I think you are deluding yourself if you think your style is different. I'm pretty well up on writing skills and I think your basic approach shines through whichever medium you are writing in. Occasional flourishes don't hide the core.

Your style is essentially list based. All your replies here are in list form. (Nobody else writes like that here. Doesn't that tell you something?) You like to think of it as structure. But one person's structure is another person's mish-mash. E.g. some people like to see examples first to get an orientation and to build up motivation to look at the details. Some people instead get their motivation from the Lego approach, building up brick by brick. It is wilful perversity not to accept that people are different. A good writer will try to offer information in ways that are accessible to as many people as possible. It may not be structured in the way that some readers might like, and it may not even satisfy anyone 100%, but if at least the information is there it can be teased out with a little effort, and actually that little effort becomes a valuable part of the learning process.

I had a good example of this recently. After wasting rather a lot of money on books about Java and C#, I struck lucky with a superb book. The previous books were all "structured". Indeed, some actually had 2.1, 2.1.1 etc. but even without that you could see how the book was put together. They were all awful (Java was also awful but that's a separate issue). And I think if I encountered one more book that thought it was a good idea to set an exercise on finding prime numbers, I might have done the author a mischief.

Then I discovered "Head First C#". It was the first time I'd come across a book like that - almost totally unstructured and with the same information presented several times, in different wordings or different formats (drawings instead of words, comic strips, lots of jokes, lots of serious stuff treating the reader like a grown up. In short something for everybody, and no references to pi or prime numbers. Indeed, the main theme of the examples was bumble bees. Brilliant. Not perfect, but brilliant (or should I say "excellent"?).

It was an expensive book, and big enough to induce a hernia, but whereas I learned next to nothing over several long months from the previous books, I got almost everything I wanted to know (which was a lot) from this book, in a very short space of time - it was just so interesting. It was also packed with important details I got nowhere else. The book's blurb claims it is based on the "latest research in cognitive science and learning theory" and it is a "visually rich format designed for the way your brain works, not a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep."

Beyond knowing empirically from my journalist career that it is valuable to present information in varied and interesting ways, I know nothing about that field of research (and, note, I do not need to), but I can now vouch from personal experience of the efficacy of the Head First approach in a rather tricky subject. It is not just that the information is entertainingly presented for a wide variety of possible audiences, but that it effectively addresses other parts of the learning process such as motivation.

Now, it seems to me that if you believe in the value of go research, you should also, prima facie, believe in the value of cognitive research done by guys with triple PhDs and government megabuck grants. If they tell us that information to be learned should be presented not as lists (or even "structures") but in more creative ways, it behoves us to listen. Admittedly it does require the rather major step of accepting that one's audience is more important than oneself, but ....

It is very different concerning the ease of understanding. In research texts, I presume the reader to know the prior research or to be able to understand maths-like definitions. In strategy books, I presume almost nothing (except that the reader should know the 20kyu basics of the game) but explain everything I introduce.

It is rather similar in that general information is separated from examples so that either are found instantly. Both my research texts and books have an internal structure so that reading the text from the beginning to the end makes good sense and supports understanding.



Your statement does not make sense because there are different kinds of systematic orders:
- structure of the contents on the headings level
- possibly structure of the go theory contents
- template order of presentation within each chapter (like first a general text, then explanation of that, then examples together with example comments)
- bullet list for procedural methods or lists of known choices

Indifferently you call all of that "lists" and thereby show that you do not want to understand what a structure is. A structure groups topics of the same kind so that the writer and the readers can identify the kind already by the looking at the group name. Yet better structures (like the one for move types in my Vol. 1) are essentially complete: Know the structure and you know (almost) all types of moves you need to know ever.

It is a great advantage for the reader if he does find all strategic concepts in the chapter Strategic Concepts and all strategic choices in the chapter Strategic Choices. You hate order and prefer the chaos; the poor reader! If I changed concepts and choices from chapter to chapter, then the reader needs to decipher which is which and is confronted with entirely superfluous extra work. I was shocked when I found out that in some of your history books I had to decide in which reasonable order I should read the not ordered chapters.



Here I sometimes write in lists to save time or offer structure for easier reading. Instead of developing each thought in great detail in a lengthy paragraph, I present only the key information. That is a purpose of bullet lists.

