Dmitry Stavisky, co-founder of Buddy.ai, a company that helps children learn English. Previously, he was CEO of Lingualeo, Vice President for International Operations at Evernote, advised Coursera on entering international markets, etc.
In an interview with ProgKids.com, Dmitry talked about the future of education, how programmable microcalculators were brought to Silicon Valley, that getting a million users is not always a success, how they teach English in Asia, that oceanology is not about fish, how pandemics help progress, why education is needed, is it cold in the Arctic, and much more.
It's not all good that it's positive
At Edwin.ai, at its peak, we had under a million users, and it was such an easy free course. Well, I'm actually still working on this right now, but it's a completely different topic. We teach English to young children. At Edwin.ai, we had this false positive - we released such a cool and unusual vocabulary trainer on Facebook Messenger, and it went well.
We had a lot of such risky hypotheses, and one of them was: would people even use the messenger? And it turned out that yes, we saw what they would do. We had about a million users there, and organic products didn't advertise at all. We happily said “OK, it works”, took a little more money and started sawing a combat course that would prepare Japanese and Korean students for the test called TOEIC (this is the East Asian version of the more famous TOEFL). We cut it down; in fact, it turned out well, trying to be objective, and there was no demand. Because this market segment turned out to be more ambitious than we thought.
How children learn English in Asia
Again, we did some custdevs there and studied the market as best we could. Everyone studies English, everyone learns it, and these tests are a kind of filter for admission to universities. There's gotta be some super high score there, or you won't even show up. And in three countries — China, Korea, Japan — to get in, you don't just need to get a higher education, you need to get a higher education at a top university. Especially in Korea and Japan, China is not so tough. In Korea and Japan, you must graduate from one of three universities, otherwise many paths are closed to you.
And here are the notorious Asian Tiger Moms, who have been preparing children for tests since they were five years old (they have been teaching this all for ten years). Because of this, the birth rate is falling (it is believed that one of the reasons for the low birth rate in Korea is that education is too expensive and too much energy takes away this very education). But we did Last Mile Course right for the test. This is done in language schools, and they are terrible, because they have a format where an elder broadcasts to the audience, people record. So what are you going to learn here? Nevertheless, they teach, pass exams, but don't speak. They probably know very good passive vocabulary and grammar better than you and me, but they can't speak at all because they are preparing for the test. Everyone understands this, this is discussed in the press, everyone hates these schools, but when it comes to choosing between Edwin there and the school my grandparents and aunts went to...
SERGEY: Fantastic! So this is just such a thing, the inertia of consciousness?
DMITRY: Yes, they know that they should change their behavior, but we certainly did not expect such inertia. We can say that we did something wrong there; it seems that this is not a startup story. This is a topic that the Korean Ministry of Education should deal with: push, push, push — in five years this will be a business, but this is not for a startup.
That's why we changed course and teamed up with Buddi.Ai. Our technologies were quite applicable there, and now we are teaching young children. It's a completely different story, that is, it has game mechanics and the most important thing is that the story is the opposite. The first version of the product was very warmly received and people were willing to pay accordingly.
How we got a million users and how it ended
SERGEY: In the first version, when you first launched this chatbot on Facebook, how long did it take you to reach a million users?
DMITRY: Listen up, quick. We quickly collected 800,000 in two or three months, and then the rest joined. What happened? Well, it's a typical situation where you're first on a platform with something decent. At that time, it was such a common thesis that everything there was moving towards chatbots and voice assistants. Facebook has been very active in this regard. Facebook helped us a lot, it did features like in the AppStore, gave us some ads, and they like it. Well, we were at the forefront there and, accordingly, we received several million virtual love from Facebook. This is a repeat of Evernote's story when we were on the AppStore in 2008 the day before it opened, and it helped us a lot. Apple loved us a lot and there actually were tens of millions of Apple marketing love there.
SERGEY: I have more questions about Evernote. I have a lot of questions about this. Max Levchin first announced that Evernote is the future. So this is a long time ago.
DMITRY: No, well Max Levchin was on the board of directors, so sort of...
SERGEY: You say you've collected a little bit of money. How much do you think “a little bit of money” is?
DMITRY: I don't remember whether we announced it or not...
SERGEY: If it's a secret, it's not necessary.
