Thursday, February 21, 2013

Richard Feynman and Bill Gates: An (Imaginary) Interview

(Updated on Sunday, 5 November 2017. Included reference to the excellent book
"The Quantum Labyrinth" by Paul Halpern, published in October, 2017. The book is about 'How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality.')


Bill Gates respects and admires "individuals who achieve something inspirational or who possess extraordinary character." Of these, one name comes up more often than others: the late great Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.

Gates had planned on meeting with Feynman in 1988 but didn't get a chance. Feynman died of cancer in February of that year. "It’s an opportunity I’m sorry I missed," wrote Gates in the New York Times in 1995. "His book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, is a favorite of mine."

Feynman was a hero because, as Gates put it, "he was incredibly inspirational. He was an independent thinker and gifted teacher who pushed himself to understand new things.
I have enjoyed everything I’ve read about him and by him. I admired him deeply…"


In 1964, Feynman gave a series of lectures at Cornell University, the Messenger Lectures, under the title "The Character of Physical Law." Topics ranged from symmetry, probability and uncertainty in physical laws to techniques by which physicists seek new laws. The lectures were recognized for their extraordinary quality. "I have videotapes of physics lectures Feynman gave at Cornell decades ago," said Gates. "They are the best lectures I’ve seen on any subject. He shared his enthusiasm and clarity energetically and persuasively."

During an interview with CIO magazine in September 1997, Gates was asked: "Who would you invite to a dinner party?" Feynman was on the list, along with Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci. As recently as June, 2017, Gates said in an interview with TIME magazine that "One person I'm sorry I never got to meet is the physicist Richard Feynman. He had a brilliant mind and was a phenomenal teacher." (http://time.com/4786837/bill-gates-books-reading/)

On July 14, 2009, Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Gates, launched a Web site called Project Tuva that makes The Messenger Lectures freely available to the public for the first time. Gates purchased the rights to the seven lectures in the series to help kids get excited about physics and science. “I think someone who can make science interesting is magical. And the person who did that better than anybody was Richard Feynman. He took the mystery of science, the importance of science, the strangeness of science, and made it fun and interesting and approachable,” said Gates.

At the time of his death, Feynman had become everyone’s favorite physicist, thanks to the popularity of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think. With these books, transcribed by his friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton from taped conversations over a period of years, Feynman captured the public imagination as no other physicists had before him, with the possible exceptions of Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a set of lectures Feynman gave to undergraduates at Caltech in '62-63, is now a classic. (For a description of how the lectures came about, see the definitive article by Feynman's colleague Matthew Sands in Physics Today, April 2005. The lectures - Volume 1 as of this writing - are now available online for free on the Caltech website.

Feynman’s fame grew when he was appointed to the Rogers commission in 1986 to investigate the Challenger shuttle explosion. His dramatic demonstration on TV of the loss of resiliency in O-ring at freezing temperature as a principal cause of the Challenger accident made him a national celebrity. In applauding his performance, the physicist Freeman Dyson said: "The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks a clear question."

Since he passed away in 1988, Feynman lore has continued to grow. Several books have been published, including Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (James Gleick, 1992), Most of the Good Stuff: Memories of Richard Feynman (American Institute of Physics, 1993), No Ordinary Genius (Christopher Sykes, 1994), The Beat of a Different Drum (Jagdish Mehra, 1994), Feynman’s Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun (W.W. Norton, 1996), The Meaning of It All (Helix Books, 1998), The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Perseus Books, 1999) Feynman's Rainbow (Leonard Mlodinow, 2003), Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard Feynman (Edited by Michelle Feynman, Basic Books, 2005), Quantum Man (Lawrence M. Krauss, 2011), and The Quantum Labyrinth (Paul Halpern, Basic Books, 2017).

Reminiscences by colleagues also appear from time to time in Physics journals, such as "Capturing the wisdom of Feynman" by Matthew Sands (Physics Today, April 2006) and "Memories of Feynman" by Theodore A. Welton (Physics Today, February 2007). A fascinating article on how Feynman approached the subject of piano tuning ("Stiff-string theory: Richard Feynman on piano tuning" by John C. Bryner) appeared in the December 2009 issue of Physics Today.

Feynman has even made it into the billboards! When Apple Computer began its "Think Different" series of ads featuring great scientists, artists, humanitarians and the like, the company chose Einstein and Gandhi among its first examples of the uncommon rewards awaiting those who dared to follow the beat of a different drum. "Can Feynman be far behind?" I wondered.