In my book, I also use some lists when the key information suffices, is all one needs to learn and additional words don't explain more. E.g., criteria for playing elsewhere might include a bullet item

- to play a ladder breaker

Easy. This is learnt within seconds! The reader 18 kyu or stronger knows what a ladder breaker is. So additional fog to confuse him is best avoided entirely!

You let lists sound like evil. Contrarily lists are a powerful tool for accelerating learning where possible.



Only mish-mash person would want to put a strategic choice into the chapter Strategic Concepts. A good structure convinces the reader, except you of course.



Other people like to see the general before the specific. Unless the book is split into two books, each chapter has to start with either the general or the specific. Readers preferring to read examples before introductory texts may do so! Nobody prevents them from looking at examples before they read the general texts! Or vice versa. If the book separates both clearly, then the reader has this chance. In a chaos book without structure, the reader is busy with finding what he wants to see first.



Therefore books showing nothing but examples are terrible because readers wishing to see general information don't get any. Also mish-mash books are terrible because readers preferring order don't find what they want. Ordered books are good for all readers because the chaos reader still has his chance to read whatever and when he wants. He is even guided to it very clearly.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who read this and smiled

No lists no fun! :)

When compiling drafts of my books, I tried different presentations of the contents. E.g., I tried to start every chapter with an example. It did not work because the example was floating unrelated to the contents and the reader would need to read on, learn about the general ideas and then go back to the example to understand it. An introductory example works well if it is already accompanied by much of the general theory. Later in the same chapter, the same general theory would have to be repeated (and worked out in greater detail). The book would become 60%-100% longer. Rather one needs to throw out about half of the other chapters. Even more has to be thrown out if each aspect of general theory is illuminated from various different angles. Throw out 2/3 of the theory and you can explain the same thing thrice.

This is not my writing style in my current books. I have been considering to possibly write a beginner's summary book later, something like "Josekis for Beginners". It would be different book project with a different aim and partially different readership.

Rather my current books do study the same (ca. 170) josekis throughout the books and do illuminate them from every possible angle - however, different study perspectives occur in different chapters. This enables dozens of different concepts, methods, etc. so that the book has many more topics than any other book and every joseki (or its moves or shapes or sequences) occurs several times in the book. Not each joseki in each chapter but in a few different chapters:) So depite the great amount and high density of theory, the reader gets various roads to an understanding. Just one thing is impossible at the same time: that the same general theory is explained from different angles in its chapter. The angles "general text", "explanation of general text" and "examples" have to suffice. A reader with difficulty to understand a complicated topic has the options of postponing an understanding of the topic or reading the same chapter more than once. It is like reading a dictionary but skipping the complex taisha variations for the time being. As soon as one has become stronger, one can take up the book again and read its most demanding chapters.

Learning requires effort. Reading one book with much contents requires effort. Reading many dull books without contents requires stanima. Instead studying 100,000 examples requires even more stanima and time. Doing a mixture of all requires both. Great improvement requires at least some effort. The teacher / writer can greatly ease teaching but still the learner does not improve for free. At least some time and effort cannot be avoided. The simplest method does not work if the player does not even want to count numbers of stones surrounding an empty area.

Please note, "stamina", unless you are adding st to anima.

Best wishes.

_________________
No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

Robert, I can agree or sympathise with much of what you say just above, and I'm sure I'm not alone in looking forward to your next book, but I am both encouraged and a bit dismayed by this statement:



I am encouraged in that you appear to be responding to comments (not just from me) that there are various ways to skin a cat. I'm dismayed because of the way you dismiss that attempt. Even if you haven't got the experience or the will to make it work, it is indeed a perfectly good way to present a topic by giving an intriguing example first and having the reader go back to it. The intriguing aspect provides motivation. If, for example, you also add text that asks the reader to try this problem using his usual approach and then read on and compare the new approach, you may create extra clarity (for him). And by engaging the reader in this friendly way, you are further increasing motivation. This is far from the only workable technique, but it does seem to work for many (most?) people.

The motivational aspect is important. You say yourself that great effort is required. You ought therefore to provide as much motivation as you can. In tennis, say, a good coach does not usually need to explain to his charge that he needs to move this muscle and generate so many kg/f while focusing on x and not forgetting y. Instead he handles this in the background, often simpy by example - hit it like this. Mostly, he simply tries to motivate the player to hit ball after ball thousands and thousands of times until the action becomes automatic. The player does not need to have any understanding of what he is doing. In fact, if he focuses on even one small part of his technique, instead of relying on automaticity, this is supposed to be the cause of choking in sport.

