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In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

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Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#121

Post by mattejade »

WalterBright wrote: post #91
haswell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out I'm sorry, but even if this is true under some circumstances, this seems like terrible general advice, and only matters if your only goal is to reach the top echelons of your field. That doesn't mean there is no room for "a…

My career advice is usually: 1. draw a circle around the things you enjoy doing 2. draw a circle around the things that pay well 3. draw a circle around the things you're good at The intersection is your best career path. I tried to be a musician. Epic failure. I tried sports. Catastrophic failure. I tried sales. Monumental failure. Persisting in those endeavors as a career is akin to beating my head on a rock. Peopl…

I’d argue that this sort of career choice intersection is actually not helpful for most.

Here’s why. For most people, there are plenty of things in this world that they’ve never tried that they’d enjoy the hell out of — especially if they get past an initial learning curve. There are plenty of things that they’ve never committed to long enough to know they have a serious aptitude for it (for example, it took me 5+ years of learning music to realise I’m a brilliant improviser, just because most early music training doesn’t even touch on it).

In my opinion, if someone isn’t sure what career to choose, the solution actually is: go out and try more stuff. A lot more stuff. Do something long enough that you get past the initial learning curve.

Once you’ve collected enough real world experience and data, then you can make an intersection of “what you’re good at”, “what you enjoy” and “what pays” — but you probably won’t even need to, since this is a trivial exercise compared to actually gaining that data in the first place.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#122

Post by intended »

haswell wrote: post #84
xyzzyz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there are smart people who get all this stuff "easily" (previous practice, exposure). Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair, and some people do have it easier than others, without having to pay for it with extra study time. If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things mo…

> and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out I'm sorry, but even if this is true under some circumstances, this seems like terrible general advice, and only matters if your only goal is to reach the top echelons of your field. That doesn't mean there is no room for "a…

I feel Arguing on the basis of the scenario provided is participation in a rigged fight.

Intelligence isn’t Unimodal, the smartest people aren’t necessarily the most productive, persistence is its own quality, and in a small percent of scenarios - insight would be the opposite of current practice.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#123

Post by eyelidlessness »

xyzzyz wrote: post #112
eyelidlessness wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair … > If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out. That seems drastic even without accounting for untold ways people enter any stage of life with disadvantages. I me…

In your professional life, you are encountering people who are already heavily preselected, most recently by the hiring process, earlier by hiring and promotion processes of their previous companies, yet earlier by graduation requirements of their school, earlier by admission requirements, etc. People who should drop out, have already dropped out long before they met you, so you don't meet those very often, and thus…

I’m certain you’ve misguessed important aspects of my professional life. I’m also certain there are many people I’d love to work with and see have a chance to succeed. Some get this advice before I have a chance to intervene, which is bad. Many just get discouraged before anyone could sway them so blatantly at all, or don’t even have the opportunity to try.

Your point was intelligence, right? How intelligent is it to just categorically exclude people based on their disadvantages? How intelligent is it to presume every systemic thing that came before you was right? How intelligent is it to encourage everyone to think the same way you do on the subject and discourage anyone from being more willing to take chances with people they feel more comfortable mentoring or training than you do?

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#124

Post by eyelidlessness »

chitowneats wrote: post #85
eyelidlessness wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah dawg! That sounds like basic decency that doesn’t cost much to anyone who’d be harmed. Also it’s a general principle of meritocracy. You can’t merit anything without access to merit it!

LMFAO do you have any idea how much it costs to operate an ice-skating rink? How about in a place like Los Angeles, California? Apparently not. Or you're trolling me. In that case, well done friend.

Your objection was to equal opportunity to lessons. We’re not talking about operating ice skating rinks for the public. We’re talking about allowing all people to be taught by teachers.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#125

Post by [deleted] »

xyzzyz wrote: post #63
deskamess wrote: post #42

Pretty much most senior level/grad algorithm classes are like this. They introduce a framework for solution and then give you about 2-3 example lecture problems that they walk you through. 2-3 weeks after being introduced to 5/6 frameworks its Exam day. You are given unique word problems that, in the eyes of someone experienced like a prof or PhD student, is trivial. But you are struggling with 1 week of homework exp…

> But there are smart people who get all this stuff "easily" (previous practice, exposure). Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair, and some people do have it easier than others, without having to pay for it with extra study time. If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things mo…

[deleted]

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#126

Post by jjice »

com2kid wrote: post #5

My favorite history professor in college gave open book essay exams. He asked your opinion on topics, "what were the motivations of the leaders of the US revolution?" Even better were the questions that ended in "why or why not?" There were no right or wrong answers, if you could justify your answer in a reasonable manner, you got full points. Some students hated his tests, some students loved his tests. The students…

> If I'm not scared and uncertain of how I am going to do something, of if something is even possible, than I probably am not tackling a hard enough problem.

I like that sentence a lot. I'm working on something new at my job that's hard and uncertain, and it's the most fun and motivated I've been in my (fairly short) career as a software engineer. I might keep that idea around as a heuristic.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#127

Post by xyzzyz »

yowlingcat wrote: post #120
xyzzyz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there are smart people who get all this stuff "easily" (previous practice, exposure). Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair, and some people do have it easier than others, without having to pay for it with extra study time. If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things mo…

Experimental technique development and pushing the cutting edge of current state of the art techniques is a phenomena you can see everywhere in human society. It is there in every field of creative endeavor humans engage in, which I would say research is one of. Not only would I say that research isn't special, but I would also say that, just like every other field of creative endeavor that doesn't intrinsically brin…

> Not only would I say that research isn't special, but I would also say that, just like every other field of creative endeavor that doesn't intrinsically bring a lot of money, those who write the checks (and those who focus on currying their favor) call the shots and sit at the center of influence networks and control the flow and direction of creative production.