DMITRY: Well, it's no secret, it's something we didn't announce. Yes, we had our first investor in General Catalyst, then we went to Y Combinator, then Google Assistance invested in us. It was a hypothesis test there; we raised the first money with a dozen slides, so the first investment was much less than one million.
Work biography
DMITRY: I guess you're already talking about my career? My career between Edwin and Evernote included LinguaLeo, where I was hired as CEO. So I spent two years in Moscow. In 2015-2016. Evernote was my longest project, including working at the Odessa Academy of Sciences (7 years). And at some point I realized that I had to move on, sat around for several months, then started watching what to do, and now I was very interested in online education, well, not necessarily languages. Then it happened by accident that Sergey Belousov recruited me to LinguaLeo and I really liked this topic. And now, in fact, I've been studying English for six years.
SERGEY: It's cool, so you started online education even before it became a trend, or at that moment... when did these MOOCs already appear?
About the reasons for success
DMITRY: Yes, that was after the MOOCs. In particular, I helped Coursera a little bit to enter popular markets, between Evernote and LinguaLeo. Of course it wasn't as big back then as it is now. There was already Coursera and EdX. There was DouLingo in the language industry and there was, in fact, LinguaLeo; they started at about the same time, there was completely different access to capital and talent, and the results were very different. You have to be born in the right place...
SERGEY: How is Real Estate? “A place, a place and one more place”? So we're all doomed? Those who are not there then...
DMITRY: Well, I would not say that they are doomed, but it is much more difficult for those who are not there. But again, this seems to be becoming less important now, and not only because of the pandemic, in fact, over five years, some dispersion of capital, experience, and everything has occurred.
SERGEY: How measles made people equal in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Covid in the 21st century.
How COVID and other pandemics have helped progress
DMITRY: Well, they say that the plague contributed to one of the leaps in capitalism. It has mowed a third of Europe and the cost of labor relative to land has risen significantly. Previously, you could simply own land there and not worry, but then it turned out that the land had to be cultivated. The cost of labor has increased, which means that this has served as an impetus for the independence of peasants and citizens, innovations, and so on and so forth. And as a result, we got capitalism, education, and rational thinking.
SERGEY: The plague is a great democratizer.
DMITRY: Yes, but I would like other methods after all...
SERGEY: Humanity should do it on its own, but external factors are forcing it. Well, actually, it's a very good hypothesis, and I like it.
DMITRY: Well, these are not my hypotheses, I read it somewhere and it seemed to me...
SERGEY: No, no, no, it just works for me too. That's a very cool explanation.
DMITRY: In fact, there was another explanation that this problem was solved in different ways. In Western Europe, as a result of the change in the dynamics of the balance of power, urban peasants received more rights and freedoms, while in Eastern Europe (Prussia, Poland, and Russia), on the contrary, they said “yeah! Right now we need to hold them down so they don't really run around here.” And we got a tightening of serfdom. What I bought for is what I sell for, but it sounds interesting.
SERGEY: Yes, at least there are a lot of explanations. Many things are becoming logical and we can make some predictions about the next ten years.
DMITRY: Listen, I really hope that Covid does not mow 30% of the population; I really hope that it won't even mow 1% off.
How the process of communicating with investors has changed
SERGEY: No, well, there have been changes anyway, everyone has gone remote work, it's still the idea that everyone should be in Silicon Valley to get to investors...
DMITRY: Yes, of course. In other words, it is an accelerator of trends that existed before. For example, ZOOM was much earlier. We met last time at Stanford and now at Zoom. Much has changed now, and when the dust settles there, the new rules will differ from the old ones.
SERGEY: It will be somewhat difficult to explain “let's come here”. You can say “why, let's talk on the phone”.
DMITRY: Well, education that is close to our hearts also thinks that a lot will change. So I think there will be hysteresis in behavior.
Is the future of education face-to-face or remote?
SERGEY: Regarding education. It seems to me that full-time education is still much better. Or is it not? Or are there any results, evidence that “no, no, everything can be done remotely”?
DMITRY: Yes and no. Yes, it's better and no, it's not always like that. I think this depends very much on age and subject matter. Let's be honest that in elementary school, one of the functions of a school is to be a nanny.
SERGEY: Yes, to look after the children while the parents work, yes.
