Lessons of an MIT Education • Hacker News Board

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#221

Post by fjsolwmv » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:41 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #157

dougmwne wrote: post #6

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. I…

He’s an engineer or scientist. The world needs engineers and scientists, and it makes them feel good to assert their superiority. At the end of the day, these guys always work for somebody, who is usually some sort liberal arts or business major. It’s something to keep in perspective when somebody asserts that math and science run the world.

Check the background of the CEOs of the largest businesses in the world. You'll surprise yourself.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#222

Post by fjsolwmv » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:47 AM UTC

josinalvo wrote: post #87

throwanem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Begin"? The prior century is replete with horrific examples of societies, spanning - perhaps defining - the modern ideological spectrum, which behaved in precisely such fashion. I agree that the study of history is the best method yet found for recognizing the errors which produced those enormities, in order to avoid repeating them. But I'm not sure how effective undergrad history courses, or even history specializa…

> I agree that the study of history is [a] method [...] for recognizing the errors which produced those enormities, in order to avoid repeating them. Why? Do we have any evidence for that it helps at all? Here's what I find weird: when one is talking about learning history, usually the "pro" side cites the importance of the subject, and the "no" side, the methodological "flaws". It seems that this discussion is a bit…

Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#223

Post by kmill » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:54 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #177

kmill wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that you need to remember a lot of things to do math effectively, but a big difference between knowing dates and knowing theorems is that you can re-derive the theorems by yourself given enough time. A not-insignificant reason I got into mathematics was that I have difficulty remembering specifics, so I could lean on reinvention. I frequently forget the trig identities, but I know the basic definitions of…

You can also re-discover the dates by doing your own historical research, if you want to. And of course, historians don't really spend much time literally learning lists of dates. More realistically, there are lots of causal and logical connections between historical events that enable a historian who knows the details of a particular period to infer certain facts that they've forgotten from facts they remember.

Don't worry, I'm not completely ignorant about the work historians do.

> You can also re-discover the dates by doing your own historical research

My point was that you can put a mathematician in a closed room with only pencil and paper, and they could redevelop an entire theory if needed. A historian in the same position would be unable to do any work -- they need primary sources. I went with your "learning lists of dates" as a stand-in, since, like primary sources, you can't derive dates from scratch.

Sure, history has a "how" of research methods, but the research products must rest on the "what." Mathematics is almost entirely "how." The "what" for a mathematician is mainly knowing what's been done and what needs doing, for the purposes of directing research and giving attribution.

Also, I am pretty sure G.C. Rota was being somewhat facetious in quite a lot of the article. These are "lessons of an MIT education." Lessons aren't necessarily truth.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#224

Post by jcranmer » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:58 AM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #151

csa wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm... Im not sure I should respond given your straw man response, but just so others can keep the record straight... 1. PISA is a widely administered test for 15 year olds. 2. TIMSS is a widely administered test for 4th and 8th graders (Advanced TIMMS does "last year of secondary"). 3. We are talking about university -- specifically elite universities. 4. I am extremely familiar with education in East Asia (most fa…

1-2. I know the tests are administered to school children. But academic success in school translates to academic success later in life. 3. What makes you think that MIT would be more elite than elite universities in other countries? Talent follows a normal distribution and if PISA and TIMMS show that the American mean is below the average, the American elite must also be below the average. So, if the most gifted Amer…

You make a big deal about how secondary school rankings show that Americans are idiots and use that to guess that university rankings should similarly show that American universities are poor quality.

Which is obviously why only 12 of the top 25 schools, and 4 of the top 4, are American. I'd cite the logic failures in your argument as well, but I think letting actual statistics speak for themselves works better. And FWIW, I'm citing the university rankings that's published by a non-US publisher lest you think it's merely patriotic bias.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#225

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:27 AM UTC

neltnerb wrote: post #57

bjourne wrote: post #41

> Lesson Six: You must measure up to a very high level of performance. I can imagine a propective student or parent asking, "Why should I (or my child) take calculus at MIT rather than at Oshkosh College? Isn't the material practically identical, no matter where it is taught, while the cost varies a great deal?" Is there any truth to this? Because it seem like classical university jingoism to me. "My institution is b…

As an MIT alum, I don't see a ton of value in competing over whose classes were the hardest. I've met super impressive people from everywhere from community colleges to Rhodes scholars and do not subscribe to the idea that MIT alums are uniquely good. But having taken some physics and math courses at multiple universities MITs went much deeper in a shorter period of time. This isn't necessarily reflected in the sylla…

[deleted]

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#226

Post by TheGrassyKnoll » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:31 AM UTC

asciimo wrote: post #67

> Those who do not become computer scientists to the second degree risk turning into programmers who will only implement the ideas of others. The horror! Maybe this was truly a terrible fate in 1997.

