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Lessons of an MIT Education

math.tamu.edu

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Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#41

Post by bjourne »

> 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 better than yours." Anecdotes like "All MIT graduates I've met were dumb" or "All MIT graduates I've met were smart" does not count.

Because I looked at the DE course he taught (18.03) and I completed harder math courses than that in my non-MIT education. I'm sure many other HN readers have too. I wonder if there is some test you can take to see if you are just as good as an MIT graduate?

The EU has done great work in this area by trying to standardize the university curriculum across the union. What that means is that a master's degree in computer science from the university of München is mostly comparable to one from Madrid, so name-dropping your university "does not work." It also means that it is trivial for a Spanish student to study one year in Germany and then come home to Spain (see Erasmus). The US system, where some colleges are rated higher than others for irrational reasons, is strictly worse.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#42

Post by throwanem »

foldr wrote: post #24
throwanem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with a lot more math and physics grads than, say, poli sci or sports medicine grads. Not to disparage fields that aren't math or physics, and I don't have a degree in the fight in any case; just that I have noticed something of a preponderance over the years among those who do have degrees not actually in the field.

Right, but there are other fields of work where poli sci grads would be more common than math and physics grads.

Government, I suppose, but then that's basically what they're trained for, so...

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#43

Post by jancsika »

> It is demoralizing to give a young person role models of Beethoven, Einstein, and Feynman, presented as saintly figures who moved from insight to insight without a misstep.

There isn't a single Beethoven scholar I can think of who seriously entertains the idea of Beethoven being a "self-generating" genius who never made mistakes.

Also, the Beethoven pieces that today's composers most admire-- the late string quartets-- were almost universally shunned by actual Romantic period commentators.

Perhaps the Romantic Age stereotype is demoralizing to students because professors with a narrow domain expertise don't actively seek out music history experts to revise their outdated views about the Romantic Age.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#44

Post by mathattack »

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…

Within the US there is tremendous variance in academic quality both between schools and within schools.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#45

Post by andrepd »

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 it is falsifiable. A new document or artifact may contradict an account and thus falsify it.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#46

Post by mabub24 »

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…

I think you're mischaracterizing humanities as not falsifiable as if it should be like mathematics.

The content is not wrong in the same way a math question is, but many humanities classes are explicitly about taking arguments presented in essays, books, journals, by the government, by public interest groups, by private industry, and testing them against "objective reality and truth that exists around them." No humanities course just takes every argument at face value. Every argument is subject to intense scrutiny.

At least from my takeaway, just saying someone or an argument is "wrong" is not really what the humanities are about anyway. The humanities focus on the reasons people have and give for their claims. Often reasons are complex and are tied into complex human contexts. Reasons are not just evidence, they are the entire baggage of argument, logic, context, culture, and history. The humanities focus on understanding those reasons. Whether deciding whether those reasons and claims are wrong is important, but not the entire purpose of the humanities, and never was.

To be sure, there are people who come out of humanities programs with distorted views of the world. I have met many, and it worries me in some ways what more and more do to the humanities.

But there are also those that come out of STEM fields with wildly distorted views of the world as well. And I think that is because they lack a solid humanities education.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#47

Post by mathattack »

baxtr wrote: post #4

> Lesson Ten: Mathematics is still the queen of the sciences. > When an undergraduate asks me whether he or she should major in mathematics rather than in another field that I will simply call X, my answer is the following: "If you major in mathematics, you can switch to X anytime you want to, but not the other way around." You can argue that with Physics as well. However, I have learned in my life, that there is a v…

The one way door is true. I’ve seen many math majors with phds in other fields but not the other way around.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#48

Post by ploggingdev »

(Off topic)

> Scientific biographies often fail to give a realistic description of personality, and thereby create a false idea of scientific work.

Any recommendations for biographies which give a realistic look into famous scientists' lives? I am reading the Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson and it's pretty good so far.

Completely off topic : how do you configure a LAN to have /~username urls (such as the linked post's url) exposed to the internet? I remember having such a directory in my school's linux network where I could place files in public or public_html (can't remember)and other users could access it by going to /~myname, but it wasn't exposed to the internet.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#49

Post by throwanem »

dougmwne wrote: post #40
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'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 (…

That looks to be an excellent treatment of the subject. Are many undergrad courses, or even just Coursera courses, similar in quality, or is this one exceptional?

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#50

Post by octonion »

mathattack wrote: post #44
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…

Within the US there is tremendous variance in academic quality both between schools and within schools.

This is complete bullshit.
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