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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)

#131

Post by Yaina »

epolanski wrote: post #56
joshvm wrote: post #17

One really important factor is the grading curve, if used. At my university, I think the goal was to give the average student 60%, or a mid 2.1) with some formula for test score adjustment to compensate for particularly tough papers. The idea is that your score ends up representing your ability with respect to the cohort and the specific tests that you were given. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/current/teach/g…

This posts sums up everything that's wrong with grading and modern colleges.

It's one solution to a problem. Which is that the results of tests are not strictly measuring how well the students understood the subject matter, but are heavily influenced by the quality of the rest and course as a whole.

That is generally hard to measure and frankly there is little accountability for bad courses. At the worst end you have bad profs who are proud of high failure rates because they don't understand it as a failure to teach but as a seal of quality how rigorous their standards are complex the subject matter is that they are teaching.

Not that grading on a curve solves any of that, but it eases the burden on students.

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

#133

Post by joshvm »

airstrike wrote: post #117
buildbot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The idea is to identify if there is a particularly easy/hard exam and the average score of the cohort is significantly different to how they perform in other classes. "Doing poorly" is quite hard to define when none of the tests, perhaps outside of the core 1st and 2nd year modules, are standard.

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

#134

Post by wuiheerfoj »

loupol wrote: post #87
gretch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this comment but follow up to this tip: Only use this as a learning technique. Do not accidentally let this bleed over into personal 1:1 conversations. I know some people in my life who are "smart" and they will cut people off in the middle of conversation to the effect of "oh yeah I already know what you are going to say, let me go ahead and cut you off so I can respond faster". On top of being completely…

I take it you are not a member of the Church of Interruption[0] then. https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

Thanks for this.

I find having a name to certain phenomena makes them easier to understand and apply in the wild, and will definitely think ‘barker’ in the future haha

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

#135

Post by vlovich123 »

airstrike wrote: post #117
buildbot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Did the cohort due poorly or were the tests given to that cohort harder than in previous years? Or was the teacher a more difficult grader than others? You're jumping to the conclusion that the cohort was underperforming just because the grades were lower when other things out of their control could have been involved.

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

#136

Post by bluGill »

normie3000 wrote: post #68
leobg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. And it makes sense, if you define intelligence as the ability to successfully predict the future. And how interesting that that is literally how LLMs are trained during pretraining. Like Ilya said: To predict the name revealed as the murderer at the end of a detective novel, you must have followed the plot, have world knowledge about physics, psychology, etc.. And that’s what you’re pointing at here. Testi…

> To predict the name revealed as the murderer at the end of a detective novel, you must have... Wait, can people do this??

People who read detective novels do. Every other book the clues are not the point and so they are skipped - or more likely there is no investigation, you are just told and the plot moves on.

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

#137

Post by hufdr »

Although this advice is quite comprehensive, I think it assumes that you've already kept up with the pace of the course. In some schools, the curriculum moves so fast that students are thrown into problem sets before they’ve even grasped the basics. I’d love to see how he would advise someone who's already fallen behind and trying to catch up. For many people, that’s the more realistic situation.

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

#138

Post by bluGill »

dsamy wrote: post #116

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 person…

That has been said more than once - but research fails to back it up in general. You are not that different from others.

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

#139

Post by musicale »

loupol wrote: post #87
gretch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this comment but follow up to this tip: Only use this as a learning technique. Do not accidentally let this bleed over into personal 1:1 conversations. I know some people in my life who are "smart" and they will cut people off in the middle of conversation to the effect of "oh yeah I already know what you are going to say, let me go ahead and cut you off so I can respond faster". On top of being completely…

I take it you are not a member of the Church of Interruption[0] then. https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

Incompatible communication styles (turn-taking vs. constructive overlapping) can be frustrating. Turn-takers may consider overlappers to be rude and aggressive and try to stop the overlap, which overlappers may in turn consider rude and aggressive; yet full-duplex is more efficient than half-duplex and even basic ACKs are important for reliable communication.

Unfortunately Zoom is 1/N-duplex, which ruins it for everyone.

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

#140

Post by mcmoor »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #97
normie3000 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To predict the name revealed as the murderer at the end of a detective novel, you must have... Wait, can people do this??

Oh yea. A good detective novel gives the reader all the necessary information to know the answer. Many lousier novels just keep some essential information hidden until the monologue, because they haven’t got a tricky enough mystery, and really shitty ones just accidentally reveal it, often by over-using tropes or having silly patterns like “it’s always the dark and brooding guy”. Ever read any Dan Brown? In Angels an…

And this is why someone made a ruleset for detective novels, so they can actually become brain-teaser https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/ronald-k...
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