The Feynman Method: Explain It to AI, Then Check What AI Explains

Today's Goals

1. Explain a concept in your own words and ask AI to point out gaps rather than explain it for you.
2. Ask AI for an analogy, a worked example, and a counterexample, and choose what helps you understand.
3. Check every number and rule in an AI explanation against your own calculation and a textbook.

Day 1 found Noor's gaps: the median of an even-length list, percentage decreases, and percentage points. Today covers sessions S2 and S3, on Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 October. The natural move would be to ask the assistant to explain the median and read what it says. Today reverses that. Noor explains, and the assistant asks questions. Then, when Noor does ask for an explanation, Noor checks it, because a fluent explanation can contain a confident mistake. Both habits rest on one idea: you have not understood something until you can explain it in plain words, and an explanation is not true just because it is clear.

Plain-Language Walkthrough

The Feynman method in four steps

The Feynman method, named after the physicist Richard Feynman, has four steps. First, pick one concept. Second, explain it in plain words to someone who knows nothing about it, such as a new colleague or a curious twelve-year-old. Third, notice where you get stuck, wave your hands, or reach for a term you cannot define. Those are the gaps. Fourth, go back to the source, fix the gap, and explain it again, more simply.

It works because explaining forces you to retrieve and connect ideas, while reading only asks you to recognise them. Recognition feels like understanding. When Noor reads "the median is the middle value," it seems obvious. Only when Noor tries to explain it, and someone asks "middle of what?", does the gap appear. The method's weakness, traditionally, is that you need a listener who asks good questions. An AI assistant is a patient, always-available listener, as long as you tell it to act like one.

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