It's a bit different for some amateurs. They may want understanding of the mechanics to help them enjoy watching the sport more. Or they may want to become coaches themselves, or be umpires, say. But if they want understanding because they delude themselves into thinking that there are shortcuts to mastery or being a top pro, they will soon find that they make little progress. The "ten thousand hours" or "ten years" rule seems to have been confirmed in so many different fields (even for apparent prodigies like Mozart) that it is clear that precise understanding is irrelevant, and can even interfere with progress. The goal is not to understand but to effect a physical change in the brain, through repetition, so that no analysis is required. Only instant response is needed. You may claim that understanding can speed up the process. In terms of the ten thousand hours required, it makes not a ha'porth of difference apparently. You cannot shorten that time significantly. The brain seems to require that amount of time as a sort of physical constant.

Once that automaticity is achieved, the player is either unable to explain how his brain achieves the instant response (naturally enough - explain how you catch a ball) or unwilling even to try - focusing on technique can cause choking or other interference. When top sportsmen detect a glitch, they do not normally analyse it themselves but get a coach to do that and to devise a regime by which the sportsman can retrain his brain with even more constant practice. Go pros who don't make it in the tournament field and who have to rely on teaching amateurs by focusing on details instead of automaticity claim to become up to two stones weaker as a result. This is probably a manifestation of the choking effect as much as lack of practice. Viewed this way, your repeated criticisms of pros as terrible teachers unable to answer your supposedly penetrating questions takes on a different dimension. You are just asking the wrong questions of the wrong people.

Of course, gaining or giving someone else an insight into something like go can be beneficial, but probably not in terms of improving the learning process directly. Rather, the little glow of understanding is more likely to provide a little bit more inspiration or motivation to put in the ten thousand hours.

If you look in this way at the example books you so often deride, you can see their great value. It may be something as simple as a favourite pro's name on the book. It may be the way the examples are graduated. It may be the book has a pretty cover, But one way or another, if it encourages the reader to go through and do every problem and put in part of the ten thousand hours, then that book is a success and, for the player who wants to be competent in tournament play, part of the only way to success.

Your derision of example books has one reasonable basis. The practice must be purposeful. If, like you, a western reader of an Oriental text is unable to get hints from the text as to how to approach a particular book, the purposefulness may be lost. But that is hardly the fault of the book or the writer. Maybe one needs to follow the example of chess players who used to learn Russian to get access to the best material. I think it is true to say that western go has sorely lacked guidance on purposeful study, mostly because of lack of access to the right teachers but probably partly through lack of the right books.

Obviously even an example book can still be badly written or designed (no purposefulness described, no graduation, etc), but the fact that the market supports so many of these books must give pause for thought beyond it being a conspiracy by evil capitalist publishers.

Purely motivational books have a market, too (viz. the self-help industry) but it is difficult to write such a book in go. Even if one were written, it may help some people but turn others off completely. I, for example, am put off not just by the Lego-brick and list style, but also by the relentless hectoring and false enthusiam of the snake-oil salesmen who write self-help books.

The real problem is that we don't and can't know what inspires an individual. I might include a line in a history book that Jowa was the son of fisherman but by fanatically hard work he became Honinbo. Some reader, for all I know and maybe descended from a line of fishermen himself, might be inspired by that one line to put in ten thousand hours of practising examples and become the first western Honinbo.

If that happened, I couldn't take any credit. The best any writer can do is to add motivational fish to the pool and so make it more likely that novice anglers can catch one - any size and any one, not just yours. Trying to sell a book by claiming it is the only way it can be done, or that the writer is the only person who could possibly have done it, is not going to convince many of us that this fish is necessarily any better than all those other fish that have been thriving as they happily swim around out there. We just want the one special fish that can make us happy.

A fair number of western players have already tried to put in the ten thousand hours, not with real success yet. Maybe they haven't actually got close to ten thousand, but my own analysis leads me to think that what western go lacks most is guidance on the purposeful part of the study. This is mostly because of lack of access to the right teachers but probably partly also through lack of the right books.

