81–90 of 123 posts
The most valuable thing I learned at university was how to tackle difficult problems. Taking advanced math and science courses where I had to really study, and still struggled, and having to write essays so frequently that I could no longer procrastinate or wait for the spark to hit me, was more valuable in the long run than any of the actual knowledge I gained. The advice to break a hard problem down into simpler pi…
The most valuable thing I learned at university was how to tackle difficult problems. Taking advanced math and science courses where I had to really study, and still struggled, and having to write essays so frequently that I could no longer procrastinate or wait for the spark to hit me, was more valuable in the long run than any of the actual knowledge I gained. The advice to break a hard problem down into simpler pi…
My biggest realization about doing hard things is that I needed to let go of my intellectual entitlement. Just because something is (or seems) effortless to others, doesn't mean it will be the same for me. Part of this entitlement stemmed from a (now eroded by bitter experience) belief that I'm somehow a faster learner than normal, that _I_ don't have to do the work. For example, about seven years ago I wanted to lea…
I think it's also important to remember it is rarely effortless to others. You just don't see the effort. I was fortunate enough to hang out with some people in college who were valedictorians at their high schools, and would generally be considered smart. They ended up graduating college with 4.0s. Since I hung out with them all the time, I got to see just how much they worked at it. They took amazing notes, and studied all the time. We didn't have a name for it then, but they essentially did the Pomodoro technique to pull all nighters studying for big exams.
Seeing them definitely helped me realize that getting through hard problems is work, and requires time. Thinking time, studying time, and practicing time. Do some things come easier to some people? Sure, but almost everyone has to put in the work at some point.
As an aside, not understanding how much work goes into something is common in sports. People see Michael Jordan hit the final shot or Tiger Woods hit an amazing shot out of a bunker, but do not realize they have probably practiced that shot hundreds if not thousands of times.
It sounds like great advice, I just wish I had some properly hard things I needed to apply it to, rather than the multitude of what ought to be simple things of which a few unexpectedly and inexplicably turn out to be grossly disproportionately difficult to do for no very good reason.
I have also experienced this phenomenon. Why do you suppose we come to these surprises, and why do you suppose we experience them? Is it because we are confident? Or because we lack sedulity? Or because our analysis was incomplete? Is the surprise time consuming because we want/expect it to be easy? Or because we are focused on a different problem really. Or because our focus was interrupted.
good word!
The most valuable thing I learned at university was how to tackle difficult problems. Taking advanced math and science courses where I had to really study, and still struggled, and having to write essays so frequently that I could no longer procrastinate or wait for the spark to hit me, was more valuable in the long run than any of the actual knowledge I gained. The advice to break a hard problem down into simpler pi…
Sadly my course at university was too easy - most of the times i could easily wing the exams, prepare for a presentation day before, and do the same thing to the project - and get equivalent of B. Professors were also good at teaching, which reduced the need to study at home even further. It hurt me in the long run - i am really bad at putting in effort unless something catches my attention(thankfully programming can…
I am a 4th semester CS student from Germany and still don't grasp recursion, even though I already took the data structures & algorithms courses. If you did have something like a magic moment where it made sense to you, please enlighten me as I would really like to truly gain an intuition (and implement a parallelized msd-radixsort for learning-purposes because I failed to do this assignment yesterday).
The 'reality' is the top level context.
You dive down to level 2 context by falling asleep; that would be the recursive function call.
In that dream, fall asleep and enter level 3 context. You are now recusrsively falling asleep.
In the movie, the characters wait for a signal to wake up and going one level up. This is the 'stopping condition' of a recursive call.
You can also see that as Matryoshka dolls.
Regarding the 'Inception' movie that's funny, because it popularized the '-ception' suffix to describe a recursive phenomenon [1]
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception#In_popular_culture
The most valuable thing I learned at university was how to tackle difficult problems. Taking advanced math and science courses where I had to really study, and still struggled, and having to write essays so frequently that I could no longer procrastinate or wait for the spark to hit me, was more valuable in the long run than any of the actual knowledge I gained. The advice to break a hard problem down into simpler pi…
Your comment reminds me of the exercise where a class was split into two cohorts, one was tasked with producing just one clay pot (I can't remember the thing now), while the other cohort was tasked with making one per day or something similar. Put simply, one group put all of its energy into producing just one, and the other group just turned out pot after pot after pot. At the end, so the story goes, the group that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if that is really the same principle as the pottery anecdote however, it's not about experimenting but a narrative enforcing the concept 'practice makes perfect', related I suppose but not the same. And anyway the pottery principle is not really sound either - I can suppose that the group tasked with producing a pot a day produces a better pot at the end than the group that was given a long time, but let…
The pot story is only valid if learning happens. You can make the same very bad $creative_product every day indefinitely without improving at all. Which is why there has to be at least some assessment and feedback. That's the big benefit of having a teacher, mentor, and/or the feedback of peers, customers, or an audience. If you have a mediocre talent they'll steer you towards making the most of it. If you have excep…
His use of loops just seems like an implementation of breaking a problem down into smaller components. If I wanted to learn to learn a difficult skill, such as writing a decent novel, I'd break it down as follows: 1) Research what skills I'll need to develop. At my current stage of learning I don't know what I don't know. 2) Figure out a path to start developing skills. This might be writing a small story every singl…
For a long time I've had this idea about creating a website where this type of idea is expressed. I envision it to be some large hierarchical tree like structure (not unlike the ones you see in games like FInal Fantasy) where you pick a topic you want to learn and it gives you the basics to learn and then once mastered allows you to goes deeper by diverging into specialised categories.
You might be able to bootstrap off of wikipedia content.
The thought that provoked this in my own head was the observation that Wikipedia is virtually useless for learning anything mathematical because so many of the links on any given article head "up", rather than "down", and a casual user can't figure out which is which.