In November '98, I was driving in San Francisco's Mission District when I suddenly saw that familiar face with the knowing grin inviting commuters to ponder the mysteries of ... what? The photograph showed Feynman wearing the corporate T-shirt of Thinking Machine, a Boston-based company where he had briefly worked as a consultant in 1983. The shirt bore a schematic representation of Connection Machine - a cube of cubes - that he helped design for Thinking Machine. (It's the same photograph on the cover of What Do You Care What Other People Think?) Then, in April '99, Feynman "came" to Silicon Valley where I live. Anyone driving along Highway 101 in the South Bay could "see" Feynman teaching quantum mechanics at the California Institute of Technology, in front of a blackboard on which he had written matrices and differential equations. According to Caltech archives, the photograph was taken on May 2, 1963, during his "Lectures on Physics" period. (Feynman has a large number of fans in Silicon Valley, so there was disappointment when Apple "replaced" him with an image of an iMac five months later.)

Gates may have been most pleased, however, with the publications of The Feynman Lectures on Computation (edited by Anthony J. G. Hey and Robin W. Allen - 1996) and Feynman and Computation (edited by A. J. G. Hey - 1998.)

The first is a collection of lectures Feynman gave at Caltech from 1983 to 1986 as part of an interdisciplinary course called "Potentialities and Limitations of Computing Machines." The second contains contributions by distinguished computer scientists and physicists who were guest lecturers in Feynman's interdisciplinary course. It also contains reprints of Feynman's prescient articles on the physics of computing: "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" (1959!) and "Simulating Physics with Computers" (1982). Anyone reading these two books will agree that Feynman's insight and ingenuity make his lectures on computation almost as timeless as his physics lectures.

Feynman even has his own 37-cent first-class stamp! The US Postal Service has honored four American scientists - physicists Richard Feynman and Josiah Willard Gibbs, mathematician John von Neumann and geneticist Barbara McClintock. The stamps were issued on 4 May, 2005. The Feynman stamp shows the physicist in his 30s, framed by the unmistakable Feynman diagrams. The stamp came about thanks to the decade-long lobbying effort by Ralph Leighton, who organized a celebration on May 11, 2005, at the post office in Far Rockaway, the New York City neighborhood where Feynman grew up. On the same day, the street in Far Rockaway where Feynman lived - 2 blocks from the post office - was renamed in his honor, from Cornaga Ave to "Richard Feynman Way." The date was appropriately chosen: May 11 is Feynman's birthday.

Gates never met Feynman but it is fascinating to imagine a meeting between the two. Here is the whiz kid transformed into a wide-eyed pupil, marveling at the master’s facility with ideas and insights, wondering at the source of that magical genius that was uniquely Feynman’s. What does Feynman think of the current state of computing? How does he envision its future? Are any architectural breakthroughs in software imminent? Where is the limit and why?




An autumn afternoon. Gates is at the Feynman house in Altadena, Southern California. Feynman introduces Gates to his menagerie - one horse, two dogs, one cat, and five rabbits. Gates smiles as Feynman addresses each animal by name and inquires of its health.

Afterwards, they settle down in the book-lined living room to talk.

Gates: When did you first take an interest in computers?

Feynman: My interest in computers really grew with my interest in physics, which is to say, very early. I recall reading in high school about mathematical machines, tide predictors, area measuring devices, and all kinds of wonderful things about computing in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Gates: How have computers helped you in physics?  

Feynman: When I try to solve a difficult problem, I ask myself: What is it that I can compute that will explain how this particular physical system behaves? This approach has served me well. I am interested in useful results, not abstractions, whether it’s in understanding how light interacts with matter or why helium behaves so strangely at low temperatures. I get useful results by coming up with numbers that can be experimentally verified. Computers play an important role in this verification process.

Gates: But isn’t your kind of computing different from the computing most of us are used to?

Feynman: It’s true the kind of computing I am interested in is based mostly on physical insights and mathematics - mathematics always in the service of physics, I must add - but computers are a big help. They can perform millions of important calculations a scientist may never have the time for. Sometimes computers can even suggest ideas one hasn’t thought of before. I find this exciting. For anyone curious about how nature works at the deepest level, a computer can be a valuable tool. I certainly find them so.

Gates: Back in 1942, when you and other scientists were working on the Manhattan Project, digital computers were several years away. What was computing like then?

Feynman: We had these Marchant and Monroe computers - hand calculators with numbers, really - that were good for adding, multiplying, dividing, and so on. They were about a foot across and several inches high, with all kinds of levers on them that you pushed to get results. Unfortunately they broke down often. Metal parts wore thin and came out of alignment because of the pounding they took, and had to be sent back to the factory for repair. We just couldn’t afford the downtime - this was a wartime effort after all - and so some of us began to tinker. We would take the covers off and try to figure out ways to fix them. Pretty soon we got good at it and kept things going.

