The learning equation

I view people as fairly complicated machines, and I look for patterns and derive formulas that explain their behavior. I'm very interested in intelligence, learning, and teaching.

I see people's intelligence as a combination of knowledge and ability to learn and process. When I meet people, I'm secretly building an equation of my head of how I see them. IQ always seemed rather stupid, so I write down something different.

I(person) = IQ + L t + A t*t

• I is a persons total intelligence and knowledge.
• IQ is what a person is born with and accumulates until about the age of 10.
• L is the rate at which a person can learn.
• A is the rate at which a person can teach themselves to learn something new.

When I classify people in this manner, I get a good feeling of who they are now and where they may go.

There are two things I like about this model. It means the IQ score you got in elementary school is crap, and it explains a lot of things I see in the world.

Let's assume your IQ via our current method is sound at the age of 10. How do we measure L and A?

L can be measured by giving someone a "Learn Ruby in 21 days" and "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" and lock them up in a room for at least two months with a sufficiently hard task and say go. L would be linear to the total time to complete the task.

A on the other hand is rather different. Unless you want to lock people up for a couple of years, then you can't really measure A analytically. Instead, I think you could do a classifier on what they have invented.

I suffer from Not Invented Here syndrome both for hubris and ignorance reasons (mainly ignorance), and I've found that my side projects and inventions help me learn a great deal more faster than anything else. I have found that the people I meet that have side projects tend to reach competency younger in life.

So, for developers, you could measure A by looking at their github profile? I think this is more or less valid until people start putting spam in their github profile. I think A also means the ability to invent and create new knowledge as I think this is a very good way to connect dots in your learning.

Anyway, I'm thinking about this today because I'm writing job descriptions. I'm crafting a job description to hone in on people who have L and A. People that have A are rare, but people with L can be found. It used to be that college implied L, but I think that college is easily gamed these days. It used to be that a Ph.D. implied A, but that is waning too given some of the shitty papers I've read recently.

Wish me luck in changing market forces!