I definitely agree, but at the same time, those who call the shots did not get there by accident either.

> I take issue with what I see to be a lot of odd presumptions in your comment:

> (1) the concept of general human intelligence (...)

Sure, this concept is not perfect. However, do we have any better alternative than using it, along with past performance, for the purpose of predicting future performance? The answer is, to anyone who pays attention, clearly "no". It is easy to criticize and to repeat platitudes about late bloomers and the like, what is harder is to make an actual hiring decision, when the goal is to maximize quality of the output of the research group. At some point, if you can't cut it, your research career will be over, and if that's to happen, it's really best for you if that happens sooner rather than later.

> (2) the bounded class-like environment usably maps performance to a capability to successfully conduct research in an unbounded academic research environment, and

Where did I said anything about "class-like environment"? If you read my comment carefully, you'll observe that I discussed "obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas", not getting higher scores on exams.

It is worth mentioning, though, that people who get higher scores on exams also tend to enjoy better success in an unbounded academic research environment.

> (3) some suitably generic conception of "intelligence based capability" exists which can accurately rank various fields of theoretical or applied research skills

> (4) that if you rank these fields of research by the intelligence level of its average practitioners, academic research requires world class intelligence, higher than what is demanded by startups and the corporate world, with starting a family dead last

You're constructing a complex strawman to respond to a very simple advice of "if you're not cutting it in academia, better quit early rather than later, and don't expect that you can make it through hard effort alone". My advice in no way implies these "odd presumptions".

> In every one of the fields you actually talked about (athletics, research, startups, corporate world), it's not enough to just have raw biological ingredients for high performance. It is a combination of: (...)

Indeed, and if the field is professional football, and you tell someone that "if you're not cutting it professional football, better quit early rather than later, and don't expect that you can make it through hard effort alone", this is in no way controversial, in fact it is rather common sense. When the activity is intellectual, rather than physical, however, people tend to react more emotionally, or allow their ideology to overshadow some hard facts about human existence.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#128

Post by opportune »

deskamess wrote: post #42

Pretty much most senior level/grad algorithm classes are like this. They introduce a framework for solution and then give you about 2-3 example lecture problems that they walk you through. 2-3 weeks after being introduced to 5/6 frameworks its Exam day. You are given unique word problems that, in the eyes of someone experienced like a prof or PhD student, is trivial. But you are struggling with 1 week of homework exp…

I did well in Algorithms courses (I took 4-5 and TA’d the intro class). I also studied math on top of CS. Imo a lot of the problem that CS students face in algorithms is due to not having a mathematical background.

Even though you are introduced to concepts like invariants, induction, and propositional logic in a discrete math class, IMO it takes more exposure and practice to get to the point where these concepts get useful in algorithms. In mathematics, and algorithms, a proof is not typically just applying invariants and propositional logic - it also requires more open ended thinking and (usually) applying patterns seen in class/coursework to solve problems. And even if not asked to formally prove correctness or complexity, knowledge of these concepts makes reasoning about algorithms a lot easier.

Most CS students at the point of taking intro algorithms know how to do some basic coding, know data structures, and if not also pursuing mathematics, have knowledge of calculus (useless) and discrete math. Unless the discrete math course was very rigorous and had a lot of coursework, taking Algorithms at that point is like walking into the deep end with floaties on - you might survive, but you’re not really ready.

In Algorithms, like in competitive programming and software interviews, you also need to have a list of all the different data structures, algorithms, and strategies you know well enough that you can ask yourself if X data structure or Y pattern is appropriate for the task. IME this is often not suggested for people studying Algorithms but it should be. Even if you don’t fully get a problem, you can probably get most of the way by identifying the general approach you should use.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#129

Post by ericd »

cameldrv wrote: post #13
trynewideas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham: > The reason his students find his problem sets "emotionally trying" is that they're getting a taste of what real work is like. Which Shengwu Li seems to disagree with, since the author retweeted this thread: https://twitter.com/bradchattergoon/status/16151056145600839... > Good on SL for setting expectations but I also want to comment a bit. If research is all about being comfortable with uncertainty, w…

Grade inflation exacerbates this problem. The straight A student of today might have been the straight B student of 40 years ago. Meanwhile, the student of 40 years ago that was exceptional in some subjects but mediocre in others can today only get an A for exceptional work, but may get a B for what used to be C level work. Truly exceptional work does not pay in grades anymore, only reliability. Now, reliability is a…

Don't professor reccs and research opportunities for the standout students in a subject make up the difference?

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#130

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

tnel77 wrote: post #80
themitigating wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But there are smart people who get all this stuff "easily" (previous practice, exposure)." I believe you meant to say "(studying)"

Sometimes. There were certain topics that I didn’t have to do any studying for and others that took a lot of effort.

Yeah, I had a similar experience. I was bad at some areas no matter how hard I worked, and good at others. To me this seems like solid evidence something like “aptitude” exists. Although, it doesn’t answer questions of nature vs. nurture, whether those different skills result from different experiences earlier in life.
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