Then the calculations became complicated, way beyond the capacity of the Marchants. We had to get IBM machines - multipliers, tabulator, verifier, keypunch, sorter, collator and what have you. They were the best machines at the time. We managed to assemble them ourselves and came up with results that turned out to be very important.

Gates: I am curious about some of those calculations …

Feynman: The biggest challenge was to figure out how much energy would be released from various designs of the bomb. Then we had to narrow it down to how much energy would be released from specific designs that would be used in the actual bomb, and how much fissile material would be needed in each case. This was very complicated, nonlinear equations and all, and we had so little time! The experimentalists couldn’t help; they needed our results to carry on their work. We computed by simulation, using a primitive form of what you would now call parallel processing. But we rose to the challenge. Our calculations told us what we could and couldn’t do. Lots of important results, very accurate.

Gates: Fifty years later, how do you view your wartime efforts?

Feynman becomes pensive. "At Los Alamos, we were doing what we had to. We started for a good reason. We worked hard. It was exciting. We discovered, invented, and pushed the limits of science and technology to create a bomb to help us win the war. We won the war but afterwards many of us weren’t so sure about the bomb itself. We had second thoughts. The bomb took on a life all its own. I remember sitting in a restaurant in New York shortly after returning from Los Alamos to teach at Cornell, wondering: what if New York City were to become another Hiroshima! Everything around me would be smashed. What was the point of life, of all this creativity? It didn’t make any sense at all. It took me a while to shake off this feeling. Eventually I got busy with physics and moved to Caltech, but that’s another story.

Gates: What about your experience with computers, though?

Feynman brightens. "There’s no second thought about that," he replied. "The main idea I came away with from Los Alamos was that even simple, primitive machines could be used to calculate important results. And it keeps getting better!"

Gates: I just finished reading Feynman Lectures on Computation. I am intrigued by a remark you made at the end of one of the chapters: "In 2050, or before, we may have computers that we can’t even see!"

Feynman: What I was investigating in those lectures was the answer to a fundamental question: What

is it that we can and cannot do with computers today, and why? One issue was, how small could you make a computer? Was there any physical limitation to its size due to laws of physics? That led me to investigate the characteristics of a computer operating according to the laws of quantum mechanics. If we want to make extremely small computers, no more than the size of a few atoms, we would have to use the laws of quantum mechanics, not classical mechanics. So I began to analyze what you would call quantum computers. People thought that the uncertainty principle would be a limitation: that is, you wouldn’t be able to make a computer as small as you wanted because of the way time and energy, for instance, was related. I found to my surprise that quantum mechanics didn’t impose any limitations on the size of a computer, over and above those due to statistical and classical mechanics.

Gates: So you don’t have to worry about any unavoidable limitation arising from natural laws when you are trying to build the smallest possible computer?

Feynman: Exactly. Nature is quantum, not classical, so if you are trying to simulate nature, it had better be built on quantum laws. And if there’s no restriction there, you’re on solid ground! Of course, you have to consider the second law of thermodynamics, reversible computing and so on.

Gates: How would you write software for such a computer?

Feynman: That’s for you to figure out! I did my part!

Laughter.

Gates: I noticed in your lectures that you derived Shannon’s Theorem in three different ways, using concepts from statistics, geometry and physics! Why?

Feynman: I am an explorer. I like to find things out for myself. That’s how I understand anything. What I cannot create, I do not understand. If I can derive a theorem or a result independently, even when I know it has been discovered before, it means I understand it. That’s the only way I know how to learn. In the case of Shannon’s theorem, each method I used to derive it taught me something new.

"Besides," Feynman lowers his voice conspiratorially as Gates instinctively draws nearer, "what one fool can do, so can another!"

More laughter.

Gates: The topics of your lectures - coding and communication theory, Shannon’s theorem, quantum computers and such - are fundamental research topics. We have a growing research department at Microsoft but our focus is somewhat different. We are primarily interested in such things as: How do you increase people’s creativity through software? What will make computers easier to use, more responsive to the needs of the user, more natural? Can computers extend human cognition by assimilating speech and linguistics? These are the issues that interest us. Do you have any interest in these aspects of computing?

Feynman: Of course I do. Any tool that can make computers easier to use and more natural, as you say, is important. My own work in physics reflects this. I invented something called Feynman diagrams that allowed me to make complicated quantum calculations in one evening that used to take physicists six months! It was my moment of triumph, to realize that I had succeeded in working out something worthwhile.

So if you are inventing tools and products that simplify computing and at the same time open up complex problems for intelligent analysis, you are doing right by me.

Gates: Is there anything we should look out for?

Feynman: You need to make sure that the tools you create do not become more complex than the problems they are designed to solve.

