Becoming an expert at anything

[It's Snake Pliskin]

D'oh!

Didn't think....

The postage must be cheaper from Aus.

 

[Timmy]

The postage must be cheaper from Aus.

I'm sure you're right Snake ... using Amazon just habit I guess ... will know to look at Joe's shop next time ...

 

[Timmy]

Try this one,

What makes expert

From this Steenbarger blog page there is a link to an article which is a nice discussion on "Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice".

Small quote from the article (emphasis mine):

"Hence, continued improvements (changes) in achievement are not automatic consequences of more experience and in those domains where performance consistently increases aspiring experts seek out particular kinds of experience, that is deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, 1993)--activities designed, typically by a teacher, for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual's performance...
More generally, the accumulated amount of deliberate practice is closely related to the attained level of performance of many types of experts, such as musicians (Ericsson et al., 1993; Sloboda, et al., 1996), chessplayers (Charness, Krampe & Mayr, 1996) and athletes (Starkes et al., 1996)."

 

[theasxgorilla]

"Hence, continued improvements (changes) in achievement are not automatic consequences of more experience and in those domains where performance consistently increases aspiring experts seek out particular kinds of experience, that is deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, 1993)--activities designed, typically by a teacher, for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual's performance.

That would be as opposed to sitting back complaining about how the ideal set of circumstances didn't come to them

 

[Trembling Hand]

Small quote from the article (emphasis mine):

"Hence, continued improvements (changes) in achievement are not automatic consequences of more experience and in those domains where performance consistently increases aspiring experts seek out particular kinds of experience, that is deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, 1993)--activities designed, typically by a teacher, for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual's performance...

Yeah that is a good one. To give an example for trading the average punter tries to learn patterns from static charts. Looking for trends and patterns that exist during the period. And tries to learn them.

Where the aspiring expert would spend a couple of hours a day practising entries that are outside the value zone on a sim for tending days. And review each practise session to learn from mistakes and remember the positive. Then move to the next task picking entries outside the value zone on choppy days etc

The difference being the punter has no specific goal and far too wide a scope to become proficient at any one task. Where the aspiring experts goal is to become an expert at one thing at a time. Ticking them off month after month. Building a huge mental map of perfect responses to certain triggers.

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Yeah that is a good one. To give an example for trading the average punter tries to learn patterns from static charts. Looking for trends and patterns that exist during the period. And tries to learn them.

Trembling hand,
Thanks for the input to an interesting topic.
Do you see any value in using static charts at all, regardless of time frame?

Where the aspiring expert would spend a couple of hours a day practising entries that are outside the value zone on a sim for tending days. And review each practice session to learn from mistakes and remember the positive. Then move to the next task picking entries outside the value zone on choppy days etc

Would this apply to all time frames and not just day traders?

The difference being the punter has no specific goal and far too wide a scope to become proficient at any one task. Where the aspiring experts goal is to become an expert at one thing at a time. Ticking them off month after month. Building a huge mental map of perfect responses to certain triggers.

So the aspiring expert learns to read the market as it is in a realtime format regardless of time frame?

 

[Timmy]

Where the aspiring experts goal is to become an expert at one thing at a time. Ticking them off month after month. Building a huge mental map of perfect responses to certain triggers.

TH, is this the sort of thing the Steenbarger book discusses? ... Certainly very impressive stuff.

 

[professor_frink]

"becoming an expert at anything"

wouldn't that be nice! In the meantime, I'll have to settle for being useless at most things, average at a few, and an expert in nothing

Nice find Timmy. Was an interesting read

 

[Timmy]

"becoming an expert at anything"

wouldn't that be nice! In the meantime, I'll have to settle for being useless at most things, average at a few, and an expert in nothing

LOL Prof.

There is a bit around the net on 'deliberate practice', the implications for us as traders/investors are, IMHO, profound... I think TH would agree as he appears to have done much research and work on this already.

Here are a couple of the things I have found which could be interest.

Brief article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Looks like a really useful book:
http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Expertise-Expert-Performance/dp/0521600812

Don't want to get too bogged down in reading about this stuff though, just want to get into it ...