DMITRY: Yes, yes, no virtual teachers (even robots) will perform this function. This time. And then there are various subjects where the teaching format is lectures. There are subjects where the teaching format includes discussions led by a teacher or professor, all kinds of humanities, for example. And there are laboratories where you have to do something with pens. The answer to these questions, I think, depends on the subject and age, and in fact, the topics of the lessons are very different. I think that, just like with offices, it will be more hybrid. I hope we won't communicate only via Zoom, but we won't sit around like sardines in open space offices either. And it's the same with schools. The teacher is definitely not going anywhere; I don't know a single subject where it is better without a teacher than with a teacher (or a distance teacher). It's just that, in addition to teachers, there will be virtual teachers who will be their assistants.
American elementary schools have the concept of “Teacher Assistant” (and universities do). So I think Teacher Assistant will be virtual. I don't know, let's take foreign languages, where a lot of time is spent learning words. Well, why would a person need a teacher to memorize words? This is such a simple example, not very interesting. In general, most of the curriculum consists of repetition; repetition is the mother of learning.
Why speak English correctly
SERGEY: Well, you live in both worlds. You are in America and you communicate continuously with Americans, and you probably see a lot of people coming from abroad, with whom you communicate in English, which is not their native language. How critical is it to speak correctly under these conditions? Because... you gave a great example: Koreans sit there, study grammar, know all the words very well, but they can't speak. Surely there is a reverse example, when a person simply speaks without knowing either grammar or anything. Does it get in the way?
DMITRY: Well, yeah. Well, I don't know, the reverse example is how in all tourist cities in the Mediterranean, where there is a bazaar and, if it doesn't say “Russian”, they start contacting you both ways. So it's clear that he knows some phrases, but it's not enough after all. Yes, it is clear that they have no grammar knowledge, no systematic training; they learned it at the bazaar. But there are absolutely no such brakes. And that's great! But this is not exactly what you need for professional work. Again, it depends on the location of the industry. Specifically, in Silicon Valley and in Hiteck, there are so many people who talk with an accent that this is normal. But the better you speak, the better.
SERGEY: So children still need to learn grammar formally and devote a lot of time to it?
DMITRY: That's a different question! You asked if... I think it hurts to talk to an adult, a professional who comes to Silicon Valley with poor language skills, but not much. Tongue-tied language also interferes. If we speak our native language tongue-tied, this does not help. Well, it's important to be understood. It is important to express your thoughts clearly, and if it comes with oratory, charisma is all the advantages.
SERGEY: Can oratory and charisma compensate for bad language?
DMITRY: Honestly, yes. I just think of people who speak with an accent but speak well, yes, they can. So what do you mean bad? There is a threshold to make it easy to understand, and then there are accents, dialects, mistakes, and vocabulary. Yes, there is a minimum that is not entirely functional. I think we're talking after that, huh? Well, just look at the top positions in tech companies there — half speak with an accent.
SERGEY: And here's the Y Combinator badge on your sweater. Are you a resident there now?
DMITRY: No, me... Edwin and I went there, I really like this sweatshirt.
SERGEY: You are also an active member of the Russian Y Combinator group, right?
DMITRY: Well, it was Vanya Novikov and a couple of other people who created this Facebook group. In fact, this is how it has evolved into a platform for Russian speakers who are interested in starting their own business... well, in particular, getting into YC, I think it's a cool topic.
SERGEY: It was an excellent result there; a lot of guys made it to this match. How many are there? Fifty?
DMITRY: Well, I don't remember, yes, they wrote statistics there, but the quality was so... significantly increased per conversion. Well, they do interviews before the appointment and help them draw up applications.
SERGEY: I would probably say that... if the goal is... We are teaching children how to program. They are now seven, ten, twelve years old there. After a certain amount of time, three or five years, they will be faced with a choice: what to do? There are tons of books and recipes for how they can study, but that's the reason why all these books and recipes are, it's like... ask a person a recipe for success, they'll probably say what they think it takes to succeed, not what actually led them to success. What made you successful? What was the main role for you? What personal qualities or role models have helped you?
DMITRY: Yes, I understand the question, it's a good question. But I'm not ready to announce that I've been successful.
SERGEY: If someone from Voronezh sees you, they'll be interested to know how they got to the center of Silicon Valley.
How education helps in life
DMITRY: I had a decent education, studied at the University of Geophysics and studied science. Quite by chance, thanks to his supervisor, he came to the United States to join an international project. This is probably a typical combination of chance, luck and some kind of preparedness and the ability to use it.
