Against 3x Speed • Hacker News Board

Re: Against 3x Speed

#341

Post by imtringued » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:11 AM UTC

rmah wrote: post #255

naasking wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This lends credence to the educational reform that I always found the most compelling: kids/people should be reading the chapters for the lecture ahead of time as their homework, and doing the practice problems in class instead of a lecture, so the teacher can actually help students work through problems (rather than parents who don't know the material). A brief review/lecture at the end to tie together all of that p…

Many teachers/professors I had in my youth asked the class to read the material before lecture so the lecture could be a summary and then most of the time spent asking questions/discussing the topic. Few students actually did so.

Just give them a weekly quiz based on the content and grade that.

My math teacher in high school gave us a 15 minute test every week and would just randomly pick 4 students who must hand it in of which one presents their solution giving the teacher time to grade the tests. Doing something every week makes it less stressful.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#342

Post by imtringued » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:14 AM UTC

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #209

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…

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…

If 2x speed lets you listen twice then by all means it is probably better than only listening once. However, the people who think they can get away with listening once at 2x speed without pausing are just passing the time, they aren't learning.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#343

Post by imtringued » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:16 AM UTC

TchoBeer wrote: post #297

culebron21 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's better to think about what you have listened to. If 2x lets you do that then you are better of vs 1x. I personally only use 2x when the person is talking very slowly.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#344

Post by culebron21 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #308

culebron21 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to learn driving a car this spring, with manual transmission. Knowing these things helped a lot. I made notes of all the traffic regulations document, and made tables of all long and intricate rules (e.g. lists of places where u-turn is forbidden, or backpedal, or what are speed limits for different kinds of vehicles/roads). This helped avoid learning all those 1000 test questions, what most students did. And u…

Do you live somewhere with an unusually hard driving test? I don't remember studying much at all for the written test (Canada), let alone memorizing a bank of 1000 questions. I never heard of anyone failing the written test. Plenty of people failed the driving test, though.

I live in Russia. Our country still hasn't adapted vision zero policy in street planning, the ministry of interior love cars and high speed. So the technocratic govt is trying to fight with traffic accidents (though it did reduce by x2 in the last decade) by ever harsher surveliance and exams.

If you're curious whether road police is corrupted, as many believe, the industrial approach to fighting this actually works and gradually decreases corruption. In 2000-2008 you could literally pay for a licence and get it without any effort. In 2010 more rules were introduced, and the risk for the bureaucrats for doing this increased drammatically, so you had to go to driving school, but could bribe the exam inspector. Since then, inspectors would try extorting bribes by making you fail. The federal govt is fighting this as well: couple of years ago, the exams started to be videotaped. The video is kept for some months. Any case of incidents or if bribery is reported, a team of investigators starts analyzing videos, and they may take away the issued licenses as well as make criminal charges against the exam inspectors. (When I was driving, the instructor was talking on the phone discussing that our local road police was being under such inspection right in those days, and everyone there were scared.) Stakes for bribery increased dramatically.

I personally would prefer less industrial approach and more social capital, trust and honesty among people, but that's another story.

You have compulsory 50 hours of lectures (though it's up to each driving school whether to enforce it or not), 27 compulsory driving lessons 1.5 hours each. Theory test is standardized for the entire country, to be exact it's 800 same questions for the whole country issued every year. The exam is done on computers, over internet, so that local police can't help the examinees. The exam is also videotaped to catch those who cheat.

Our driving school made preliminary test of 40 questions, and I think the success rate was 80%.

At driving test, roughly half of people failed.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#345

Post by ben_w » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #340

ben_w wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't it time to start reading German books? Duolingo was never meant to be an all in one solution.

Already started, but the books at my German reading level (stuck in the annoying gap above tourist and below truly useful) are boring — my search results are either kids books or textbooks depending on if I search for stuff for native speakers or not.

If you can recommend any novels for mid-skill non-native speaking adults, I’d be interested.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#346

Post by maximus-decimus » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #239

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…

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…

The only thing that taught me is imposter syndrom and how to wake up in sweat after dreaming of still being at university.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#347

Post by lern_too_spel » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

JimTheMan wrote: post #14

I'd argue that 95% of all learning, is learnt by doing. Merely listening to something without properly interrogating your understanding of it.. you will end up with a bunch of shallow and untested knowledge. At best, a boffin. It's imperative to build, discuss, interrogate, trial and fail.

And that is the trouble with the headline. If watching at 3x speed gets you to actually trying something faster, that is clearly the way to go.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#348

Post by afterburner » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #309

blakesley wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not just that the grading was on a curve, it's that they learned nothing at all but still got a better grade than most of the class (implying that no one learned anything). Almost better to just have the whole class fail, then at least the department will notice that the professor is useless. That wouldn't really be fair to the students who care about their GPAs, though.

> Almost better to just have the whole class fail, then at least the department will notice that the professor is useless.

You know it's the professor themselves that adjusts the grades? Of course the professor wouldn't fail the class if, as you suggest, it would make the professor look "useless".

Re: Against 3x Speed

#349

Post by nelgaard » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 1:03 AM UTC

bildung wrote: post #165

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…

This is a core problem in education, BTW: people, regardless of age, are essentially unable to properly evaluate whether they actually learned something from e.g. a course they just completed, and what helped with these learning effects. Those after-course feedbacks mostly just reflect whether they liked the presenter and/or the group. This of course has problematic consequences if that after-course feedback is used…

Yes, it is often a matter of sympathy, atmosphere and ambitions more than actual learning.

Many years ago as a grad student I was a teaching assistant.

One year I was instructing two classes.

One was an ordinary class. It was all very pleasant, cozy and relaxed. Students would often bake cake for the class. But I had trouble teaching because most of them did not do any homework and did not read the textbooks much. They all liked me. One even said in class that he would try to get me again next semester, meaning that he knew he would fail the exam. Which most of them did.

The other class was a special class for students that had failed the previous exams and because the curriculum had changed this was their last chance. They were a lot more motivated. And they were quite critical about me as an instructor. At one point they even made a complaint about me be because I had tried to prove a theorem on the blackboard and failed because I made a silly mistake. They were absolutely right that I messed up that proof. But we did handle it in that same class and had a good discussion about that theorem and how to prove things. And their critical attitude kept me on my toes. I worked hard preparing the classes. And the classes were focused and tense. In the end, except for one that fell sick, everyone passed the exam with good marks.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#350

Post by dirtyid » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 3:40 AM UTC

Article is about experience but in terms of learning, I find listening to the same subject explained 3 times, preferably from 3 different talks, at 3x speed is vastly better at retaining info. Repetition helps. And there's something about listening to people talk faster inbue qualities of competence that makes me pay attention more. Somewhat related phenomenon, a lot of comedy podcasts, I can't listen to at 1x speed because people talking at 2x simply sounds wittier / snappier. Have been disappointed by more than a few live shows.