Gates: One thing that concerns me very much is trying to anticipate the nature of computing ten or twenty years from now. We want to be as intelligent about it as we can, so that we can begin laying the foundation for it now, if that’s possible. Personally, I am looking for some good ideas to take us there …

Feynman: Well, it seems to me you need a new model for writing software, considering how important software has become in everything we do. I think that the next generation of software ought to be modeled after natural objects defined by natural laws. If you can model software objects after objects of nature, I think you will have moved on to something new and significant.

Gates: How so?

Feynman: For one thing, you can be sure that the software will do what it is meant to. If you push this idea further, the same software should be able to transform itself appropriately if the boundary conditions were to change. It seems to me no matter how well thought-out a computer program is, there’s always some unforeseen error in it. It’s not the fault of the designer or the developer, it’s the model on which the program is written. A large software system now seems to me to be like an elaborate sandcastle one builds at the shore. Suddenly a big wave hits and it’s gone!

Gates: So we have to change the foundation?

Feynman: I think so. You need to bind software development to criteria higher than standards and protocols. Numerical data modified by computers should be treated much as laws of nature govern the way objects behave in the real world.

Gates: But doesn’t that imply that people who write software have to be physicists as well?

Feynman: Not really. If you are talking about physical laws, the fundamental laws of nature are simple. That’s where their power and beauty come from. You go through all these complicated calculations and what comes out in the end is unbelievably simple. That’s what I talked about in those videos you have of mine. Besides, it can’t hurt to know a little physics. It’s a part of our culture!

Gates: That is true. Perhaps the new model could help in the area of testing too. Software testing has become very critical. We are always fighting product release deadlines against testing!

Feynman: Exactly. How do you test software against all possible failures? I don’t think you can, using current methods. But if software objects can be modeled after natural objects, testing becomes more straightforward. You have more confidence in the result. If the test fails, you may end up discovering something new and unexpected. That’s how it is in physics. There’s no fooling natural laws!

Gates: I remember the last sentence in your personal report on the Challenger accident: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

Feynman (obviously pleased): You get the idea!

Gates: Any example modeling software after natural objects?

Feynman: Some years ago, a bunch of guys were trying to build superfast computers using parallel processors. The company was called "Thinking Machines." My son Carl, who is interested in such things, joined them. Since the kids running the company didn’t know any better, they ended up hiring me too!

Anyway, the problem was to design a router that delivered messages from one processor to another. There were a million processors in that machine and it wasn’t practical to connect every pair of them. We chose a model where each processor needed to talk directly to only a few of its neighbors. The problem came down to figuring out the minimum number of buffers to hold messages for the router to operate efficiently.

I analyzed the problem by treating the router circuit diagrams as if they were objects of nature, the kind of stuff I do all the time in physics, and came up with a set of partial differential equations. The equations said five buffers per chip would do. Others predicted seven but in the end, it had to be five from a practical standpoint. My equations apparently saved the day!

Gates: We use certain types of object models for writing software. Coming to think of it, you can say these objects are quantized software.

Feynman: Yes! Small, self-contained software that solves just one specific problem that makes life easier for people can be called quantized software. See, you are already using concepts from physics, only you don't know!

Gates: What you are suggesting, then, is that future software should include ideas and concepts from physics as well as from computer science.

Feynman: Yes, but I think ideas should also come from biology. In fact, I think the intersection of biology and computer science could prove even more fruitful for developing software than physics.

Gates: It’s already happening. Bioinformatics is an emerging field that brings together ideas from biotechnology and computers. You studied biology for a while, didn’t you?

Feynman: Yes. I actually worked in the field during my sabbatical year at Caltech. This was after Watson and Crick’s discovery of the DNA spiral. My big moment came when Watson himself invited me to give a seminar on my work at Harvard. I am convinced biology has a lot to offer to computer science, especially in writing software.

Gates: In what specific ways?

Feynman: Well, insights can come from understanding how living organism function, from their adaptive, fault-tolerant, error-handling traits. It can come from studying how human genes are laid out, how the 'book of life' actually reads … There are thousands of possibilities, really.

Gates: That’s exciting! If I were not in computers, I would most certainly be working in biotechnology. I think we are only scratching the surface here. Have you been following the Genome project?

Feynman: Yes, and I think what scientists have accomplished is remarkable. It's a historic milestone to have mapped the genetic blueprint for human life and make it available to researchers!

Gates: The way we treat diseases and prevent them will be revolutionized!

Feynman: I certainly hope so. We can end suffering, at least to some extent, only if we know what disease really is. And when that happens, perhaps we can start talking more about health and less about disease.

