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Against 3x Speed

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Re: Against 3x Speed

#291

Post by corpdronejuly »

ben_w wrote: post #269
Ajedi32 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go even further and argue that making students read or listen to lectures for any significant length of time without them being actively engaged with the lesson is sub-optimal. Newer learning systems like Duo Lingo, ALEKS, and Brilliant do an excellent job of constantly, actively engaging students with the lesson, tightening the feedback loop between teaching the student something and checking whether they ac…

While Duolingo is certainly better than the previous school standard of “here’s a textbook, here’s an audio tape to play on loop”, it’s nowhere near the level of a private tutor. I’m currently nearing a 2000-day streak and have repeatedly gold-starred the German course as they add more content, and Duolingo isn’t the only app I’m using. Despite this, while my vocabulary is OK, I don’t conjugate even close to correctl…

That may have to do with Duolingo optimizing for paying and returning customers instead of for fluency.

Their app has to be "fun" or in flow rather than in that difficult challenging place to actually help you grow.

In learning both German and Old Norse the most helpful thing for me was to translate texts, read them aloud to a fluent speaker and get feedback. Which is hard to scale.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#292

Post by Kranar »

semireg wrote: post #281

I haven’t read the whole article but I’m deeply opinionated about this topic. I was a good but not great student in college. The computer science classes bored me to death. Years later, post college, I wanted to learn iOS mobile app development. I used the Stanford lecture series but couldn’t stay focused until … I tried 2x speed. All of a sudden it started making sense. When I got lost I hit pause, rewound, watched…

I am so happy you said this. I always felt like the majority of lectures and content overall is ceremony and that most of the actual substance comprises maybe 15-20% of the overall content. There are times when I can appreciate ceremony, especially if it's being given by a good performer, a great writer or a passionate lecturer. Unfortunately most teachers are not passionate or good lecturers, most educational videos are not that engaging, and many authors are not good writers, and so in most cases I could strip out 80% of the content and spare myself the boredom.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#293

Post by madmax108 »

semireg wrote: post #281

I haven’t read the whole article but I’m deeply opinionated about this topic. I was a good but not great student in college. The computer science classes bored me to death. Years later, post college, I wanted to learn iOS mobile app development. I used the Stanford lecture series but couldn’t stay focused until … I tried 2x speed. All of a sudden it started making sense. When I got lost I hit pause, rewound, watched…

"I haven’t read the whole article but I’m deeply opinionated about this topic."

Sometimes I truly feel like this should be the unofficial motto of HN ;)

> 10 years later I still listen to podcasts and watch most of YouTube at 2x

The sweet spot for me is between 1.5x and 1.7x (Usually speed controls aren't fine-grained enough to allow 1.7x but apps that do earn extra brownie points from me eg. VLC). It's always weird having to explain this to friends who tend to think that I'm always listening to is a rap documentary :-D

Re: Against 3x Speed

#294

Post by fouric »

culebron21 wrote: post #142

I'm impressed more by the comments than the article itself. Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of own skills. A personal example: I used to listen to a famous linguist, and everything seemed nice and clear, but then I decided to go in details on one particular question (I think accentuantion), and opened his book. It was like if you showed your programmin…

> A nice experiment showing that if you enjoy a lesson, it usually means you make no progress, meanwhile hard practice actually does make you progress

There was a post a few weeks ago whose comments had discussion about whether video learning was useful or worked better for some people than textual learning. I saw a lot of people claiming that they enjoyed videos more and learned more from them...but, as the linked study shows, enjoyment doesn't imply learning effectiveness (if anything, there's a negative correlation).

Re: Against 3x Speed

#295

Post by kej »

austinl wrote: post #289

“You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind. To be everywhere is to be nowhere." — Seneca c. 65 AD I used to try to read a lot of books, but when I found I couldn't discuss them in detail in a conversation or recall their key points, I thought, "what i…

> Now I try to re-read one book I thought was meaningful for every new book.

As a random piece of trivia, this was C.S. Lewis's rule as well: "It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."

