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Lessons of an MIT Education

math.tamu.edu

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Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#51

Post by stonemetal »

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…

In general the answer he gives sounds like bullshit to me. Really, "unconsciously absorbed" "ambiance" is what going to MIT is about?

>a gifted student will thrive in the company of other gifted students

This I put a little more stock in. It is competitive to get in. So all of the people in your calculus one class had calculus in high school, and they are all particularly gifted at math. This means they are able to cover more, and go deeper in to the subject because there is no time "wasted" educating an "average" student.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#52

Post by brudgers »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #35
brudgers wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seve…

It is entirely true that I think that, these days.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#53

Post by csa »

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…

I can't speak for MIT, but I can speak for a couple of Ivies.

The content covered in the curriculum and the speed at which it is covered is one potentially challenging aspect of one school over another.

The more important aspect, imho, is your peers. Speaking for myself and what I have heard others experience, peers can push your thinking to more sophisticated levels -- this can be in terms of something like elegance in problem solving (which has valuable real-world applications), the ability to apply the knowledge in a wider range of contexts, etc.

This is also often reflected, rightly or wrongly, in the assessment stages. If you take a class with wicked smart peers, the test is usually going to be much harder just so that the test can evaluate differences in knowledge.

I remember showing my $IVY calculus final to a friend of mine who set the curve in what was supposed to be the same class at $STATEU, and his mind was blown. It took him a few minutes just to realize that the test covered the same topics, while I thought the test was merely "hard" pedestrian content. Once I talked him through the problem, he realized how cool it was, and then he realized one of the key differences between our schools -- the boundaries of my thinking on topics were challenged and stretched much, much more aggressively.

To be fair, some non-elite schools are equally or more rigorous than elite schools, but this is usually on a department level and is the exception rather than the rule.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#54

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#55

Post by HarryHirsch »

brudgers wrote: post #52
HarryHirsch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seve…

It is entirely true that I think that, these days.

Don't do that. That notion does not conform to observable reality.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#56

Post by foldr »

rayiner wrote: post #39
falcolas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can certainly counterexemplify philosophical arguments.

It's also weird to suggest that no historical claims are falsifiable. That seems to put real history on a par with nutty conspiracy theories.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#57

Post by neltnerb »

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 syllabus because the topics may be the same but the devil is in the details.

MIT had absolutely fantastic problem sets that took me 10+ hours a week per class to finish and were rarely changed from year to year. This is because they've been tuned over so long that whether you get the answer correct is almost besides the point, the useful part for learning was the process of banging your head against them. This was true to an extent at other universities I've been at but usually the expected proficiency required to excel in a course was not quite so severe.

I ended up getting a PhD (in materials science), spent many hours working as hard as I could in lots of classes, and despite honestly knowing my stuff quite well I never got an A in an undergraduate physics course at MIT. Those were only gotten by the students who were obviously frighteningly talented, often with research experience in the course material already. Don't take that as sour grapes or anything, I am super proud of my B's in these courses. But MIT grades harshly, which may be part of why it's "harder".

Most MIT students stop caring about grades freshman year. Most MIT students interact with one another in class as fellow masochists struggling together against a common foe (learning the material) rather than competing against one another for grades. This is what I would personally call the weirdest and most advantageous aspect of MIT versus Ivy Leagues, but I actually think state schools are awesome at this too.

I'd have put that environment on the list of lessons way before any of the ones on there. Learning the value of close collaboration with people, regardless of whether you may think (probably wrongly anyway) that they're "better" or "worse" than you. Learning that when it comes to the real world, on a team you're all up against a way bigger opponent than each other, you're up against the laws of nature. And that success against that opponent is far more satisfying than any grade.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#58

Post by pault »

jack_pp wrote: post #30
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…

For anyone interested in learning more about people (and yourselves) I highly recommend Jordan Petersons' lectures on youtube. I believe he has started working on an online university for the humanities with all the money he's bringing in from patreon (he wisely hid it recently but it was close to 60k per month last time it wasn't)

I really enjoy his lectures but people should be aware that he's been in the middle of some controversy over LGBT legislation in Canada and has attracted a following of vocal red pill types. The comments on his YouTube videos are kind of disturbing. His psychology lectures are great and I mostly share his views on post modernism, but I wouldn't want to be associated with his fan club.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#59

Post by ThomPete »

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 falsifiability is not the purpose of liberal arts creation is. This is one of the reasons I don't believe that it belongs in an academic discipline were critical thinking seems to be of higher value than constructive thinking.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#60

Post by kingkawn »

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…

This would be true if the only listeners you’d encounter were computers.

But we live in the world of people, and demonstrating proficiency in only one insistent cultural mode because it is the most dedicated to rationalism is an impoverished worldview.

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