Gates: One of my goals in life is to help eradicate diseases like smallpox, malaria, cholera and polio from the world. It's terrible that so many people still die from these diseases in this day and age. The success of the Genome project should certainly help.

Feynman: That will make it all worthwhile, won't it? In many ways, the Genome project reminds me of the Manhattan Project. I feel the same sense of excitement, the same anticipation. I wish I could start over again!

Gates: I am sure there's much you can contribute still.

Feynman: Is there any database that can store the Genome and sift through its data quickly?

Gates (momentarily taken aback): We are working on it. It is extremely important to create a database system that can meet these types of challenges.

Feynman: That should be a milestone for Microsoft. If biological data managers find widespread use, database research will pick up speed too! I want to see this applied to neuroscience as well. If we can track and analyze the activities of billions of neurons simultaneously, we will have made inroads into the working of the brain, perhaps our ultimate frontier.

They ponder the implications of the coming revolution in genetics and neuroscience. Both see beneficial possibilities but recognize that there are important moral and ethical issues to consider too.

Gates: It seems to me that a really good software engineer should be able to derive inspiration from different disciplines.

Feynman: Yes! I made the point in my Nobel lecture that a good physicist might find it useful to have a wide range physical viewpoints and mathematical expressions available to him. If everyone follows the current fashion in expressing and thinking about the generally understood areas, then understanding the open problems is limited. It’s possible that the truth lies in the fashionable direction. But if it is in another direction, who will find it?

I would make the same point to the new generation of software developers. Don’t limit yourself to what you know or what already exists. Be an explorer, not a tourist. Look across disciplines. Dare to follow the beat of a different drum. Your inspiration may come from the dance of molecules on a wave in the sea, the complexity of a beehive or an ant colony, the march of stars across the heavens, the nature of memory and language, the symmetry of a snowflake, and so on. There’s no end to it! After all, nature’s imagination is richer than ours, so why not use what we know of it to our advantage?

Gates: It all goes back to childhood curiosity, doesn’t it?

Feynman: Right! And it’s a tragedy we can’t hold onto some of that curiosity as we grow older!

Gates: Who are your scientific heroes?

Feynman (after a pause): There are three, really. Sadi Carnot, James Maxwell, and Paul Dirac.

He explains: "Carnot obtained a general principle of nature from the nuts and bolts of the thermal efficiency of steam engines. In one stroke, Maxwell unified electric, magnetic, and optical phenomena. And Dirac, a hero of mine ever since I read his book The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, discovered the relativistic equation for the electron."

Gates: What do you consider your most interesting discovery since winning the Nobel Prize?

Feynman: I liked my work on the theory of liquid helium. Another was discovering the laws of weak interaction with Gell-Mann. I also worked out something called the theory of partons to explain some of the properties of protons. Right now I am standing back. I am playing around with some ideas in my mind and I don’t have a clue where I'll come out. I guess that’s what makes it exciting, not knowing what strange territory one will end up in!

Gates: Any disappointments?

Feynman: Certainly. I’ve spent years trying to solve some difficult problems without success. The theory of turbulence is one. In fact, it is still unsolved. Another was my inability to understand superconductivity in which I worked for a couple of years. I should have grasped that one after my success with liquid helium but I didn’t.

Gates: Do the disappointments linger?

Feynman: Not at all! Even where I failed, I worked very hard and had a terrific time. People only hear of successes but not of failures. The important thing is to decide which problems are important and give them your best shots. If you succeed, fine. If not, you almost always end up learning something new!

Gates: You mentioned turbulence. Is that a part of the study of complexity?

Feynman: Yes. There are many phenomena we do not understand yet, from the flight of a swarm of bees to the self-organizing properties of neural networks in the human brain. How is it that a few basic rules can lead to such extraordinarily complex behavior? This is the fundamental question any theory of complexity must answer. And it’s proving to be a real challenge!

Gates: Does that reflect a failure of conventional methods for understanding complex systems?

Feynman: Probably, or else we would have solved these problems long ago! It’s the same idea in software: How do you make sure a software system consisting of 20 or 30 million lines of code works coherently? You have to retain a certain amount of skepticism about accepted ideas and keep an open mind about ideas that appear flaky. It also means any serious study of complexity will require us to explore the fundamental relationship between physics and biology to computation.

Gates: Meaning?

Feynman: Meaning whether or not there is a computational model of the universe and of biological systems that we need to consider and understand. The field is wide open and it’s undoubtedly going to require interdisciplinary research.

Gates: During the Manhattan Project you came in contact with some of the most powerful minds of the twentieth century - Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Hans Bethe, John Von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam, Robert Oppenheimer and others. Do you think there will be such a gathering of "monster minds" again?