There's probably a few poor souls at Google pulling $150k+ that are doomed to this...

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#227

Post by jcranmer » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:38 AM UTC

pkrumins wrote: post #196

ooronning wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's that, might I ask? I've seen statistics that I haven't verified that indicate that while somewhere between 25 and 40% of CS undergrads aren't able to find work as programmers, around 40% of professional programmers don't have a CS degree. And I'm really not sure what to make of this.

Because they wasted years of time learning useless garbage that universities teach that is of no use.

I can't speak for all, or even most, universities, but my anecdotal experience is that university education was invaluable. Even in classes that I went in thinking I knew everything and that the class was going to be a waste, I learned stuff. And in speaking with others who haven't had a full CS degree, it's sometimes surprising how much stuff they don't know.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#228

Post by abecedarius » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 3:00 AM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #198

abecedarius wrote: post #141

An insightful list, but one part bugs me: the approval of working so hard you can't stay awake. This is bad for learning, and apparently there are even experiments showing that it's bad -- which casts an ironic light on the part of this list about demonstrably knowing things vs. bullshitting. Maybe there's a deeper reason it's good, but I'm skeptical.

Indeed. I thought Lesson 8 was simply a statement of institutional-scale masochism. >MIT students often complain of being overworked, and they are right. When I look at the schedules of courses my advisees propose at the beginning of each term, I wonder how they can contemplate that much work. My workload was nothing like that when I was an undergraduate. Ok. How is that at all healthy, not just medically but academi…

Maybe it works better at sorting people by ability (in some more visible sense of ability) than at helping them develop. I think that goal explains more about precollege education (as one of many goals for it, all fighting it out) -- at the college level the biggest sorting happens in admissions. I'm just guessing about all this, though.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#229

Post by benbreen » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 3:19 AM UTC

allenz wrote: post #115

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And "the world of people" needs to be driven by a coherent set of principles. So far the western world subscribed to rational thought and the socratic method. The question is, to what extent the current shape of humanities is aligned to those principles?!

To the extent that the humanities are not "rational", whatever that means, they are a valuable and useful complement, and the world need not be driven by rationalism alone. The humanities teach how to look from multiple perspectives, our values, what we believe and why, our self and our relation to society. It teaches critical thinking and analysis of complex, nonquantifiable factors, such as: should we declare war o…

As a history professor, it's good to see such a civil and thoughtful discussion of the value of the humanities on HN. Thanks :)

For what it's worth, I enjoyed Prof. Rota's piece and didn't particularly object to his "what"/"how" distinction. I agree with commenters above that it's a misrepresentation of historical research, which can be deeply empirical. Unfortunately a huge amount of history education, especially k-12, does boil down to a rote memorization of past events, so I can't really fault him for the generalization.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#230

Post by kelukelugames » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 3:34 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #201

pjscott wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious to see if he'd actually said that or if you were misrepresenting a more reasonable claim. I'm not familiar with Jordan Peterson but managed to find this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q ... in which he says that high-powered careers are very unpleasant due to hyper-competition among people who are exceptionally willing to tilt their work-life balance way toward work, and that most (but…

Thanks for the link! This thing is hilarious! About 7:00: " And you think when you're 19, 'cause you're so clueless when you're 19, you don't know a bloody thing, you think, "well, I'm not really sure I want children anyway". Like, oh, yeah, you can tell how well you have been educated. Jesus. Dismal. Dismal. Without fail. " I've watched women go through their professional careers, many, many of them. It's a very rar…

Right? He's like a caricature from the Mad Men era. No wonder so many of the MRA or whatever they are called love him.