 

[Trembling Hand]

Thanks for the input to an interesting topic.
Do you see any value in using static charts at all, regardless of time frame?.

Well it all depends on the task. Obviously if your trading EOD your charts are static. The thing about deliberative learning is the task goal. Newbies look at charts for practise with the idea of find trending stocks. This is obviously a very broad task to be setting yourself

Where deliberative practise is breaking that down to smaller chunks of info. For example the patterns before a trend starts, getting favourable early entry, topping patterns, volume analysis & on & on. So they learn to get on before the trend is recognised by others because they have memorized the smaller patterns and become experts at the detail.

Would this apply to all time frames and not just day traders?

Yep. The evidence is the same for any task, weather its chess, musician, surgeon, sports person, trader or investor. You want to step up to the expertise level you break it down into very small tasks and become an expert at each specific step by deliberative practise with specific goals and rigorous feedback increasing the task difficulty each time you master that last.

So the aspiring expert learns to read the market as it is in a realtime format regardless of time frame?

They are trying to learn 100s or 1000s of "chunks" of info that they can recall on in an instant to pieces together with far greater accuracy the likely out come of the market than the punter that sees stocks in a broader trending or not trending view.

Like the sports person that is always in the right place at the right time because they get their cues from little bits of info where the dud is just casing the ball all day (chasing the ball(trend)).

TH, is this the sort of thing the Steenbarger book discusses? ... Certainly very impressive stuff.

Yep. its all about the concept applied to trading.

 

[son of baglimit]

You need a certain personality type to put that to work. Some traits of such people include:
-logical thinker
-values knowledge above all else
-gets satisfaction from efficiency: everything is something that can be fixed or improved.
-can absorb a lot of information and discard anything that does not fit

This cannot be easily taught. It is something you are born with or develop very early on in your life.

the bit i bolded suits me exactly. ability to absorb enormous amounts of info, but only retain that you think useful in the future. when my wife yells as me for being a forgetful PR***, thats the excuse i use.

p.s. damn good article.

 

[Timmy]

Like the sports person that is always in the right place at the right time because they get their cues from little bits of info where the dud is just casing the ball all day (chasing the ball(trend)).

Good info thanks TH.

This bit about the sportsperson ... I listened to all of about 15 mins of the cricket last summer and happened to hear the ABC commentators talking about Brian Lara's batting ... he would call to the batsman at the non-strikers end how many runs he was taking on this ball (being bowled) right after the ball left the bowler's hand - he knew what sort of ball it was and where he (Lara) was going to hit it and therefore how many runs were available ... expert indeed.

 

[professor_frink]

LOL Prof.

There is a bit around the net on 'deliberate practice', the implications for us as traders/investors are, IMHO, profound... I think TH would agree as he appears to have done much research and work on this already.

Here are a couple of the things I have found which could be interest.

Brief article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Looks like a really useful book:
http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Expertise-Expert-Performance/dp/0521600812

Don't want to get too bogged down in reading about this stuff though, just want to get into it ...

Cheers Timmy, will have a look at those once the alcohol wears off(the closest I come to being an expert at)

 

[theasxgorilla]

The difference being the punter has no specific goal and far too wide a scope to become proficient at any one task. Where the aspiring experts goal is to become an expert at one thing at a time. Ticking them off month after month. Building a huge mental map of perfect responses to certain triggers.

This is so important of a reality check for aspiring newbies (at anything) to acknowledge. "Month after month"...ie. it takes time. Much of the learning process can't be shortcut. One has to be effective during the learning process. Forget being efficient...acknowledge that you will have to spend as long as it takes, and that you can't learn it all in a day.

It's like learning a song on the guitar, or learning how to clutch and change gears in a car. You can try so hard to learn it in one sitting, but invariably when you sleep on it and come back to it the next day suddenly it's easier. It feels like you're a step or two closer to being automatic, the unconscious competent.