Feynman: That was a different situation at Los Alamos. The project came about because we had to win a war. Besides, the science was also good, very good. We were discovering and inventing as went along. I don’t know that such a situation will reappear. Times have changed. It’s more structured now, more what you call "market-driven." But it really doesn’t matter, because there are many great minds about, brilliant people working in your field who are pushing the limits of technology, worrying about how people interact with computers, how software is written, and so on.

This was the moment Gates was waiting for, the real reason he had come to Altadena. Everything else was a prelude to this moment.

Gates: Will you consult for Microsoft?

Feynman’s response is instantaneous and unequivocal. "That’s the wackiest idea I ever heard!"

Gates is relieved. He has read enough about Feynman to know that the response really means Feynman is interested.

Gates smiles and suggests that his son Carl can perhaps join him too.

Feynman’s face glows. "Ain’t a bad idea at all," he says in his best Brooklyn accent.

Gates doesn’t want to leave any loose ends behind. "How about next month?" he asks. "We will give you a tour of the Microsoft campus and you can meet the people working on new ideas. I think you will like what they are doing."

But Feynman stops him. "Not possible," he says. "I am going on a trip to," he pauses dramatically and then says with a flourish, "Tannu Tuva!"

Gates is vaguely familiar with the planned trip to this place deep in Central Asia, outside of Outer Mongolia, with a capital named Kyzyl. One reason Feynman is interested in going to Tuva is because, in his own words, "any place that’s got a capital named K-Y-Z-Y-L has just got to be interesting!"

For a moment Gates thinks of asking Feynman if he can come along too. Then he sighs. Too many commitments! With a shock he realizes he too is a prisoner of schedules and deadlines, just like other worker bees!

"After you return from Tuva, then?" he asks, almost plaintively.

Feynman looks out the window. The day has about an hour of sunlight left. Shadows are lengthening and a small wind is stirring the sycamore leaves.

"Why not?" he says, grinning, and extends his hand. Gates gratefully shakes it.

 "There’s a revolution coming in software and I think you will enjoy being there when it arrives," says Gates.

 "I’m sure I will."

Gates presses on. "Information is our most important asset. We plan to create great stuff out of it."

 "No," replies Feynman softly, "imagination is."



On the flight to Seattle, Gates is restless. He picks up an airline magazine and is immediately repulsed by its banal content. He wishes he can run up and down the aisle to work off the intellectual energy that has gripped him. A mechanical problem has grounded his private jet, so that's not a realistic option.

He reclines as far back as the seat allows and closes his eyes. "Must quickly put a team of good people together," he thinks. "Feynman is coming to Microsoft. Seek inspiration from across disciplines. Learn to tap into nature’s imagination. It’s time to take the company to another dimension."

(c) Hasan Zillur Rahim

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Flipping the Classroom

The short educational videos of Khan Academy have attracted millions of followers worldwide. Salman Khan, the 36-year-old architect of the Academy, has executed the “flipped classroom” model more successfully than anyone else. It is the idea that students should watch online lectures and work through homework problems on their own at home, at their own pace. Class time once reserved for lectures by teachers would be spent mentoring and one-on-one tutoring. In other words, what was once done in the traditional classroom would be done at home and what was done at home would be done in the class.

Can the flipped classroom work for college students? How practical is it? How effective would it be?
Here is a random sampling of the perspectives of some college students in Northern California.

As Mary sees it, changing the typical teacher-classroom setting can make a big difference in the way students absorb the material. In the traditional method, teacher lectures and students are expected to learn the material without actually engaging in it. People like Salman Khan have realized that real learning takes place when students are engaged, rather than sitting at a desk listening to a teacher speak for over an hour. “I feel as though lecture is something I can listen to at home and while I am in class I can ask the teacher any question on the material or ask my peers for their feedback on the lecture. This type of education will work better for our generation as we have come a long way in technology.”
To Julio, flipping classrooms is a great idea because “in some classes lectures literally go on forever. Students just sit there passively, often bored and frustrated. I'm a huge statistics nerd and the fact is that it will make learning in a solo environment much easier. If this plan gets to become like Facebook in the next few years, it will open up education for the better.”

Joelle is convinced that flipping classrooms will not work. First, many people will not listen to the lectures at home and so when they get to class, they will be even more lost. “Class time is a time to absorb all the information possible so that at home you can try to work out the problems or write your essays in peace and quiet. It is challenging because you are now on your own to use the information you absorbed in the class. I also do not think it will work even for those who actually do listen and read the lectures at home. If there isn't a teacher to answer their questions right away, the rest of the section might not make any sense. Traditionally, in class the teacher teaches you the fundamentals and builds a solid base for the more challenging questions. Without this, it can get very confusing for the students.”

