being designed by mathless desigers? And if you came to think of it, some of this world has been done under the collaboration of designers and experts on Maths. This, by all means, do not mean, that designers should be trained as expert mathmaticians. This simply means that there should be Mathmaticians prepared to work with designers.
Have a wonderfull weekend
Eduardo Corte-Real 
IADE, Lisboa


Enviada do meu iPad

> Em 03/05/2014, às 15:12, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
> 
> ​I wish to voice my strong sketpicism about this 10,000 hours claim.
> 
> This is my area of research. I have done experiments, pubished papers in
> the best peer reviewed journals, and written at least one book that talks
> about this. anders Ericsson, the person responsible for the 10,000 hours
> figure, is a friend. I have known him since he was in graduate school.
> 
> I don't beleive him.
> 
> All the other stories are derivatives. As for Malcolm Gladwell, he is
> completely untrustworthy. Gladwell takes one single investigator and then
> uses that one person's work to base (and bias) his wonderful journalistic
> writing style.
> 
> If you want a brilliant expose of Gladwell, read the truly excellent book
> by Duncan Watts: everything is obvious once you know the answer.  Duncan
> watts is a scientist, but a great writer as well.
> 
> I never trust books on science by non-scientists,  no matter how well they
> are written.
> 
> --
> Ericsson denies the power of individual differences. He also studies
> extreme skills.
> 
> One can gain a deep appreciation of many topics in far less time. Does it
> take time to develop the extreme skill of the world's best performers? yes.
> But not everyone has to be the world's best. (In fact, by definition, not
> everyone can be the best.)
> 
> How long does it take? it depends upon:
> 
> the person
> the topic
> the level of mastery desired
> the level of skill desired
> 
> So, for example, I can slowly accomplish some tasks quite well with only a
> relatively small amount of instruction and training.  If I spent a few more
> hours (or a few thousand), I could do equally well, but with far less
> mental effort and far less time.
> 
> For most of us, the peripheral topics we need to use occasionally can be
> learned with only a relatively few hours.
> 
> Think of it this way.  2,000 hours is one year of training at 40 hours/week.
> 
> 10,000 hours is 40 hours of training every week for 5 years.
> 
> It is nonsense to think that all professionals need that amount of training
> for every skill they possess.
> 
> ------
> Notice too that i said training, not practice.  There is lots of evidence
> that practice does not make one better. it is training that is required:
> training is targeted practice, with intelligent assessment afterwards (in
> design, we call that critique).
> 
> Don't believe everything a popular journalist tells you.
> 
> Don.
> 
> And, as my academic signature says:
> 
> Prof. Emeritus Cognitive Science & Psychology
> ​ (University of California, San Diego)
> Breed Prof. of Design and Prof. EECS, Emeritus
> ​ (​
> Northwestern University
> ​)​
> 
> ​Author of some relevant books: Learning and Memory. Memory and Attention.
> Models of Human Memory. Human Information Processing. ​
> 
> ​
> ​For Terry: Models of Human Memory is almost entirely mathematical models
> of memory​, the one exception being a computer simulation model.
> 
> ​
> 
> 
> 
> Don Norman
> Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow
> [log in to unmask] www.jnd.org  <http://www.jnd.org>
> "Stupid Smart Things" and other LinkedIn
> Essays<http://www.linkedin.com/influencer/12181762-Don-Norman>
> |  Core77 Essays <http://www.core77.com/blog/author/don-norman/default.asp> |
> Essays on my website <http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html>
> Book: "Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded<http://amzn.to/ZOMyys>"
> (DOET2).
> Course: Udacity On-Line course based on
> DOET2<https://www.udacity.com/course/design101>
> (free).
> 
> 
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