SERGEY: How did education help? Are these connections?
DMITRY: We remember the events of thirty years ago. You asked me how I got to Silicon Valley, but first I needed to get to America. I went to Boston first. How did I get there? I got into an international project at my academic institution. To get into this project, you had to go to an academic institute; to enter an academic institute, you probably had to...
SERGEY: Academic success has led you to...
DMITRY: Yes, yes, and then... I was modeling, that is, writing computer models in very different areas, including those where I didn't understand anything. I was modeling the climate, but then I started modeling macroeconomics.
SERGEY: Are the differential equations about the same?
DMITRY: Well, not much different. Yes, in the climate there, partial differential equations are four-dimensional, but here God willing it is linear.
SERGEY: It's much easier, actually, right?
DMITRY: It is mathematically much easier, yes, but conceptually it is much more difficult, because people participate there with all their cockroaches. This is much more complicated even in the concept of turbulence — it is unpredictable.
And then it turned out that I was more interested in programming — writing, debugging models, visualizing, and everything else — than what we were modeling. And when we finished this project, I left the academy and went into the industry. I'm going to say trivial things right now: everyone gets chances, but not everyone uses them. In other words, you have to be prepared for this and then don't lose it. Again, I don't know how many chances I missed, but I used some to the fullest.
How to get into science
SERGEY: How did you end up in the academic community? Is this some kind of special school or is it just?..
DMITRY: No, there weren't any special schools, and my family has had the same doctors and two black sheep in all directions for three generations. This is my father is a historian and I actually don't understand what. And so my mom, both grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousin are all doctors. I went to the Faculty of Geography and wanted to be an oceanographer. I've seen enough of Cousteau's movies. It's quite random. Friends and classmates went there, and I heard from them that they have a geology department and they teach oceanology there, and “of course I'll go to the Geology Department”. Okay, I've done it.
They first accept you and specialize in your second year. And in the first year, they teach a very wide range of geographical disciplines.
Oceanology is about submarines
Well, this is the very first lecture on oceanology, where the professor is standing like this, a huge audience, sitting the whole course, two hundred people and he asks: “Well, have you seen enough of Cousteau? Fish, corals? Do you think oceanology is about this? No, guys, oceanology is the science of submarines.” And this really turned out to be the case, and when the Soviet Union's boats stopped plowing the oceans, oceanology collapsed, including in the United States. My classmates, who came here for graduate school when they stopped sailing submarines, fell sharply in funding for American oceanology.
SERGEY: Okay, the customer is gone.
DMITRY: Yes, yeah. Oceanology was not concerned with corals and fish, but with acoustics, the structure of waves in the aquatic environment, and so on. In general, I had no interest in submarines, but I was interested in how they were described. So I went to a related field called meteorology and climatology. Again, there's quite a bit of stuff out there. There are also weather forecasters who make the weather, and I went to model it. Well, again, not right away. At first, I--I thought I was going to be field geographers, going around and measuring things. Well, that's what happened until I went on an Arctic expedition to northern land after my third year.
Is it cold in the Arctic
SERGEY: Was it cold in the Arctic?
DMITRY: No, no, first of all, it's not so cold there because the ocean is warm after all, but I spent six months on the glacier, and somehow after that I started to think that something was too much and maybe not freeze my ass, but write a model? And then you come in for two weeks, try something on, calibrate it and you'll have the same effect.
SERGEY: This is how all mathematics moved, this is how it developed!
DMITRY: Well, yes, in general, six months and after waiting for the polar night (there was a real chance to spend the winter there), I miraculously took my legs away from there. Just got back to the session. It's so sobering... brain-clearing, as it turns out. Thank God, we had a certain educational base: a geographer and geographer, and guys from the Mechanics and Mathematics Department gave lectures along our hydromed stream. If for the first three years I didn't understand why we were being loaded with this, the next two years were: “Phew, at least I can do something at all.” Well, that's actually how I got into it, to the academy.
SERGEY: And what preceded this? Was there any interest in school? Well, Cousteau got it, movies. And to Cousteau? Or was it a click like that? What did you do before Cousteau and after Cousteau? Well, after Cousteau it's clear.