James believes that flipping the classroom will benefit students, particularly in math and science. When students listen to lectures in classes, they are expected to know everything by the time they finish taking notes. Then they are expected to do homework and solve problems by themselves. Students often feel overwhelmed with challenging problems and have no one to ask for help. They begin to fall behind. Listening to video lectures at home without distractions, they know what to ask in class. That way they can solve problems and master the material.

Julie’s view is that flipping the classroom will be of use to those who have mastered online learning and research and are self-motivated and relatively wealthy. “However, for people with learning disabilities like myself, there are disadvantages. People with limited resources cannot afford expensive technology like smart phones and iPads. I am afflicted with ADHD, anxiety and depression. I suffer memory lapses and I find learning new things very difficult. While flipping classrooms might work with classes in which I have a natural interest, like Liberal Arts, it would not work for me in Applied Sciences. I prefer learning in a classroom where there is live interaction with my teacher as well as other students. So, while flipping the classroom can be an advantage for some, many of us need the physical presence of a living and breathing instructor.”

Yvonne finds the idea of flipping classrooms at a college level attractive. It will show which students are actually doing the required work (watching lectures at home). Listening to lectures at home actually forces students to take the time to pay attention and go over the material. It gives students the ability to come up with questions to ask the teacher later. When they get to class they can right away ask what they need help with. It also makes the job of the teacher easier.
Some students may like flipping classrooms so that they can get one-on-one help with their professors but Ray sees it differently. “Because I am a more hands-on learner, it just will not work for me. I have taken online classes and hated them because I never felt I was learning anything from my professors. I do not think flipping classrooms will work at the college level. I feel that if this method of teaching was an option for college students, more than half of the students will not even watch the lectures online. That would just make it that much harder for them to learn anything. I understand why they are trying to flip the traditional classroom because technology is starting to take over the younger generations. I may be
old-fashioned, but I definitely prefer the traditional setting in a classroom, getting lectured by a professor and working on my work at home.”
Kelvin thinks that the Khan Academy has done a great job demonstrating that there can be a new way of teaching. The opportunity to allow the student to decide when they wish to listen to the lecture can be very useful in reducing stress. It also makes more sense in terms of time-management. In many cases, students are too busy with work or parenting for the first half of the day. This frequently conflicts with their class schedule. The flipped classroom can also benefit students who are ill or recovering from illness. “From experience I can state that having surgery on my shoulder, and with a very short time for recovery before the start of the semester, caused me a great deal of stress and pain. A flipped classroom can help in such situations.”
For Cheslea, the story is in the grim statistics. According to the report by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, the United States spends $1.3 trillion a year on education. The result, however, is not consistent with the investment. For instance, the U.S. is ranked 25th out of 35 countries in mathematics, 17th in science and 14th in reading. These statistics cry out for reform. “I am 100% behind Khan’s idea of teaching students all around the world through web videos, which brings the possibility of change for the greater good. Khan’s idea can change the minds of many students who feel that the current education system is doing nothing for them. His idea will work even better at the college level. What is inspiring is that with just a $7 million operating budget, Khan Academy is reaching, over the course of a year, "about 10 million students in a meaningful way.”
Tony really likes the idea of flipping the classroom. It is a great way to engage students, leaving more time for hands-on experience with the teachers, be it lab work in chemistry or biology or solving math problems. In fact, in math classes it surprises Tony that there are not more whiteboards around the whole classroom. “I think it would be an excellent idea to break the class into small groups and spend most class-time solving problems. The students who know how to solve a problem can explain it to other students and the professor can move around the classroom, acting as a facilitator to help when needed. Educator and author John Holt once said, 'The biggest enemy to learning is the talking teacher.' On average, in a one-hour class, a teacher’s lecture can take up fifty-five minutes, with the other five minutes spent perhaps on student interaction. However, study after study has shown lecture is the most ineffective way for students to learn and retain information. “We need to push past the lecture model. Online lectures free up the professor for more meaningful teaching in the classroom. Plus, online lectures can be recorded and reviewed as needed by students. Technology has really evolved to the point where we can now easily use it to enhance the education process. I believe the countries and educators who embrace technology will achieve their education goals faster. That will ultimately benefit the next generation of learners.”
For Christina, “going in to a classroom and seeing my instructor face to face is how I've been conditioned to learn. However, flipping it around and listening to lectures on my own could work if it were not for the fact that I'm so easily distracted. When I'm in a classroom setting, I am forced to focus on the lecture, so I suppose it would depend on the student. I think it would be a great idea to flip one or two classes to help students decide which method would work best for them."
Kendal thinks that flipping the classroom is a good idea for math and science classes. “The method of listening to a lecture for half of a class period and then having to immediately put into practice what was just learned is very challenging for me. I am a student who likes to be prepared and I feel that having a better understanding of the day’s topic would make the time spent in class more valuable. It would also give students a chance to practice the problems or homework on their own. I know that when I am forced to figure something out I usually remember how to do it when the test comes around. If someone shows me how to do a problem and I just copy down the work written on the board, all I have completed is the problem, not the learning of how to solve that problem."
Flipping the classroom has its benefits and drawbacks like most innovative ideas. As Petros sees it, if classes are changed to reflect a tutoring style, it will become more engaging for students and instructors. In contrast, when classes have twenty five or more students, the dynamics between instructor and students becomes robotic due to sheer size. "Educational institutions and teachers often knowingly ignore the fact that each student is different and possesses different intellectual skills. Some may be initially geared more towards math or history but all have the ability to master any subject in their own way. The challenge comes in executing this truth. Instead of our current factory-like education system, Salman Khan is highlighting individually-geared learning.  Online learning lectures and problems with small in class tutoring is the way of the future education system."
Although the idea of having one-on-one tutoring with the instructor in class might sound appealing to some, David has found the conventional way of teaching to be still effective. The main reason he is opposed to the flipped classroom is that he finds doing homework and other busywork in the classroom extremely difficult. My mind can focus and concentrate much more easily in the comfort of my own home and desk. Even though I feel this way about flipping the classroom, I can see why it would be of great use to many students. Students may have the opposite experience from what I have. For instance, a student might learn and do homework much more effectively when given one-on-one tutoring. In the end it comes down to this simple truth: The effectiveness of different types of teaching depends on the student.”
For Abigail, flipping the classroom will not improve the learning experience of students at any school level. When you're attempting to use in-class tutoring or "one-on-one" time with a group of 30 students, it simply will not work. There are too many students in need of help for the instructor to spend sufficient time with each one. When you are able to lecture the whole group, you can utilize teaching methods that will appeal to a large group of students, which also leaves sufficient time for questions. Also, as is likely to happen with a flipped classroom, when students are given too much responsibility with little accountability, they fall behind. "Yes, at the college level, students should be able to take on the responsibility of watching lectures at home to practice later in class, but there will always be students who cannot live up to this challenge, because they are not receiving direct "credit" for it. Those students will end up lagging behind the others and so most attention will go to them, because they will be completely lost. This is unfair to the other students in the class. Also, online lectures can leave students with the responsibility of essentially remembering everything the online instructor said, and then later ask questions. This expectation is unrealistic and unfair to students. It is much easier to ask questions as you are learning the information, then to come back the next day knowing exactly what it was you were confused about. This is bound to fail. Additionally, students who work hard will go to tutoring on their own, and those are the students who will succeed anyway."

