title: Learning new skills is like learning to sex eggs

A teaching story I’ve used in the past for helping people understand about learning new skills.

The novice comes into the barn where an old woman is sitting in front of a bin of eggs, reaching into it, pulling out an egg, and she looks at it, feels it, holds it up to the light, and smells it, and then sets the egg into another tray to the right.

She repeats these steps with another egg, and eventually puts it to the right as well.

Another egg, same process, only this time she puts it to the left.

This goes on and the novice observes, without asking questions, and the old woman offers no explanation.

Finally, they break for the noon meal. Still without speaking of the process, they return, only this time the nove sits in front of the large bin of eggs. He picks up an egg, looks at it, shakes it, and the old woman takes the egg from him, and proceeds with the same process, looking at it, feels it, holds it up to the light, smells it, and then sets it to the left.

The novice picks up another egg, looks at it, feels it, smells it, and the old woman again takes the egg from him, looks at it, feels it, holds it up to the light, smells it, and then places it to the right.

The novice picks up another egg, looks at it, feels it, holds it up to the light, and smells it, and then hesitates. The old woman takes the egg, looks at it, feels it, holds it up to the light, smells it and puts it on the right.

Eventually, the novice begins placing eggs on the right or left after going through the process. Occasionally the old woman takes the egg and repeats the processes, rebinning the egg. By the end of the day, the old woman is not taking any eggs from the novice.

The novice has learned to sex eggs.

Did you ever wonder how people learn to sex eggs? That is, determine whether an egg is a male or a female fertilized egg? This is different than determining how to tell if an egg is fertilized, but even that requires a certain skill transfer.

The analogy is “You don’t learn to play tennis by reading a book about tennis” is what is at work here. You can’t actually just ‘‘tell’’ someone how to determine the sex of an egg (although there seem to be no shortage of web sites that will attempt to do just that).

So, how do you learn how to sex an egg?