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Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

cs.stanford.edu

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Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#111

Post by weitendorf »

neilv wrote: post #107

Some good advice, but two of the pieces surprised me: > Go to the prof before final exam at least once for office hours. - Even if you have no questions (make something up!) Profs will sometimes be willing to say more about a test in 1on1 basis (things they would not disclose in front of the entire class). Don't expect it, but when this does happen, it helps a lot. Does this give you an unfair advantage over other st…

I never did that in college because it seemed awfully manipulative to bother them unless I really needed it. It didn't even occur to me that that's what other people had been doing until I had almost graduated.

Being a student to me just really warps your perspective on the world because it confines you into such an arbitrary, stressful, gameable system that you either adapt to it and come out of it with a very flawed model of reality, reject it at your own peril, or suffer through it. I would rather get a B than transparently work my professor for an A- and it's concerning to think that the people who go on to become doctors and management consultants are disproportionately the ones who do that.

Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#112

Post by shripadt »

brosco wrote: post #10

I have a tip for following lectures (or any technical talk, really) that I've been meaning to write about for a while. As you follow along with the speaker, try to predict what they will say next. These can be either local or global predictions. Guess what they will write next, or what will be on the next slide. With some practice (and exposure to the subject area) you can usually get it right. Also try to keep track…

This is a fantastic tip, thank you for sharing! It reminded me of an article similar to this one:

Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact (The minds of social species are strikingly resonant): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synch...

"... when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns ..."

"The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain."

"Synchrony may be a sign of shared cognitive processing ..." "The mouse study suggested another level of meaning for synchrony: it predicts the outcomes of future interactions."

Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#114

Post by nsagent »

brosco wrote: post #10

I have a tip for following lectures (or any technical talk, really) that I've been meaning to write about for a while. As you follow along with the speaker, try to predict what they will say next. These can be either local or global predictions. Guess what they will write next, or what will be on the next slide. With some practice (and exposure to the subject area) you can usually get it right. Also try to keep track…

This is exactly how I read research papers and how I advocate others read them as well. As you read try to figure out how you would solve the problem outlined and what experiments you would need to perform.

Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#115

Post by fn-mote »

billy99k wrote: post #45
brosco wrote: post #10

I have a tip for following lectures (or any technical talk, really) that I've been meaning to write about for a while. As you follow along with the speaker, try to predict what they will say next. These can be either local or global predictions. Guess what they will write next, or what will be on the next slide. With some practice (and exposure to the subject area) you can usually get it right. Also try to keep track…

My technique was to write tons of notes during the lecture. In college, I would have many pages of notes for each lecture and because writing is more of an active process than just sitting or spacing out for an hour, I rarely had to study for an exam.

There’s a whole science of learning, and this barely scratches the surface.

Spaces repetition for memory work.

Problem solving skills just be strengthened somehow.

Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#116

Post by dsamy »

While Andrej's advice may offer useful tips, it's important to consider that success strategies can vary significantly among individuals. What works for one person might not work for another due to different learning styles, backgrounds, and circumstances. Additionally, the educational landscape has evolved since 2013, so some advice may be outdated. Always critically evaluate any guidance and adapt it to your personal situation.

Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#117

Post by airstrike »

buildbot wrote: post #35
airstrike wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'll ever understand/accept the idea of curving grades.

It makes sense when applied across multiple instances of a test, if one cohort does terribly curve up, one really well curve them down relative to the overall distribution of scores. But yeah within a single assignment it makes no sense to force a specific distribution. (People do this maybe because they don’t understand?)

Even in that case it doesn't make sense. Why should the underperforming cohort be rewarded for doing poorly?

Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#118

Post by chongli »

fn-mote wrote: post #105
vector_spaces wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The viewpoint of a lecture as an inefficient note delivery system is a pretty common and reductive view. Your "Let's Play" analogy was pretty apt though. I think their (potential) value seems pretty clear when you look at language courses -- you can't possibly hope to develop fluency in a language by studying it in isolation from books -- forming your own sentences and hearing how other human beings do the same in re…

I consider the value in math lectures to come from the speaker’s explanation of why to expect certain things. Is this an obvious fact in another context, rewritten for this application? Is this a surprise? What reasons besides the rigorous argument are there for believing the theory?

A lot of the theorems I learned in school weren’t particularly amenable to intuitive explanations like that.

For example, take Galois theory. The fact that a polynomial’s solvability by radicals depends on the solvability of its Galois group is surprising and not intuitive at all. The fundamental theorem of Galois theory is a very technical result utilizing purpose-built mathematical structures that were developed specifically to study the solutions of polynomial equations.

Re: Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

#120

Post by foofoo12 »

> It has happened to me several times that I was stuck on some problem for an hour in the night, but was able to solve it in 5 minutes in the morning.

If you really try to solve a problem and then put it away for a day or two, you'll often find that your brain has done some good background processing on the problem.

I've experienced it multiple times and one of our professors recommended it as a "trick of the trade". But you have to do an serious attempt to solve the problem before you can send it to the background thread.

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