Katia believes that classes should be based on one-on-one tutoring as opposed to class lectures.  By having students listen to the lectures at home allows class time to be reserved for working on what they have learned. This is the ideal way of teaching: have students and teachers interact on a tutoring basis, instead of having students mindlessly copy their teachers’ PowerPoint lectures. However, if students are not serious about their responsibility in the flipped model, they are signing away their future. They will not succeed in the class. Countries that have higher educational rankings than the United States use techniques like this.  Our college classes today are mostly all about busywork and simply passing the tests.  For students and teachers to successfully execute this method, both staff and students have to have a clear understanding of the dynamics of the flipped model. With hands-on technique promoted by the Khan academy, students can become more intelligent and succeed in college. "From experience, I can say that many of the classes I took reduced to nothing more than copying the PowerPoint slides of my teachers. In a psychology class I once took, my teacher would stand in front of the class and would read off the bullet points.  It was a shame to spend the class copying down what she had already typed. It was a total waste of time. Flipped classroom is the way to go."
Lauren is intrigued by the idea of flipping the classroom. She finds lectures utterly useless. In college, many teachers just create PowerPoint presentations and go through the slides in class. While it is helpful for teachers to fill the gaps in the slides, students can do that at home. The proper “flip the classroom” technology is what Lauren thinks students are missing. She would love to go home after a long day of school and work and just sit down to take notes on a lecture and wind down. “I honestly think it would be amazing. This way, students can hear the lecture and come up with questions and are prepared when coming to class to work on the homework. The only thing that would make this approach unsuccessful would be if the software and the technology were weak and counter-intuitive. There has to be some kind of website where students can log on and easily find all the lectures. The teachers would have to take the flip seriously. I doubt if a lot of teachers would go for this method but I think students would love the switch. No more missing homework assignments! No more failed tests! No more misunderstanding! I would love it!"