From: prufer.public@mnet-online.de.invalid   
      
   On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 09:41:58 -0700 (PDT), "artyw2@yahoo.com"    
   wrote:   
      
   >They* tell us that the attention span for people is about their age in   
   minutes up to a maximum of 30. These studies were done in the 60s (I could   
   find a cite somewhere, but  ooh shiny)   
   >*The people who advise us (community college instructors) on teaching   
   methods. The idea being if you have a 3 hour class, and you just lecture,   
   you're in trouble.   
      
   Depends, though. I have had one lecturer that managed to explain a   
   (superficially) dry-as-dust subject (multistate optimal control theory)   
   extraordinarily well. Not do this, do that, model it, grind through the matrix,   
   get result -- he'd go about explaining how what happened in reality was   
   reflected in the symbols on the blackboard: this goes this way, so here this   
   happens. He could make me see it the way he did, for a while, the matrices and   
   functions meshing and joining like gears, and not a "worked" problem but a   
   "seen" one, where you "know" the answer.   
      
   I'd tune out after about an hour, hour fifteen of a 1.5-hour lecture, like   
   losing strength on long run. And the "seeing" didn't last very long, or apply   
   well to other problems that the one discussed, that required own work and own   
   experience.   
      
   This lecturer was a guy that they named some function after, in a small   
   backwoods nook of the large country that math is, and knew what he was doing...   
      
   (Not a data point, just an anecdote.)   
      
   As to attention span: A pediatrician once told us that all the diagnoses   
   withstanding, she'd yet to see a child with ADD diagnosed who had problems   
   concentrating on a video game for astoundingly long amounts of time.   
      
      
   Thomas Prufer   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)