"What we know about sleep and memory for certain is that for at least some types of procedural memory, disrupting sleep after training interferes with learning," says Stickgold, HMS assistant professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center.

http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/1999/Mar19_1999/psych.html

And maybe staying up all night watching world markets and playing 'CFDs' isn't the best way to learn either

 

[rub92me]

I read a really useful article a little while ago and have since found it online at:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-expert-mind

Its called:

The Expert Mind
Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well
By Philip E. Ross

If anyone reads the article and has some thoughts I think some fruitful discussion could ensue.

Another twist of the old 'nature vs nurture' debate. The author seems to favour nurture over nature and carefully chooses his examples and studies to support the point. Imo it's not as simple as that and you can make an equally convincing case for the other side.

 

[Trembling Hand]

Another twist of the old 'nature vs nurture' debate. The author seems to favour nurture over nature and carefully chooses his examples and studies to support the point. Imo it's not as simple as that and you can make an equally convincing case for the other side.

Please do then.

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Well it all depends on the task. Obviously if your trading EOD your charts are static. The thing about deliberative learning is the task goal. Newbies look at charts for practise with the idea of find trending stocks. This is obviously a very broad task to be setting yourself

Where deliberative practise is breaking that down to smaller chunks of info. For example the patterns before a trend starts, getting favourable early entry, topping patterns, volume analysis & on & on. So they learn to get on before the trend is recognised by others because they have memorized the smaller patterns and become experts at the detail.

Yep. The evidence is the same for any task, weather its chess, musician, surgeon, sports person, trader or investor. You want to step up to the expertise level you break it down into very small tasks and become an expert at each specific step by deliberative practise with specific goals and rigorous feedback increasing the task difficulty each time you master that last.


They are trying to learn 100s or 1000s of "chunks" of info that they can recall on in an instant to pieces together with far greater accuracy the likely out come of the market than the punter that sees stocks in a broader trending or not trending view.

Like the sports person that is always in the right place at the right time because they get their cues from little bits of info where the dud is just casing the ball all day (chasing the ball(trend)).

Thanks for the answers to my questions TH.

A deliberate query is often most useful.

 

[rub92me]

Please do then.

Well, I'll give you one example, research on the internet will show you many more. The article uses the example of the Polgar sisters to put forward the case that if you use deliberate training and effort you can create chess experts. Mr. Polgar wrote a book describing his methods in detail that sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Probably thousands of parents tried his methods with their children, however I know of no example that created a similar success. To me that calls into doubt the theory that you can create experts regardless of inate or natural ability. For the record I'm not saying that deliberate training can not help develop an expertise in some field.

 

[Trembling Hand]

Mr. Polgar wrote a book describing his methods in detail that sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Probably thousands of parents tried his methods with their children, however I know of no example that created a similar success.

Do you know of any story where people have read a single self help book and had success?? Other than the marketing gumpf I haven't. I think that has more to do with the motivation of such people rather than the process.

To me that calls into doubt the theory that you can create experts regardless of inate or natural ability.

Define "innate or natural ability". Other than maybe IQ, or physical characteristic for a sport. What is natural ability for something like chess. Study after study has proven that grandmaster chess players memory, outside of a chess board, is no better than the lay person. In fact some have shown that their memory is just as bad when pieces are placed on a chess board in a random fashion. Which fits the trained chuck memory theory and disproves the theory that grand masters have a "innate or natural" superior memory.

 

[rub92me]

Define "innate or natural ability". Other than maybe IQ, or physical characteristic for a sport. What is natural ability for something like chess. Study after study has proven that grandmaster chess players memory, outside of a chess board, is no better than the lay person. In fact some have shown that their memory is just as bad when pieces are placed on a chess board in a random fashion. Which fits the trained chuck memory theory and disproves the theory that grand masters have a "innate or natural" superior memory.

Inate or natural ability as it relates to the 'structure' of the brain. Actually studies have shown that testing the chuck memory theory points to the fact that the brains of the experts process information differently from the non-experts. That does not disprove the theory that grandmasters have a brain that is 'naturally' wired differently from the start. I do think that the chuck memory theory is a very plausible theory. I'm just drawing a slightly different conclusion from it. The article also didn't explain why that theory would automatically equally apply to a very different discipline like trading.