# On Challenges that Build

On my return flight from Singapore to London, I listened to quite a few hours of music. Two of the songs I listened to and enjoyed at least partially for similar reasons were It’s Gonna Be Me (by NSync), and I Can’t Be Mad (by Nathan Sykes). It’s a bit of a strange pairing as the former seems to be an upbeat, relaxed pop song while the latter is a fairly moody piano ballad. However, the common element I latched on to here was that both songs feature sections that are repeated multiple times, with the vocals developing additional complexity on each iteration (thinking about it this is fairly common in songs that are critically reviewed well, and also in songs I like). For example, in It’s Gonna Be Me there is a line in the chorus which is sung four times over the course of the song, and its complexity develops:

The challenges in I Can’t Be Mad have a couple of changed notes, but also (if trying to reproduce the original) demand different productions of the notes (falsetto vs not, belts, etc). There’s always a risk of adding too many embellishments, though I find expanding upon base melodies can be quite interesting. Singing these, and considering what would be reasonable for my voice (adding a closing run to the last syllable above, for instance) and what would not be (adding a +1 semitone key change after the second chorus in I Can’t Be Mad – original is already awfully hard), can be enjoyable too.

Generalising this, I quite like the idea of “increasingly complex variations on the same theme” when learning concepts and when teaching them. This already seems to happen for many concepts in mathematics. Over the course of an A-level student’s mathematics education, he/she might understand how to write a quadratic expression as a product of linear factors (e.g. converting $6x^2 - 19x - 7$ into $(2x-7)(3x+1)$). This could first begin with expressions where inspection works feasibly. However, students should also be presented with some examples where inspection is extremely difficult or even impossible (though probably only after gaining some confidence with the cases where inspection is plausible). For general expressions, one could try to use both the quadratic formula and factor theorem to factorise something like $6x^2 - 19x - 8$ into $-\frac{1}{24}(-12x + \sqrt{553} + 19)(12x + \sqrt{553} - 19)$. However, there will be some expressions like $6x^2 - 19x + 16$ where the solutions to the quadratic are not real; later, with some understanding of complex numbers, these would make sense. Students will also learn about problems which may not obviously be quadratics but can be written as such (like $x^4 + 2x^2 + 1$); the ability to synthesise the various techniques can then be tested with something like $7x^8 - 10x^4$.

To some extent my Masters project also had this theme – linear time logic, adding knowledge, adding dynamic modalities, generalising that to full branching time logic, and then switching out the infinite traces for finite traces. I haven’t written a course or a book on a computer science topic yet, but I can imagine that there might at least be sections that follow this kind of sequence.

This pattern also occurs a fair bit in many technical interviews I’ve seen as well, where problems start easy, but additional and progressively more challenging constraints are repeatedly introduced. The purposes here could include testing for a breaking point, seeing how candidates react to problems without an obvious solution, or whether they are able to synthesise additional information to come to a solution.

I find that I often learn best by practicing on smaller examples at first, and then (attempting to) generalise their conclusions to larger models, considering when these conclusions may fail or not. Having multiple variations of progressive difficulty can be useful as they can give a sense of achievement as partial progress towards an overall goal is made. Furthermore, I find understanding how changes in the problem scenario leads to the base solution method being applicable or inapplicable to be a key part of understanding as well; there is a clear need to reason about this when considering incremental variations. Going back to It’s Gonna Be Me, for example, aiming downwards at the word ‘love’ and not conserving sufficient air or energy for it might work for the first three passes, but it’s unlikely to on the last round.

There is a risk that the method can be frustrating in that it seems like it is consistently ‘moving the goalposts’, especially if one forgets that the partial goals are partial goals (and starts to think of them as complete ends in and of themselves). The standard I’m using for understanding (ability to critically evaluate applicability in novel contexts) may be seen as a little high. I also haven’t covered how to bootstrap the method (that is, how to develop an understanding of how to attack the base problem before any variations are introduced). Nonetheless I think there are some contexts where this works well. I’ve found it to be useful in singing, mathematics and interviewing at least!