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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)

#161

Post by baq »

whatever1 wrote: post #99
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…

Which is why I hate the PowerPoint presentation-based lectures. Speaker typically goes too fast, and their brain does not actually break down the arguments into logical steps. They just read the slides. Chalk and board is the way.

Reading from slides is the absolute worst way of delivery anywhere, whether it’s a lecture or an internal presentation to your work team, doesn’t matter. The best power point slides have zero overlapping words with what the presenter is saying except perhaps some slide or section titles.

Chalk and board though is not necessarily the best. Power point supports magic hotkeys - B and W - and allows drawing on slides. When done properly with a stylus, it’s incrementally better in almost every way than chalk, though a proper lecture hall with multiple blackboards will still hold its own.

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

#162

Post by jeffreygoesto »

arjie wrote: post #159

Fascinating. I wondered if this would suggest note-taking in lectures (it doesn't). This is something I never did and then finally I bent to everyone saying it's the most important thing and I did awfully in Algebraic Geometry. I had to return to my old technique of just paying 100% attention with 0% note taking, and then creating short cheat sheets of techniques in LaTeX before the exam. This is the first time I've…

I did not, it distracted me from listening. One of the key things to do was to do and not only read as many exercises as possible, including the old ones of the same professor. Then going back to reading the material once you got stuck.

Most of the time I studied with a good friend who had to go to the army and did not want to lose those years. So I prepared everything during the semester and taught it to him when he took some days off before the exams. Tough times but worked well for both of us.

A very good focus operator for exams was to ask the TA questions in the last exercises. The topics they answered quickly had a high chance of being relevant, because they had prepared them for the exams.

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

#163

Post by skirmish »

kevmo314 wrote: post #50
orev wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do friends need to be made through all-nighters? Could you have made the same friends by organizing study groups during regular hours, and then doing something else fun with those people in the evenings?

They don't have to be, nor am I claiming that all nighters are unilaterally positive. But they were an integral part of my college experience and many of my friends' and I enjoyed them in a type 2 fun kind of way. Asserting that they're not worth it misses the broader picture.

Like in army training, shared suffering helps comradery.

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

#164

Post by crackalamoo »

hammock wrote: post #86
alyxya wrote: post #19

The most important advice is at the end. > Undergrads tend to have tunnel vision about their classes. They want to get good grades, etc. The crucial fact to realize is that noone will care about your grades, unless they are bad. For example, I always used to say that the smartest student will get 85% in all of his courses. This way, you end up with somewhere around 4.0 score, but you did not over-study, and you did n…

In university, how can you get a 4.0 with an 85% average? In high school they added 1.0 to honors courses but I don’t remember the same thing happening in undergrad.

Grade inflation is common at many schools. And many difficult technical classes grade on a curve, sometimes to the point where you can get an A with an 85%.

But yeah, I still don't see how an 85% average would be a 4.0.

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

#165

Post by liqilin1567 »

jackling wrote: post #22

Lots of good advice in this article. My favorite pieces that I agree with 100%: > Reading and understanding IS NOT the same as replicating the content. This happens to me all the time. It's really important to try and replicate everything that you learn. I would go even further and constantly reaffirm that you still know how to prove facts that you take for granted. > NEVER. EVER. EVER. Leave a test early. Every time…

> Study very intensely RIGHT before the test.

Yeah, I don't think this works because I think short-term memory is unreliable under pressure and our brain usually absorb things during sleep.

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

#166

Post by brosco »

gretch wrote: post #73
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…

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…

Good point! I used to be guilty of this myself, so now I'm pretty sensitive about other people doing it. I am now one of the more senior students in an academic research group, and some of the younger members would benefit from this advice. I think it's a symptom of sophomorism, and hopefully most will grow out of it.

I agree it's especially frustrating when they don't even get it right. That crosses the line for me, and I will admonish them to let me finish what I am saying.

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

#167

Post by dvrj101 »

ropable wrote: post #150

Looking back at my time at university, I have to admit that I mainly attended group study sessions in order to spend more time with the attractive singles in our course. This had the accidental benefit of forcing me to study and discuss the material more (which led to better understanding) so that I could help coach others. That in turn led to 1) a reasonable side-hustle in tutoring and 2) dating and marrying my wife…

> I mainly attended group

yup

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

#168

Post by agnishom »

ropable wrote: post #150

Looking back at my time at university, I have to admit that I mainly attended group study sessions in order to spend more time with the attractive singles in our course. This had the accidental benefit of forcing me to study and discuss the material more (which led to better understanding) so that I could help coach others. That in turn led to 1) a reasonable side-hustle in tutoring and 2) dating and marrying my wife…

> I mainly attended group study sessions in order to spend more time with the attractive singles

This is the plot of the brilliant tv show _Community_

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

#169

Post by KronisLV »

ropable wrote: post #150

Looking back at my time at university, I have to admit that I mainly attended group study sessions in order to spend more time with the attractive singles in our course. This had the accidental benefit of forcing me to study and discuss the material more (which led to better understanding) so that I could help coach others. That in turn led to 1) a reasonable side-hustle in tutoring and 2) dating and marrying my wife…

> This had the accidental benefit of forcing me to study and discuss the material more (which led to better understanding) so that I could help coach others.

The few times when someone tried to explain things to me live, lead to my brain just kinda blanking because of the time pressure and whatnot and it wasn't very useful for me.

Instead, if I wanted to learn something properly, I'd have to just dig into the material myself and iterate on it. Consulting others worked better over text, in a group chat or forum or whatever.

I could only discuss a topic when I already had good grasp of it and felt confident about it. At that point it was more for the benefit of others, outside of finding niche cases that I didn't run into myself.

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

#170

Post by johnnyanmac »

jama211 wrote: post #142
hufdr wrote: post #137

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.

This advice is aimed at students who are already getting good-great grades but want to optimise further. Advice for students that get poor grades is quite different. That being said my grades in university were middling to poor and once I got out I applied for jobs with my degree in hand and not a single one asked for my academic transcript. Perhaps more prestigious graduate positions might have, but I just didn’t ap…

>Now the idea that anyone would care about my university grades seems laughable.

Sadly, this current batch of graducates can't grab anything even with decent schools and grades. Some are putting a huge emphasis only on Tier 1 schools. Crazy how quickly everything changed.

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