Dusk Eagle wrote:coming up with a rule to describe it is very hard.
Finding principles is the task of teachers. Only when they fail, players have to find principles on their own. When reading a book teaching principles, the question is not how difficult it is to come up with such a principles if the book did not exist but the question is whether the reader understands the principle explained in the book.
Dusk Eagle, here is a test for you. Please use your preferred teaching method: teaching only by examples. To make it much easier for you, it is a quality step higher than your ordinary go book: teaching by sorted examples, i.e., all examples teaching the same occur in the same chapter (or message). Without looking at the hidden section of the Teaching by principle section, look at the answers.
Now reflect whether you have actually understood why the answer moves are the correct moves. Only then look at the Teaching by principle section and please tell us whether your intuitive understanding was as good as after seeing the principle.
Teaching by principle:
Principle:
When defending a corner, choose the biggest move so that then the opponent cannot invade to create reasonable life, create a ko, create a seki or get better endgame than ordinary reduction from the outside.
That principle is essentially trivial, and does nothing to help me understand any of the examples. What helps me understand those examples is the process of reading/counting potential sequences.
hyperpape, if I had added also sequences and variants to the examples, then I would have needed hours for editing. Usually I do not spend that much time on forum messages.
The principle is not trivial. I needed about 1.5 years to find it for myself. Before I would have made moves like the following:
This move is not the biggest; compared to the correct move, it loses at least 1 point. The principle tells you to play the biggest move - not a move that is some 1 point smaller than the biggest move.
I like principles, but I have to say this was a particularly poor one to choose.
I have to agree with hyperpape that the principle is obvious in so far as it is true (there must be situations where it is correct in a whole board context to pressure the outside stones more but leave some aji inside).
Any issue for me with the problems comes from not knowing which moves leave aji and which moves are biggest, not from a lack of understanding of the principle.
For example, the first problem: I would have played the one space jump to the center. This surely leaves even more aji than the incorrect kosumi. I don't immediately understand the endgame aji you refer to. Surely it is this lack of reading/understanding that is at fault as opposed to my lack of understanding of this principle.
The second problem: I've looked at examples of invasions here on Sensei's Library and got this one correct.
The third problem: I've seen this shape before, but if I hadn't, I might've chosen the incorrect answer without knowing there was a bigger move. This wouldn't have been because I didn't know to choose the biggest move, but because I didn't see and understand the bigger one.
I know very little about go, but quite a bit about learning languages, and the type of book that I have consistently found best is one in which the chapters have the following structure:
First, a text which introduces a limited amount of new vocabulary and a large number of examples of a particular grammatical structure.
Second, the vocabulary list for that chapter.
Third, explanations of the grammatical principles.
Fourth, Numerous exercises.
The book concludes with a good reference section, summarizing the vocabulary as well as the grammatical principles presented in the book.
By comparison, all go books I have read seem hopelessly rambling.
I tend to doubt the author's estimation of his own abilities (after all, it was reported that Jeffry Archer believes that he will be awarded the Nobel prize for literature), but take the views of a cross-section of readers who are his/her target audience. It also helps when the organisations having an overview of Go produce unbiased reviews for their members to read.
Best wishes.
No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post. http://www.gogod.co.uk
the principle is far from obvious. It is much easier to use (or have intuitive understanding with the same effect as) a principle like "If you reinforce a corner, choose the biggest move.". Actually a great percentage of amateur players think like that and make these locally wrong moves because they equate and confuse visually big with factually big:
daal, your book structure proposal is easy to write but it means that only little contents is taught because each chapter needs to be pretty long. Maybe it could be used for books like Tesuji / Davies because there is just not too much contents for such a writing style.
TMark wrote:take the views of a cross-section of readers who are his/her target audience. It also helps when the organisations having an overview of Go produce unbiased reviews for their members to read.
This is a possible approach in theory. In practice, the go community is too small to get a representative cross-section of target readers. Almost one has to be happy if a book is reviewed at all:)
I didn't mean to imply that I think learning only by examples is the best possible way, but I do find it quite hard to learn without examples. If you just gave me the principle "When defending a corner, choose the biggest move so that then the opponent cannot invade to create reasonable life, create a ko, create a seki or get better endgame than ordinary reduction from the outside," I would have a tough time applying that. Whereas when I look at the example problems, I can develop a feeling for the principle being taught. Explaining the principle in words is certainly helpful when combined with the examples, especially to ensure that one has gained a full understanding of the principles.
If anyone here has ever tried to learn Esperanto from lernu.net, one approach to teaching I really like is the way the Beginner's course Bildoj kaj Demandoj is taught. You are given several examples of dialogue referring to a picture, and then are asked questions in Esperanto which can be answered given that you understood the example dialogue they give you. After driving home a particular concept (such as use of the word kia), they then explain in English the principles behind which you just learned, to clear up any confusion. (Whether the principle comes before the examples or after isn't too important to me.)
In short, I would much rather read a Go book with just examples than a Go book with just principles and no examples, even if neither extreme approach is ideal. I could at least know I would learn something from the former approach.
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.
Dusk Eagle wrote:I didn't mean to imply that I think learning only by examples is the best possible way, but I do find it quite hard to learn without examples. If you just gave me the principle "When defending a corner, choose the biggest move so that then the opponent cannot invade to create reasonable life, create a ko, create a seki or get better endgame than ordinary reduction from the outside," I would have a tough time applying that. Whereas when I look at the example problems, I can develop a feeling for the principle being taught. Explaining the principle in words is certainly helpful when combined with the examples, especially to ensure that one has gained a full understanding of the principles.
Thanks, Dusk Eagle, that's exactly how I feel when reading such principles. To add to that, examples must be well chosen for the target audience. When I had a look at Robert's examples including the explanations, I was asking questions to myself like "Ok, if there is still aji left, how is it possible to exploit that? If the invader can make a ko, how can he make it? etc.". In order to understand and apply the principles and the examples above, profound tactical knowledge is needed. But this can only be expected in the dan ranks. If the audience are DDKs and weak to mid-SDKs such principles and examples would probably not be very helpful.
Not to derail the discussion - but can anyone who has bought part of the Fujisawa Tesuji dictionary tell me, are its tesuji primarily of the "this is awesome" variety or the positional judgment variety?
What I mean is, there are some tesuji where you look at a position and say, "there's absolutely no way for Black to kill/cut/capture/connect/etc. It's just impossible." And then lo and behold, there is a tesuji that shocks you. But there is another whole class of tesuji where what's counter-intuitive isn't Black's next move, but the fact that the end position is desirable for Black. In a tesuji problem, the awesome tesuji are normally introduced by some concrete goal (B to connect, B to cut, B to gain endgame profit), whereas the positional judgment tesuji are often introduced with "What is B's best result?" or "What can B do in this position?"
jts wrote:Not to derail the discussion - but can anyone who has bought part of the Fujisawa Tesuji dictionary tell me, are its tesuji primarily of the "this is awesome" variety or the positional judgment variety?
I can't stand books that mix these, which really limits the books I can enjoy.
