About

“I don’t know. It’s a mystery!”
— Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare in Love

That line captures something I’ve come to appreciate about learning: understanding begins with mystery—and sometimes a little humor.

In science, mathematics, and many other fields, we encounter patterns that point to deeper levels of order. The joy of studying these subjects lies in the growing sense that nature is “saying something” through them—something coherent, elegant, and continuously unfolding. My work as a teacher grows out of the curiosity these patterns stimulate. I’m interested in how people come to recognize these patterns and derive meaning and benefit from them.

Recently, I have been teaching in two very different ways: by building a learning tool that can reach many students at once, and by working closely with a small number of students in conversation. Both approaches aim to present ideas clearly, so that students experience that familiar sensation: “Of course—I’ve always known that.” Like beautiful melodies, good explanations combine inevitable patterns with surprising variations.

The first approach—teaching through a digital tool—has taken shape in Lingua Formula, a web-based teaching assistant designed to streamline how students organize and navigate the “foreign language” of technical subjects—terms, formulas, and the overarching ideas that link them together. The aim is simple: remove barriers to understanding subjects that are, at their core, rooted in common sense.

Many ideas that appear intimidating in textbooks are, in fact, familiar. Consider a subject often seen as dry and imposing—statistics. In everyday life, we constantly weigh possibilities, judge likelihoods, and compare outcomes. What makes these ideas seem difficult is not their substance, but their presentation: they are rarely framed as extensions of familiar experience and are often expressed in formulas—a kind of foreign language compared to natural speech. Lingua Formula is designed to reduce that friction, helping students move more naturally from intuitive understanding to clear formal expression.

The second approach—teaching through direct conversation—is much smaller and more personal. I teach a private class with two students, focused on cognitive science and its applications, where the method is largely conversational. Discussions often begin with provocative questions—such as, “Do we learn by recognizing and extending self-evident truths already present in the mind?” From there we examine ideas carefully from different angles and think about how they might apply to fields like software development, artificial intelligence, and psychology.

The best moments in teaching and learning happen when an old belief gives way to a better one because someone asked the right question or dared to say what they actually think.

More broadly, my work explores:

• the role of analogy in understanding new ideas
• how educational technology can either sharpen thinking or quietly distort it
• how emerging models in cognitive science (e.g., analytical idealism and integrated information theory) might reshape our approaches to teaching and learning

Over time, the tools of research, teaching, and learning will change—from blackboards to software, from libraries to artificial intelligence—but the goal remains the same: to help us become thoughtful investigators of ideas and skilled practitioners in our fields.

Above all, I value curiosity, clarity, and intellectual honesty. I want students not only to remember ideas, but to test the limits of those ideas, and propose larger ones.

If you’d like to learn more about how I approach teaching, please visit the Teaching Philosophy page.

To see examples of the educational software I am currently building, please visit the Teaching with Technology page.

Background

Before focusing on teaching, I worked as a software developer at Hewlett-Packard. In 2002, I developed artificial intelligence software capable of rewriting its own code in response to changes in user data requirements. More recently, I have been working on the so-called "alignment problem," which involves directing the power of artificial intelligence toward healthy and ethical purposes.

For several decades, I have studied theories of mind and their application to everything from product design to human health. I consider software coding to be a modern form of publishing. When we encounter a new program, we usually ask, “What does it do?” But a more important question may be, “What does it teach?”

If you’re interested in these topics, you can reach me at davidlong@unr.edu.