[_Microft]

I'm reasonably sure that it was a pottery class (or study) in which students/study participants were asked to produce either the best piece they could think of or as many as possible. I think it was actually a study that I read about.

It might need some internet sleuthing to find it. I'll try later.

I do not think that it is surprising that practice improves skills though (well, except for people with an exceptionally fixed mindset ;).

(For today's lucky Ten Thousand, "fixed mindset" refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_Growth_Minds... )

(For today's lucky Ten Thousand, "today's lucky Ten Thousand" refers to https://xkcd.com/1053/ )

[lqet]

Here is an article discussing this:

https://medium.com/swlh/the-science-backed-secret-to-rapidly...

> On the first day of the class, the ceramics teacher divided the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the class, he announced, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

> The works of highest quality, the most beautiful and creative designs, were all produced by the group graded for quantity.

[saberdancer]

It's an anecdote which could be completely fabricated, I'd expect it is since the source seems to be a book where it is mentioned as story with no names.

If anyone has some kind of study or more concrete example, I'd love to hear about it.

[meheleventyone]

It should be obvious to most people that it's trivially true that practice helps you improve skills that require manual dexterity.

I also think it's highly likely the anecdote is supposed to be illustrative rather than literal. IMO it's meant to be advice to students not to fret about how perfect their work is and that with time it will improve. It's just been distorted by the "one quick hack" culture of self improvement.

[hairofadog]

I’ve heard this story lots of different ways and assumed it was a fictional allegory. If it’s true, I can’t help imagining some poor student in the “quality” group at the end of the class, after the big reveal, looking down at their inferior ceramic bowl and going, “well, that was a waste of time,” and then maybe there's a sad moment later where they give up their dreams of becoming a ceramicist.

[jlokier]

> highly likely the anecdote is supposed to be illustrative rather than literal

If it is a made up anecdote, that would be rather misleading under a headline that says "science-backed".

The article argues that it's supported by data that focus on quantity leads to better quality than focus on quantity.

It doesn't argue that it's merely a compelling idea that we should try for ourselves.

[meheleventyone]

Random writing on the internet can be misleading.

[ajuc]

Unix vs Multix.

Plan 9 and GNU Herd vs Linux.

Spring vs EJB.

Rest vs Soap vs CORBA.

C vs Algol.

It's easier to do something simple and iterate on it than to do something perfect from the start.

[arthev]

Trivially leads to local optima only, though. You're intentionally making a stake somewhere with no reasonable expectation of high quality, after all.

[meheleventyone]

That's a different idea though.

Rather the whole point here is that when learning it's better to focus on quantity over quality AND by doing so that quality will naturally be better. The parent is looking for examples of this latter idea.

[saberdancer]

I'm mostly interested in the source of the story, it sounds completely fabricated and if it is true, it should be very easy to replicate.

But let's take the idea to the extreme, imagine we are building an system, one team starts building and improving on the design for 6 months. Other team builds and starts anew every 2 weeks. Who would have a better system at the end of 6 months? Tough to tell, the iterative one will probably build it from the ground in a better way with less technical debt but who will have a more complete system or more features.

[meheleventyone]

I don't think it's important for the message if the story is true or made up. It's overthinking things to an extreme.

I also think it's being misapplied when put into a completely different context. Teamwork, not students learning, project that is harder to start again and slower to iterate that way etc. I'm not sure we should consider every piece of advice as being some how completely universal.

We could also overthink it in the other direction. The students themselves could have come to the conclusion that the best way to get quality was lots of practice and made lots of pots or parts of pots until they had perfected pot making and merely presented the final result. Whereas the students that went for quantity merely made a load of crap pots. Same lesson but roles reversed.

[ajuc]

If you consider version n+1 of your software a new product - it's the same idea.

This is basically agile vs waterfall.

[meheleventyone]

Starting simple versus starting complex is different than making the same kind of thing repeatedly to refine the act of making it and the end quality.

Iterating on a project is definitely a great way to learn about it, refine how you make it and accrete complexity. So it can but doesn't necessarily have to encompass both ideas.

I also think that whilst it's tempting to stretch the anecdote to fit all sorts of ideas it's particularly unhelpful when trying to discuss the idea it actually references.

[saberdancer]

But if you threw away all the code after each version, I doubt you'd get much done. Sure the code might be perfect, but you can do only so much in a short timeframe.

Perhaps it would be best to iterate fast early on in the project, throw away a couple of weeks with PoCs and then go for the big one.

[adambyrtek]

I get your point, but wasn't Linux the simple solution that got improved over time vs GNU Hurd which tried to implement the perfect micro-kernel architecture?

[ajuc]

Yes, that's my point?

EDIT: Ah, you mean the order is different :)

[kstenerud]

But this can also backfire:

- C++

- CMake

- PHP

- Postscript

And it can work well:

- TeX

- Git (not the later additions)

[billfruit]

Why is a study or a concrete example necessary, if I might ask. It works perfectly fine as a thought experiment.

[jlokier]

Some thought experiments tell you a useful answer.

But this thought experiment doesn't tell you what works, as either outcome is quite compelling and plausible. So it's not much use as a thought experiment, other than to show that it might be interesting to study it in the real world.

