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Lessons of an MIT Education

math.tamu.edu

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Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#31

Post by dougmwne »

hudibras wrote: post #14
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…

I don't think he was that harsh, and he actually praised the "knowing what" subjects. He simply meant that at MIT , the "knowing how" is more important.

He does say, 'By and large, "knowing how" matters more than "knowing what"' as the heading of that section. I have a lot of trouble with the claim that there are no skills to be mastered in subjects beyond the hard sciences and sports. I agree with him that the factoids themselves are trivia.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#32

Post by sharevipinfo »

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…

i think this very ok. https://sharevip.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Loi-Active-...

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#34

Post by czbond »

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…

People are machines - simply meat machines. The underlying mechanics and operating systems differ, but the processes and 'tasks to be done' are similar. =) IMHO

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#35

Post by HarryHirsch »

brudgers wrote: post #26
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…

An MIT professor can be naive. A history major learns how to read and analyze documents...and how to write. An art major learns how to create art. An even more significant difference between these and many contemporary STEM subjects is that an undergraduate is expected to know how to create original work...there's no copying art homework especially not in an advanced class. These days I think that the creative elemen…

These days I think that the creative element of programming is why software is eating the world at the pace it is. Undergrads can look at each other's code and say Wow! while one titration is fungible with every other

That's simply not true. The reason that software is eating the world is that the rate on investment return is so much higher. Every time I read a publication from Phil Baran's group I have to pause several times to think it through, it's very deep, very subtle. Website is here, btw: http://openflask.blogspot.com/

It's actually worrying that computing has overtaken science and engineering. Back then, Arnold Beckman made a fortune in scientific instruments and enabled the world to do better science. Nowadays, Google and Facebook sit on huge corpora of natural language texts, and the only thing they do is build better AI for better targeting of ads.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#36

Post by falcolas »

rayiner wrote: post #27
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…

The charactetization is incorrect. The liberal arts do teach “how.” Creative writing or political philosophy or history teaches you skills you can use to analayze scenarios and communicate with people in different ways to different effect. Where the author is correct is that in those fields the output isn’t falsifiable. Your math skills allow you to construct proofs that can be verified. Your study of history allows…

> But they are not falsifiable.

I disagree. Historians are constantly making predictions of events happening today, based on their knowledge of history. Some are accurate, some are not. They can then take this output, and use it to refine the views of history.

This doesn't even cover how history is written by very unreliable narrators, and historians have to do more than learn the "what" to uncover the "how".

Your argument is also somewhat limited to History, when Philosophy, Psycology, and other liberal arts degrees do not have the same limitations.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#37

Post by DennisP »

gooseus wrote: post #29
hudibras wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he was that harsh, and he actually praised the "knowing what" subjects. He simply meant that at MIT , the "knowing how" is more important.

I think mistaking History for a "knowing what" subject rather than a "knowing how" subject is a terrible misconception. Understanding how societies and civilizations reacted to different pressures and how the structure and nature of their institutions evolved and handled those pressures is much more important than remembering what happened where. Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repe…

I think what the article means by "how" is knowing how to personally do something; the "how" for history is knowing how to do historical research.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#38

Post by ll931110 »

phereford wrote: post #9
melling wrote: post #7

Has the course number changed? It’s not on the Open Courseware list. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/

It is 18.03. He may have just inadvertently flipped the 0 and 3. It is 18.03 now, and was in 2002 :D.

No, it's not 18.03 (which is differential equation). Check the syllabus.

http://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Guidi-Not...

Seems that after Gian-Carlo Rota died, the class is defunct. The closet one can get is 18.175, but it still presents material from purely theoretical standpoint (e.g. no application to physics to CS).

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#39

Post by rayiner »

falcolas wrote: post #36
rayiner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charactetization is incorrect. The liberal arts do teach “how.” Creative writing or political philosophy or history teaches you skills you can use to analayze scenarios and communicate with people in different ways to different effect. Where the author is correct is that in those fields the output isn’t falsifiable. Your math skills allow you to construct proofs that can be verified. Your study of history allows…

> But they are not falsifiable. I disagree. Historians are constantly making predictions of events happening today, based on their knowledge of history. Some are accurate, some are not. They can then take this output, and use it to refine the views of history. This doesn't even cover how history is written by very unreliable narrators, and historians have to do more than learn the "what" to uncover the "how". Your ar…

“Falsifiability” is a word with meaning. If you identify a single counter example to a mathematical conjecture, the conjecture is wrong. That is not true for history, philosophy, psychology, or the other liberal arts.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#40

Post by dougmwne »

throwanem wrote: post #11
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…

"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'll offer a specific example of historical context. The University of Virginia offers an undergraduate level Coursera course on modern history.[1]

That course's treatment of the causes and importance of the industrial revolution suggests that access to cheap energy is the key difference between an agrarian and high technology civilization. That idea and that particular history professor's connections to Washington (he was executive director of the 9/11 commission) helps to explain a forever war in the Middle East and climate change denial.

[1]https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world

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