A20

Minimal-sufficient explanation

Ask for the shortest explanation that is still correct (then expand only the parts that actually blocked you) so you stop paying for essays when you needed three sentences.

When to use this: First time through the material
Learning impact: Clear help, modest gain
Learning evidence: Credible with caveats
Where you are with the topic: Building understanding
How often to use it: Worth repeating often

When to use it

You are meeting this idea for the first time and need a way in.
The reading feels dense and you want a first map before the details.

What to ask AI

Type something like: “Explain … in the shortest form that remains correct for …. No”.

Tell it your current level and ask it to stay one step harder than comfortable.

Keep the hard part on your side: you retrieve, attempt, explain, or decide before you ask for help.

How it helps

For learning it is often expertise reversal in a trench coat: processing an explanation you didn't need consumes the attention you needed for the one clause that mattered.

Minimal-sufficient explanation inverts the default.

Start with the shortest true account.

Expand on request, surgically.

You learn to notice where you break (Works well alongside Multi-level explanation multi-level) without drowning in optional colour.

This is not "explain like I'm five." Child versions often become false.

The constraint is minimal and still correct: every word earns its keep, no comforting lies.

How to run it

Ask for minimal-sufficient first, with an explicit length or sentence cap.
Read it once. Mark the first opaque sentence.
Next: expand only that sentence: not the whole topic.
Stop when you can restate the minimal version in your own words.
Next: add detail later for richness, not for rescue. If you need richness to understand, the "minimal" was too minimal (or wrong), say so.

Example exchange

You

Explain osmosis in the shortest form that stays correct for first-year biology. No history, no extra pathways.

Water moves across a semi-permeable membrane toward the side with higher solute concentration. That's the core. What would you add if the audience were sitting an exam on tonicity tomorrow?

You

I'd add that the membrane lets water through but not the solute, and name hypo- versus hypertonic.

Keep those as your optional layer. Can you restate the one-sentence core without them?

Copyable prompt

Explain [IDEA] in the shortest form that remains correct for [LEVEL]. No
analogies, no pep, no optional history. Max [N] sentences. If you cannot be
correct in that space, say what extra sentence is load-bearing and stop.

The Tell

Here is how you know this method has flipped: you feel well-briefed and still cannot state the idea in two true sentences of your own.

In that moment the AI (or the schedule, or the story) did the thinking, and you only recognised a finished product.

Tighten the prompt for minimal-sufficient explanation so you attempt, decide, or retrieve before anything is handed to you.

Principle evidence

Strength of the underlying learning idea, not a claim about AI products.

The underlying learning idea is rated moderate. Minimal-sufficient explanation echoes parsimony under cognitive load: avoid extraneous detail until needed (CLT; instructional design on just-in-time information).

AI delivery evidence

Whether an AI tutor delivers this method well is a separate question.

Related to contingent tutoring’s “smallest useful help.” Principle moderate; AI brevity-with-correctness is speculative.