Yesterday I read through Hamming’s talk, “You and Your Research”, which explores his overall philosophy. This anecdote I think is most relevant (I’m probably going to edit this into the main post)
Over on the other side of the dining hall was a chemistry table. I had worked with one of the fellows, Dave McCall; furthermore he was courting our secretary at the time. I went over and said, “Do you mind if I join you?” They can’t say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, “What are the important problems of your field?” And after a week or so, “What important problems are you working on?” And after some more time I came in one day and said, “If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?” I wasn’t welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with! That was in the spring.
In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the hall and said, “Hamming, that remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e. what were the important problems in my field. I haven’t changed my research,” he says, “but I think it was well worthwhile.” And I said, “Thank you Dave,” and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles. They were unable to ask themselves, “What are the important problems in my field?”
If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, “important problem” must be phrased carefully. The three outstanding problems in physics, in a certain sense, were never worked on while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean guaranteed a Nobel Prize and any sum of money you want to mention. We didn’t work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It’s not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important. When I say that most scientists don’t work on important problems, I mean it in that sense. The average scientist, so far as I can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes will not be important and he also doesn’t believe that they will lead to important problems.
That seems like a startlingly weak anecdote (especially so given that it’s the only one we’ve seen). From this quote, it seems like Hamming—contrary to the claim Elo quoted—in fact inspired none of his colleagues to “make major shifts in focus” or to “rededicat[e] their careers to the problems they felt actually mattered”.
The one colleague who was, allegedly, inspired by Hamming’s questions in some way, explicitly said (we are told) that he did not shift his research focus! He ended up being successful… which Hamming attributes to his own influence, for… some reason. (The anecdotal evidence provided for this causal sort-of-claim is almost textbook poor; it’s literally nothing more than post hoc, ergo propter hoc…)
Do we have any solid evidence, at all, that there is any concrete, demonstrable benefit, or even consequence, to asking the “Hamming question”? Any case studies (with much more detail, and more evidential support, than the anecdote quoted above)? So far, it seems to me that the significance attached to this “Hamming question” concept has been far, far out of proportion to its verified usefulness…
Edit: Corrected wording to make it clear Elo was quoting a source.
My opinion is that from trying the exercises several times over the course of the last few years, it’s a valuable tool to help me see what I’m ignoring or what I need to deal with.
Do you have more info on this? I’d be very curious to hear about some specific examples!
Yesterday I read through Hamming’s talk, “You and Your Research”, which explores his overall philosophy. This anecdote I think is most relevant (I’m probably going to edit this into the main post)
That seems like a startlingly weak anecdote (especially so given that it’s the only one we’ve seen). From this quote, it seems like Hamming—contrary to the claim Elo quoted—in fact inspired none of his colleagues to “make major shifts in focus” or to “rededicat[e] their careers to the problems they felt actually mattered”.
The one colleague who was, allegedly, inspired by Hamming’s questions in some way, explicitly said (we are told) that he did not shift his research focus! He ended up being successful… which Hamming attributes to his own influence, for… some reason. (The anecdotal evidence provided for this causal sort-of-claim is almost textbook poor; it’s literally nothing more than post hoc, ergo propter hoc…)
Do we have any solid evidence, at all, that there is any concrete, demonstrable benefit, or even consequence, to asking the “Hamming question”? Any case studies (with much more detail, and more evidential support, than the anecdote quoted above)? So far, it seems to me that the significance attached to this “Hamming question” concept has been far, far out of proportion to its verified usefulness…
Edit: Corrected wording to make it clear Elo was quoting a source.
[for clarity, we were both quoting other sources]
My opinion is that from trying the exercises several times over the course of the last few years, it’s a valuable tool to help me see what I’m ignoring or what I need to deal with.
Indeed, my apologies—I read hastily, and didn’t spot the quoting without the quotation styling. I’ve corrected the wording in the grandparent.