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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)

#31

Post by SoftTalker »

ido wrote: post #23
sfn42 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They told us which chapters to read before each lecture, nobody else that I knew did it. I did. It was super helpful.

I suspect the reason is that most late-teens/early-twenty-somethings are not responsible/emotionally mature enough to put in the required amount of work in the relatively free environment of university where nobody is checking if you’re doing your homework or show up to class.

Related, for me, was that high school just wasn't very challenging. I got As without ever really studying or feeling that I was working very hard. I took that approach into university and it worked for my freshman and most of my sophomore courses. Then things got actually tough and I realized I could not just intuit my way through exams, and I had never really learned how to study.

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

#32

Post by storus »

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…

That won't work at elite schools like Stanford where a hard class average is like 98% and 94% will give you B+ due to the opposite curve being applied.

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

#33

Post by quacked »

ido wrote: post #23
sfn42 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They told us which chapters to read before each lecture, nobody else that I knew did it. I did. It was super helpful.

I suspect the reason is that most late-teens/early-twenty-somethings are not responsible/emotionally mature enough to put in the required amount of work in the relatively free environment of university where nobody is checking if you’re doing your homework or show up to class.

Every undergraduate student I met over the age of 22 was much, much better than their young counterparts within the same ability cohort.

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

#34

Post by kevmo314 »

> All-nighters are not worth it.

I disagree. I made some of my best friends through all nighters and continue to occasionally pull them because they reinvigorate meaning into my work as they did my coursework.

If your only metric for success in school is your GPA, then yes all nighters aren’t worth it. But climbing a metric leaderboard isn’t the only measure of doing well in a course.

It is curious because Andrej recognizes this with his comments concerning coffee.

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

#35

Post by buildbot »

airstrike wrote: post #26
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…

I don't think I'll ever understand/accept the idea of curving grades.

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?)

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

#36

Post by [deleted] »

kevmo314 wrote: post #34

> All-nighters are not worth it. I disagree. I made some of my best friends through all nighters and continue to occasionally pull them because they reinvigorate meaning into my work as they did my coursework. If your only metric for success in school is your GPA, then yes all nighters aren’t worth it. But climbing a metric leaderboard isn’t the only measure of doing well in a course. It is curious because Andrej rec…

[deleted]

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

#37

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

kevmo314 wrote: post #34

> All-nighters are not worth it. I disagree. I made some of my best friends through all nighters and continue to occasionally pull them because they reinvigorate meaning into my work as they did my coursework. If your only metric for success in school is your GPA, then yes all nighters aren’t worth it. But climbing a metric leaderboard isn’t the only measure of doing well in a course. It is curious because Andrej rec…

This is an article about doing well in courses, not in making friends

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

#38

Post by kevmo314 »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #37
kevmo314 wrote: post #34

> All-nighters are not worth it. I disagree. I made some of my best friends through all nighters and continue to occasionally pull them because they reinvigorate meaning into my work as they did my coursework. If your only metric for success in school is your GPA, then yes all nighters aren’t worth it. But climbing a metric leaderboard isn’t the only measure of doing well in a course. It is curious because Andrej rec…

This is an article about doing well in courses, not in making friends

The course I did best at in school was the one that led to a job opportunity through some friends I made.

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

#40

Post by xmprt »

random9749832 wrote: post #15
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…

Every learning method you can think of has been thought of before and all variations have been implemented in classrooms throughout time. It is mostly pseudo-science. You either put in the effort to learn and struggle until you succeed or you don't. There is no secret sauce.

There are are a 100 different ways to struggle to learn. Some of them are better than others. I don't see how that's pseudoscience.
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