I.e. it might be "obvious" to you that focus on quantity over quality leads to better quality as assessed by another in the thought experiment. But it might be equally "obvious" to someone else the other way.

A real study would be interesting, because there might be a real world consistent pattern. It might actually be useful to know which one works best for real.

[billfruit]

But we can reason theoretically about what could be the outcome of the thought experiment, and if that is compelling enough, that I think is sufficient insight, that carrying out a real experiment wouldn't give any additional knowledge.

Also since this human behaviour we talking about here. Experimental Psychology is a field known for its credibility crisis, its inconsistent and possible non-reproduceable results, that I have not much faith in it to give us useful insights, and I would be more interested in hearing many of those matters addressed from a purely theoretic point of view, than through conclusions from dubious experimental data.

[jlokier]

Sure, if there is one outcome.

In this case, when I do the thought experiment, my mind runs both possibilities and concludes they are both plausible and compelling.

When I do the thought meta-experiment of imagining other people doing the thought experiment, it sees some people imagining one outcome is compelling and likely, and other people imagining the other outcome is compelling and likely.

I'm not sure what useful theoretical point of view you would draw from that, with regard to this particular experiment.

[xenocratus]

Because if your conclusion relies on the actual result of the experiment then having it as a thought experiment only leaves you open to biases.

[mkl]

A study or concrete example is necessary to know whether it is truth or a just-so fantasy. I don't think thinking about it is enough; even though we know people improve with the right kind of practice, if you're judged purely by quantity, there is no guarantee of improvement.

[hyperpape]

I have never seen a reliable source for this anecdote. I strongly believe it's fictional. Most of the sources either don't cite anything, or go back to Art and Fear, and the presentation there doesn't say anything about where this happened.

Of course, the idea that you need practice to be good at things is obvious. But first, that's not quite the claim in the anecdote, which is about being told to aim for high quality. In any case, the vivid anecdote would be better off if people were clear that it's a hypothetical.

[_Microft]

I found this "study" mentioned in the slides of a university course and contacted the lecturer to find out if they have a source for that. I will reply to my top comment if I get an answer. You might want to check in a few days.

[webmaven]

> I'm reasonably sure that it was a pottery class (or study) in which students/study participants were asked to produce either the best piece they could think of or as many as possible. I think it was actually a study that I read about.

> It might need some internet sleuthing to find it. I'll try later.

The earliest reference I am aware of is the 1985 book "Art and Fear", at the beginning of the section on perfection:

https://books.google.com/books?id=yGf6CAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA77&vq=c...

The book doesn't have footnotes or a bibliography, unfortunately.

I think people take away only part of the lesson from this anecdote, and miss the implication that, since getting an "A" was trivial for the "grade by quantity" group, students were not just encouraged to practice, but were also free to experiment without fear of failure (after all, they could easily make up any shortfall by firing a few unworked lumps of clay to get to 50 lbs).

But I wish we had data on the number of students, distribution of grades, number of pieces each student made, etc. because it should be obvious that we can't extrapolate too much from the fact that some data points on the "high quality" end of the distribution were all from one group. The three best? Ten best? The best half? What was the size of the class anyway? Did anyone try to game the system by just firing 50 one-pound lumps?

In some sense, this is a bit like evaluating software based on SLOC, and we all know how that ends up.

It should also be obvious that none of the students had any particular incentive to explore the "delicate" end of the possible artistic design space, although at least the "quantity" group wasn't penalized for doing so. So, if no students cottoned on to the "50 1-pound lumps" hack, I would expect to see coffee mugs rather than teacups in their work.

[__jf__]

Yep that pottery class also comes up as an anecdote in “Art and Fear: Observations on the perils and rewards of artmaking”:

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaki...

[modernerd]

I first saw it in Jeff Atwood's blog back in 2008:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality...

[_Microft]

UPDATE: the lecturer responded and as it turns out, they were also referring to the story from the book Art & Fear by Bayles and Orland.

Searching Google Scholar for older publications on the topic of quantity vs. quality did not turn up anything useful either. Looks like we are out of luck here.

[arh68]

I believe the ceramics bit is fabricated, and it was actually a photography class. But it hardly matters. It's an interesting perspective, details aside.

[_Microft]

I found a lecturer referring to a pottery study and sent them an email asking if they could point me to the actual study. Let's see and wait.

[LegitShady]

If you learn classical methods of drawing techniques you often do poses in different time frames - 1 minutes, then 2 minute, then 5 and 15 minute poses.

The shorter poses don't let you put in any detail but you learn how to quickly express gesture and delineate important masses and shadow.

For 5 minutes poses you're essentially practicing the first 5 minutes of a drawing intentionally without intending to finish it.

It's essentially a similar idea.

[christophilus]

Adam Smith observed something similar. In his case it was about nail manufacturing or something, but he noted that the boys who made a thousand nails per day were not only more efficient than an unrelated craftsman who might try it, but also their quality was likely higher.

[nate]

There's various versions of this anecdote/experiment. There was also a photography class experiment that has made the rounds: https://jamesclear.com/repetitions