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Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

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Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#31

Post by NPDW »

ruang wrote: post #30
NPDW wrote: post #25

There are some great notes on Mathematics taken from a former student at Cambridge (now doing a PhD at Harvard). They are ridiculously good quality and lecturers had to ask Dexter to take down notes a term at a time to ensure students weren't skipping lectures. The notes cover a lot more than what a standard student would do over 3 years undergrad + 1 year graduate (masters). http://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes

These are great. I wonder why he didn't just handwrite the notes. These are much better, but they seem like they would take a long time unless you can type latex quickly.

He, infamously, wrote these notes realtime in lectures.

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#32

Post by makach »

This is not how I make notes. This is way beyond my note-taking skills and I cannot say anything else than I am deeply impressed!

High quality notes is of highest value to yourself, or others, as has been proven many times before. My favourite example is the notes taken by Marcel Grossmann, used by Albert Einstein.

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#33

Post by montalbano »

NPDW wrote: post #31
ruang wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are great. I wonder why he didn't just handwrite the notes. These are much better, but they seem like they would take a long time unless you can type latex quickly.

He, infamously, wrote these notes realtime in lectures.

To add, here is an interesting resource on how one might go about doing that using Vim and LaTeX:

https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#35

Post by lukeramsden »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
scscsc wrote: post #19

It may not seem obvious to everyone, but the value is taking the notes (helps learning significantly), not reading them without context after the fact. People who are interested in learning a subject without attending lectures would be better served by a textbook in the field.

I kept my notes from college. They're pretty much useless today because there's no context. If I had had the foresight to bring along a cassette recorder, that would have been the context. But I didn't, and neither did anyone else. Of course, there's no way I could have afforded the large number of cassette tapes, either, so the point is moot. It's too bad all those lectures are lost to history.

Maybe a "Paircast[0] for lecture notes"-type application could help with this. Records audio, maybe even transcribing it (if high enough quality), while also tracking how the notes relate to the audio across the time of the lecture.

As for lectures in the past, it is a shame we may have lost them, as it seems to me (purely speculatively) that the lectures from the 70s and 80s seemed to make a whole different class of programmers to the ones of today. Or maybe it was the tinkering and not the lectures, who knows.

[0] https://paircast.io/

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#36

Post by merelydev »

Zealotux wrote: post #20

Does anyone have adequate resources to share on learning Math "from scratch"? I must shamefully admit that anything beyond the basic symbols is entirely foreign to me.

[Warning Advice from a Beginner]

I started self learning Maths (number theory) this year from scratch I am extremely slow but I am progressing. My advice is take a textbook of the kind of maths you want to learn and skip the theory jump straight to the exercises do them and compare the answers, if your answers are wrong then read the theory. Also when doing exercises you can reference the theory but don't read the theory alone.

One thing that will block you is notation, if you are a coder Math As Code [0] is great way to decode the advanced Mathematical symbols, It helped me start reading math:

[0]- https://github.com/Jam3/math-as-code

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#37

Post by gadders »

nosianu wrote: post #18
gadders wrote: post #17

Anyone seen something like this for medicine? I'd look to show my daughter that wants to be a medic...

There is tons and tons of great content on sites like Youtube (search for what you want: anatomy, neurology, physiology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, statistics,...) or courses on edx or Coursera (mostly free without the useless "certificates"). Never mind even more sites Google will show you. Some of it dumbed down, but lots of it is from professionals and lecturers for actual medical students. I won't…

Fair point about not googling but personal recommendations still have a place.

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#38

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
scscsc wrote: post #19

It may not seem obvious to everyone, but the value is taking the notes (helps learning significantly), not reading them without context after the fact. People who are interested in learning a subject without attending lectures would be better served by a textbook in the field.

I kept my notes from college. They're pretty much useless today because there's no context. If I had had the foresight to bring along a cassette recorder, that would have been the context. But I didn't, and neither did anyone else. Of course, there's no way I could have afforded the large number of cassette tapes, either, so the point is moot. It's too bad all those lectures are lost to history.

[deleted]

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#39

Post by zerr »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
scscsc wrote: post #19

It may not seem obvious to everyone, but the value is taking the notes (helps learning significantly), not reading them without context after the fact. People who are interested in learning a subject without attending lectures would be better served by a textbook in the field.

I kept my notes from college. They're pretty much useless today because there's no context. If I had had the foresight to bring along a cassette recorder, that would have been the context. But I didn't, and neither did anyone else. Of course, there's no way I could have afforded the large number of cassette tapes, either, so the point is moot. It's too bad all those lectures are lost to history.

I'd say it depends on the lecturer and how the lecture is held. Some read it specifically for the notes to be taken. And it is assumed that students would learn from these notes afterwards, which are much more concise compared to textbooks.

Re: Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

#40

Post by SteveGerencser »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
scscsc wrote: post #19

It may not seem obvious to everyone, but the value is taking the notes (helps learning significantly), not reading them without context after the fact. People who are interested in learning a subject without attending lectures would be better served by a textbook in the field.

I kept my notes from college. They're pretty much useless today because there's no context. If I had had the foresight to bring along a cassette recorder, that would have been the context. But I didn't, and neither did anyone else. Of course, there's no way I could have afforded the large number of cassette tapes, either, so the point is moot. It's too bad all those lectures are lost to history.

It's interesting to me that no one had a cassette recorder in class. When I was working on my degree in the mid 90s nearly everyone had a recorder on their desk while they were taking notes. I didn't record every class or even every lecture, I focused mostly on the topics/lectures where I had difficulties. If I 'got it' I usually recorded over that tape.

I may even have a box of them somewhere around here in the barn.

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