So, an interesting question is whether either Robert's book or his approach can help remedy that lack. As explained above, I don't think the book can help directly: it doesn't (can't) substitute for the ten thousand hours, and the ten thousand hours can't be reduced, so it can't provide shortcuts in that sense. The focus on details might even be detrimental. Perhaps, though, it can help with motivation, either of players or coaches, but in that area the approach, or style, may or may not be significant. Even if it does work, it can probably only work with the portion of people who find a specific trigger there to motivate them. And I would still be totally certain the cat could have been skinned another way, but of course the motivated portion might well differ too.

However, it may help with purposefulness more than with motivation. Still, if it does, how much does it matter? This is one thing I could never get a good angle on when reading about the ten thousand hours. Yes, all the experts insist purposeful practice is "important", but they also seem to give the impression that you can still become a pro or "gifted amateur" if you put sufficient hours in. The more purposeful person may, I gather, become a 9-dan instead of a 6-dan or 1-dan, but mastery is apparently within the grasp of all, even those who have no understanding of what they are doing.

Also, is purposefulness more important than motivation? I couldn't get a clear angle on that either. It is clear that repetitive practice over a very long period seems to be, by far, far, far, the most important aspect, and if motivation leads to that, motivation may be more important than purposefulness. But purposefulness may also feed into motivation (and, of course, there are other factors not mentioned here). It's real teaser.


****
Different aspect:

Even the historical angle as in Fukui Masaaki's recent joseki dictionary? Though small, this provided much more motivation for me to look at josekis than the dense Ishida etc dictionary. I've now put in the first ten thousand seconds...

Possible. It is also possible that the reader is intrigued by general text at the beginning.

Starting with a teasing problem example is yet another way of doing it; during the messages above, I had understood a request for starting with an explained example first.

A teasing example requires about 1/2 page per chapter plus 1/2 page for the solution or ca. 50+ pages for the whole book. Having to throw out 10 chapters for that is too much.



There are many different ways to motivate the reader; I use different ways in the book.



For Vol. 2? I have said that it contains some advanced chapters. Surely they require greater effort than the easier chapters.



Exactly. That's why I precede one of the most difficult chapters by four preliminary chapters:)



There are always shortcuts. The problem is: So far no one has compiled all of them (except for those that require dynamic thinking like the ability to read ahead).



Sure; it is a very frequent experience.



We discussed that before.



The typical question was: Which are my most severe general weaknesses?
Even a 5k teacher could have found them. The only requirement for him would have been to be a good teacher with the principle ability to detect weaknesses in other players' games. An ability I have as a teacher, except that, in the case of judging my own game's major weaknesses, I was in blindspot of prejudice - overlooking the obvious. Comparable to overlooking the existence of haengma as a concept.



Rather it is epitome of inefficiency.



Entirely wrong. If a player might learn that eyes can be approached also from the inside from a) advice or b) 10,000 games with his beginner friend, then (a) is always better.



Many books even do not have such hints. And - no - just a hint is worth almost nothing if the entire rest of the book is just examples.



It is an extremely severe fault of them.



Like Kitani?:)



Possibly, although by far you have not convinced me yet that there are that good such books.



Such books are written in 1/100 of the time.

The main problem seems to be though that too few players (in Asia, where there are those many example books) demand much higher quality of contents.



What. Now that is easy: To become a stronger player.

For that purpose, go knowledge must be learned and the necessary knowledge be written.



Wow, something we agree on:)



That much I do not claim. The book teaches some aspects (like strategic concepts and analysis methods) of the game but not all. (E.g., tactics is missing.)



I am not sure about that. You describe it as gaining a level an artful musician has but Go does not need art. Go "only" needs reduction of decision complexity. If in future that is taught well in all topics, then much less than 10,000h might suffice.



If you mean infinitesemals in endgame counting - yes. If you mean all the basic general principles (like "A lost ladder can still be used for a ladder breaker.") - no. Those principles are necessary rather than detrimental.



Which purposefulness do you mean?



You need to tell us what you refer to because we have not read that book, have we? (Of course, my book contains also some old pro games, but I am not sure if that is the history you mention.)



If you don't read the Ishida as a crime novel (Which group dies first?!), don't touch it;)

I give up, Robert. You are just soooooo different from anything I've come across elsewhere.

But I did notice this and wondered why you didn't generalise:

You not? :)



Before or after finding my weaknesses? For the purpose of finding more Go playing weaknesses or for finding weaknesses everywhere? Aren't you opening a 1001 nights bottle? :) FYI, I did some generalizations, however, even I can't let generalization grow exponentially without bound. Usually every generalization requires specific effort and thinking about a (general class of) topic(s).