Poi dancing.

"Knowledge how - what psychologists call procedural knowledge - is the knowledge that enables a person to perform music, to stop a car smoothly with a flat tire on an icy road, to return a serve in tennis, or to move the tongue properly when saying the phrase 'frightening witches.' Procedural knowledge is difficult or impossible to write down and difficult to teach. It is best taught by demonstration and best learned through practice... (It) is largely subconscious." - Norman



The best example I can think of for procedural knowledge is dancing poi. I've been learning poi since early this year and the most difficult challenge of all is making your left brain think and do something totally different from your right brain. Your right arm may be doing it's own thing, while your left arm is doing the complete opposite, at the same time. My mentors teach by demonstrating, some may try to write it down but generally it's not as easy doing it than reading it. It's something you cannot perfect by reading the steps over and over. It is something you have to keep practicing until you get it right. And once you do get it, it's pretty hard to explain how your arms just move along without your brain doing any work at all, except maybe to think what your next poi move will be.

This shows how such precise behavior, such as performing a difficult poi move, can emerge from imprecise knowledge, which in this case is procedural knowledge - wherein one moves effortlessly without really thinking too much of what you are actually doing.

Photo taken from Playpoi's Flickr