>> Then, it is not tried until I have to tell someone else.
I usually find out whether or not I REALLY understand something when I try to explain it. If it comes out sounding lame and confused - that means I was confused.
My theory is that when someone REALLY understands something, their explanation will be so simple that it sounds obvious. The question might have taken 300 years of work by thousands of people to FIND the answer, but once the right answer is found and well understood, a good explanation will leave a student thinking 'THAT'S totally obvious!"
(I'm not sure the opposite is true. Sometimes when you read something in a textbook and it sounds fishy or like someone is glossing over important details, hoping you won't notice the hand-waving, it's because the author didn't know the RIGHT answer, he only knew the double-talk he was taught. But sometimes it just means that the right answer was complicated and the author decided that "simple" was better than "right" for his book.
And sometimes it means the answer was right but I didn't understand it - either the author was unclear or I was dense.
OK, I guess the other opposite is sometimes true, too. Some clear and simple answers are wrong, too! Listen to any political ad or debate.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H L Mencken
