[kenjackson]

A lot also has to do with comfort. If I'm the smartest person in the class I feel a lot more comfortable asking questions. I know that if I have a question then a good percentage of other people do too.

But if I'm not the smartest in the class (or simply not familiar with the material) I may be more inclined to look on Google or follow-up afterwards with the presenter. I don't know if the question I have is worth the time of the 20 or 200 other people in the room. I just don't have the context to know.

So to me it's unclear if smart people ask questions because they're comfortable or because that's what they naturally do. A good experiment -- take these same Turning Award winners to a basketball court and have them run through some plays. See if they start asking questions like, "OK, I go left here, but what if someone is setting a pick, should I switch?" or do they nod their head...

[larrys]

"same Turning Award winners to a basketball court and have them run through some plays. See if they start asking questions like, "OK, I go left here, but what if someone is setting a pick, should I switch?" or do they nod their head..."

My experience has been that people are centered around feeling special in a few areas. Something outside that area they don't have an issue with appearing to be stupid. In fact they seem to almost embrace that. I'm sure you've run into plenty of "smart" people (say your Doctor) that say "I'm really bad with computers."

So my theory would be that the further away from their area of expertise a person would be more likely to admit they know nothing and ask a question.

I would even say that the asking of questions follows a bell curve.

If you are an expert, no fear.

If you know nothing no fear.

[samirahmed]

what you say is very true. Asking questions in an environment of peers tends to depend on confidence.

Questioning everything and asking questions are often different things in a classroom environment.

A key premise of the Khan Academy is that students learning in the intimacy of their own space enables slower students to learn and excel

[ZeroGravitas]

In Sal Khan's TED talk he displays a graph and claims they repeatedly saw "slower" students catch up and excel. He then asked himself whether he (and the audience) had benefited not by being better than their classmates but more by luck that they didn't misunderstand (or simply miss) some early lesson and then get left behind as the class moved on before they had a chance to grasp it.

[phillmv]

Whenever I find myself thinking that I'm the smartest person in the room I like to take a deep breath and look around me more carefully.

Always a poor assumption to make, in my experience.

[kenjackson]

I was using the term "smart"/"smartest" largely following the use in the post. You can replace it with the term "relatively competent in the domain being discussed".