Cousteau and programmable microcalculators brought us to Silicon Valley
DMITRY: Well... it was blowing in the wind. Cousteau yes, Cousteau made such an impression on me. But when my classmates went to the Geology Department, it just clicked. And before that, I had a pretty serious interest in biology. Probably, if it weren't for Cousteau and my classmates, I would go to the biology department. In eighth grade, I got my hands on the MK-54 programmable calculator and wrote the factorial calculation using machine code. I had a lot of fun doing that. Well, then the whole class solved the equations there. I remember the first program I wrote. It was on MK-54 machine code, and I even remember how many operating cells there were, how many...
SERGEY: I dreamed of such a thing. I read about them in the magazine Technika Molodezhi. They directly posted listings for all sorts of games there.
DMITRY: Yeah, yeah, that's her. I'm not just old, I'm super old, I remember MK-54. And at university we had punch cards.
SERGEY: Oh, I also found punch cards, great stuff! My dream is to make a video about great people programming. We're the ones who are complaining about the computer being weak and all that stuff. Look at what people used to do! This is when you type in a program during the evening and then wait another week for you to be given time to download it, and another week when you get the results back. That's great.
DMITRY: Yes, and then there is a syntactic error in the results and you carry a razor blade and putty to seal or cut right into this punched card.
SERGEY: I didn't know this life hack! That's great, it's great. Where can you watch it live and press the buttons? Does it still exist anywhere?
DMITRY: Mountain View has a Computer History Museum...
SERGEY: Yes, but they don't let me in there. I mean sit down or do something about it.
DMITRY: No, they certainly won't let you sit down. I've got a stack of punch cards buried here somewhere. Just tell me in advance whether the box will have to be found.
SERGEY: I know where to buy it... It's easy now. But take a perforator...
DMITRY: Exactly where to find the drill, I don't know, really.
How do you become smart?
SERGEY: Okay, biology, math, programming, oceanology — how? What did they do to you when you were a child? How did such a powerful brain develop? Did you eat right? Ecology?
DMITRY: Well, look, I used to be a botanist and I still am. Well, not really, there were interests and much more interesting (especially in high school). Well, I was a good student; our family didn't even discuss what could be different.
SERGEY: Was it some kind of strict “study or otherwise...” requirement?
DMITRY: No, it's more of an expectation. This is the role of parents, of course. Parents, their circle, what they talk about, what are their interests...
SERGEY: Did your parents directly discuss any academic issues?
DMITRY: My mother is a doctor, my father is a historian, and it is difficult for them to discuss their work, but there are some related areas (which I can't even remember). And what they discussed with their friends at the party table or in the kitchen. I think I came up with the idea of biology... my father's friend, a journalist, had a microscope and showed me a slipper, and it hit me right in the heel. Mom kept dragging some chewed birds and nursing them — it's another part of biology. The school was quite ordinary; unfortunately, this is not a 57th school, but nonetheless. The teachers were very good, everything was smooth, the classmates were great, some of the teachers were quite cool. We had a biology club led by a biology teacher. And then he suddenly started taking a philosophy club. Well, that turned out to be a mistake, because philosophy is such a dumb topic. They squeezed him out of school because of a scandal, but they didn't put him in jail. It was proletarian times; in general, they decided that he was teaching the children something wrong. It turns out that this also happens. Lessons are in a format where something is discussed there and made you think.
SERGEY: So they don't just broadcast, they also engage in dialogue?
DMITRY: Yes, this is something like that... Well, I was unlucky, I literally went to these mugs for six months and was one of the youngest ones. Well, it made an impression, and it turns out you can.
How math and programming changed lives
SERGEY: You said that programming and math practically saved you from wintering in the Arctic Circle, and then programming also reformatted your life.
DMITRY: No, well, look, what kind of math is applied? Mathematics is a light version of what physics provides. Well, as a tool. Insofar as we have climate models there. We solved it numerically; it has a rather complicated system of equations. Our math is superficial, but we did. So how did I go to northern land. It was a very important expedition. We studied the interaction of the atmosphere with the glacier, we had a lot of data and we were too lazy to process it manually, so I coded something like that there. Somehow it leaked to the VMK faculty. And I did some processing there. My term work was based on what I wanted to practice on northern soil. Some simple statistical programs, time series processing.
Programming is important
SERGEY: So wouldn't it be far-fetched to say that mathematics and programming played one of the key roles? Do you think this is relevant now for people, for children, for students?.. Because everyone does it...