I think it's a good idea but I struggle to follow it when my list of books to read is so much longer then I'll ever complete.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#296

Post by nokcha »

madmax108 wrote: post #293
semireg wrote: post #281

I haven’t read the whole article but I’m deeply opinionated about this topic. I was a good but not great student in college. The computer science classes bored me to death. Years later, post college, I wanted to learn iOS mobile app development. I used the Stanford lecture series but couldn’t stay focused until … I tried 2x speed. All of a sudden it started making sense. When I got lost I hit pause, rewound, watched…

"I haven’t read the whole article but I’m deeply opinionated about this topic." Sometimes I truly feel like this should be the unofficial motto of HN ;) > 10 years later I still listen to podcasts and watch most of YouTube at 2x The sweet spot for me is between 1.5x and 1.7x (Usually speed controls aren't fine-grained enough to allow 1.7x but apps that do earn extra brownie points from me eg. VLC). It's always weird…

> Usually speed controls aren't fine-grained enough to allow 1.7x

On most sites, you can set an arbitrary speed by executing a line of JavaScript in the debug console:

    document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 1.7;
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3027707/how-to-change-th...

Re: Against 3x Speed

#297

Post by TchoBeer »

culebron21 wrote: post #213
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder the quality of learning if you listen to/watch something at 2x speed twice. Bonus if there is a delay in which your mind may formulate questions. I'm guessing it would be superior unless it was a very high difficulty piece. Having a basic understanding and then formulating questions allows you have an input on the learning, as opposed to simply listening. I would also say that with some material (esp. fictio…

Try this: after listening to a story or to a lecture, retell it to someone else in as much detail as possible. Or try defending lecturer's position or what their information implies. You'll be shocked to discover, you don't know enough details. You'll have to listen another time, and off goes the profit of x2 speed. But even after listening multiple times, it's still very hard to argue for, or retell in details what'…

>and off goes the profit of x2 speed

I'm unconvinced. Is it better to listen to something once at 1x speed or twice at 2x speed?

Re: Against 3x Speed

#298

Post by blakesley »

supportlocal4h wrote: post #253
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%! This reminded me of a similar lesson beaten into us _repeatedly_ in college. I would study for a test and feel like everything was crystal clear. Then i walk into the exam and get absolutely destroyed by stuff i thought i understood.. over and over again. It was (unfortunately) a common experience. Seeing the answers afterwards, they usually involved facts i knew applied in a way i could not. That experience co…

A bit off-topic, but I remember a college class in which I was completely lost. I wasn't even clear on the topic of the class. Nothing ever made sense. I got D's on most of the tests. I was enormously frustrated. Then, at the end, I got my final grade: B+. My sense of relief was comical and fleeting. It was replaced by anger. How was it possible that most of the students in the class did worse than I? What an absolut…

Are you just talking about grading on a curve? This happened to me in a graduate math class and I agree with you that it felt unnecessarily demoralizing. But it also seemed like a natural outcome of grading a hard class on a curve.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#299

Post by petters »

culebron21 wrote: post #142

I'm impressed more by the comments than the article itself. Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of own skills. A personal example: I used to listen to a famous linguist, and everything seemed nice and clear, but then I decided to go in details on one particular question (I think accentuantion), and opened his book. It was like if you showed your programmin…

It is very clear to me that listening at 3x works after some training. (Not surprising, since almost everyone already reads way faster than normal speech)

The proof for this is e.g. blind people. Listen to what their screen readers sound like! I bet it will be hard to know even what language it is.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#300

Post by sandyarmstrong »

blakesley wrote: post #298
supportlocal4h wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit off-topic, but I remember a college class in which I was completely lost. I wasn't even clear on the topic of the class. Nothing ever made sense. I got D's on most of the tests. I was enormously frustrated. Then, at the end, I got my final grade: B+. My sense of relief was comical and fleeting. It was replaced by anger. How was it possible that most of the students in the class did worse than I? What an absolut…

Are you just talking about grading on a curve? This happened to me in a graduate math class and I agree with you that it felt unnecessarily demoralizing. But it also seemed like a natural outcome of grading a hard class on a curve.

I had some upper division math classes that were offered for both undergrad and grad credits. I enjoyed the classes, but one thing I noticed was that the teacher seemed to be under some pressure to ensure the grad students passed. They didn't seem to care about the classes and performed horribly, I would do OK, and at the end of term all the undergrads like me would exit with an almost-guaranteed A.

Really helped to shape my perception that grades are meaningless and ultimately political.

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