rating knowledge
Wed, Apr 18, 2007Some recent experiences have caused me to consider how I rate my knowledge of things. To date I’ve relied on some combination of recency and depth. The main point of that combination being the loss of information over time. Things I did only 6 months ago from memory, may require more effort and thought to do now. So how do you rate your knowledge given the fact that the only information you may really know is what your dealing with currently? There are obviously some limits to this idea. I can recall the Big-O times for a variety of structures and algorithms, but I have yet to actually put that knowledge to any useful test. Does that mean that I don’t actually posses the knowledge or am incapable of using it? Given a scale of 1-10, what would rating would you give someone’s knowledge given the following scenarios:
- The person has API exact knowledge off the top of their head
- The person has rough API knowledge off the top of their head but is fuzzy about details and wrong about some details
- The person has no API knowledge off the top of their head
- The person has incorrect API knowledge
- The person figures out the API based off of experience
I may have experience with linux and all sorts of other things, but as I don’t use that every day the knowledge recedes into the dark corners of my mind only revealed after much shaking. This leads me to question the level of import I’d previously applied to my choice of daytime job. I had originally believed that my free-time escapades into the other technical roles and systems would maintain my knowledge of those systems at the level required to easily jump into a situation needing those skills. At this point, I can’t say I believe that anymore. Some recent thorough testing has revealed some softness in those areas. While after some head shaking (remember those dark recesses of my mind where the real knowledge hides?) I can recall the necessary information, the time between question and answer is too short to provide the actual answer.
So the question I’m left with is: What do I do to fix this? I wonder if anyone else has a suggestion.
As a side note, I’ve come to the conclusion that my writing is much better than my speaking. I plan on giving up the latter as it has been nothing but a hindrance in life.