DMITRY: No, of course, it's relevant; I think that being able to program something means being literate. Even if you're not going to become a professional programmer, dedicate your life to computers. To understand how this works, we need to understand how to do it. I think this is literacy. A simple script in plain language to code something there. Some lego robot, you name it. And so much... otherwise it's not at all clear what's going on. If this is done, the child will understand a lot of things, but then... in many areas it is a tool — the ability to work with data and process it. My son studies Neuroscience, the brain, and what he does most of the time is process huge amounts of data. That's the same classic Machine Learninig. But I guess you're asking about students. How deep to go depends on your future plans and interests, but at least...
SERGEY: I'm not asking about students; I don't know who I'm asking about. For example, English, obviously, if you learn it from birth and be in a language environment, you will get the best results. If not from birth and not in a language environment, won't it be a big problem if you start teaching there, for example, in tenth grade? Or at the institute?
DMITRY: It will be, actually. We're just designed to make languages much easier to learn from four to twelve. And then it's harder. And there are very few people who started learning a language as teenagers after twelve. For example, in a Russian-speaking environment, you can see who arrived before noon and who after: some speak with an accent, while others speak without. Well, in general, there are always exceptions; people with an absolute ear for music have learned. But generally like this. In fact, this question... was the question: should we learn languages at all? The question was worded differently, but the meaning was as follows. I think so. Not necessarily English. First of all, I don't believe that any translators will replace this, and I have an explanation for this. The best automatic translator will replace the simultaneous interpreter. It's going to be just as good, maybe a little better. Let's see how people who have access to synchronized interpreters behave: billionaires and aristocrats, who also learned languages and are teaching. Why, it would seem. Hire a simultaneous interpreter and he'll walk with you. The fact is that language proficiency greatly develops the brain and makes it possible to look at things in a different way. We think wholly or often in terms of language. You realize you can call it that way and that gives you different angles. I think this is important.
SERGEY: A great film also explained this thing — “Arrival”. How aliens arrived on earth and you're already dreaming in their language. Does this apply to programming? Teaching a child at seven or nine years old? Is this the same as teaching a foreign language?
DMITRY: Yes, it is possible to teach, yes. This is literacy. Elementary. You should program at nine o'clock, but learn human languages sooner. Programming languages and human languages are fundamentally different.
How to learn math and programming
SERGEY: To be good at math, you need long-term training; you need to study it for years. It seems to be the same with programming. You can't sit down and learn programming in a short period of time. The brain should probably identify the pattern. This is how I explain it to myself.
DMITRY: No, look, if you want to become a professional programmer, you have to know a lot of things there. I'm talking about something else: even if you don't have the slightest interest in this; you hate computers, at the age of nine or ten you should at least write a couple of scripts and code something. Just for general education. Without that, there would be too much mystery around how it all works. You don't have to spend a lot of time (set aside a semester), and then out of interest.
What to do differently
SERGEY: Knowing everything you know now, what would you like to know 10-20-30 years ago if you rewind a significant amount of time, what do you know now? What could dramatically and dramatically increase your efficiency and efficiency?
DMITRY: Professional, right? When I actually left the Academy of Geophysics to start programming, I had a minimal database, but there were a lot of holes. I had friends who were studying to be a computer scientist in graduate school, I borrowed educational materials from them and methodically went through many of them on their own: how the compiler works, how networks work. Well, the Faculty of Geology didn't teach that. VMC professors came, but they taught numerically. So I didn't want to be superficial; I wanted to know how it works. I was too lazy and didn't have the opportunity to go and get a second education, so I studied it at home. So well... you asked me what I wanted to know. Here it is. In part, I remember that. If I had wanted to be a professional programmer 30 years ago, I would have just gone to computer science instead of the geofaculty and VMC, well, in those conditions. I'm really not really sure that's the path I would take.
SERGEY: So there's more focus on computer science and applied mathematics, something like that?
DMITRY: Yes, yes, but I would go on expeditions as a laborer in the summer. It was great and useful, and it had a big impact on me. Yes, when we talked about programming skills, you compared it to math. I think this is not so much about mathematics as about structured formal thinking and the ability to formalize something. You want to program a Lego robot to crawl like a cockroach. You look at a cockroach and start to formalize what the cockroach does. This is logic and the ability to formalize what you see. Not some branch of math.
