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I'm not 100% sure of this, but in my own life I sometimes suspect that people respond better to incoherent babble than a polished presentation
My hypothesis is that the polished presentation makes them feel intimidated or makes you feel arrogant/snooty.
Again, not 100% sure about this, and maybe it's more of a "me" thing. But it's something that's crossed my mind more than once.
My dad and I had the same incoherent rambling math professor (decades apart and at different schools!). We both loved him and learned a lot in his classes.
Our theory is that the listener has to do more work and there's no illusion of comprehension with that sort of delivery. If you want to understand it, though, you can put the pieces together for yourself.
There must be something to that. I often hear from students that I'm very clear in my explanations and they feel like they understand when I do it on the board, then they go on to fail the test.
Maybe I should be more incoherent.
It's worth a shot. Maybe do some A/B testing next time you have multiple sections of the same course: one polished and one a rambly incoherent mess.
Main problem: I'm too lazy to actually try and teach two different ways.
It would be kind of difficult to be rambling and incoherent when you've prepared a polished version.
That's what has begun to happen. They asked me questions yesterday that led me to believe they are reading about it on their own.
You might be right
It's probably about expectations. If they go to a conference and are sitting in an audience, they want to hear a polished presentation. If they're sitting with you at a dinner table, they want to hear unfiltered garble.
It makes me think more of our effort should be on search and less on message.
There are probably lots of interested people who just need someone to talk to.
Exactly. I have made an ass of myself with planned conversations more than once. This had to be one of the most garbled, incoherent bitcoin explanations ever uttered, yet it didn't matter.