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Lessons of an MIT Education

math.tamu.edu

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Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#61

Post by ellius »

throwanem wrote: post #49
dougmwne wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Anecdotally, as a history undergrad and grad student, almost all collegiate history courses are like that if they’re any good at all. You do occasionally get low-level surveys that seem more like laundry lists of names and dates, but overwhelmingly in my experience courses will focus on the question of why. You’re studying the interplay of people, ideas, economies, technology, et al to understand how and why a particular thing happened.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#62

Post by wolfgke »

foldr wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

> 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.

In my humble opinion the scarceness of falsifiability in history is the reason why it is so easy to create nutty conspiracy theories about history vs, say, mathematics or physics.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#63

Post by bjourne »

csa wrote: post #53
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…

Then one should prefer the universities in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. Students from those countries outclass everyone else on every level of the education system. Just look at PISA results and TIMSS -- it is almost scary how good they are. In fact, one should avoid all American colleges since American students are quite a bit below the international average on those rankings!

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#64

Post by hoke_t »

ploggingdev wrote: post #48

(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…

Try "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman?"

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#65

Post by frankling_ »

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.

Your statement is obviously false (counter example: analytic philosophy produces conjectures that are black-or-white-falsifiable on the exact same basis as mathematical conjectures). Since you are engaging in epistemology, you may appreciate that the above is also an example of what falsification looks like when it is not formal. I'd suggest reading some Popper.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#66

Post by foldr »

wolfgke wrote: post #62
foldr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. In my humble opinion the scarceness of falsifiability in history is the reason why it is so easy to create nutty conspiracy theories about history vs, say, mathematics or physics.

But then why do you judge the conspiracy theories to be nutty, if they are on just as firm an epistemological footing as actual history?

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#67

Post by asciimo »

> Those who do not become computer scientists to the second degree risk turning into programmers who will only implement the ideas of others.

The horror! Maybe this was truly a terrible fate in 1997.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#68

Post by analog31 »

david-gpu wrote: post #8
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…

> "If you major in mathematics, you can switch to X anytime you want to, but not the other way around." I hear people say that about mathematicians, physicists and even philosophers, yet I've never come across any of them in my career. I suspect it's wishful thinking.

I majored in math, and then did a PhD in physics. My first job out of grad school involved programming the controls for factory machines. These machines involved a technology that couldn't be bought off-the-shelf, and thus required custom controls. Today, I'm an "architect" at a business that makes measurement equipment.

My perception is that it was easier to cross disciplines when I got out of school, more than a couple decades ago. Things like "embedded systems" weren't well enough defined to have an established training-to-job career path, so it was easier to break into those fields. Rejecting candidates who didn't match a template was only beginning to be automated. Today, bigger employers are looking for training that is more specific to the task at hand.

So if you're in a rapidly emerging area where workers tend to be younger, you might see fewer cross-disciplinary people. At my workplace, the people with "generalist" background who are now working in specialized areas of engineering, tend to be over 50, myself included.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#69

Post by xkcd-sucks »

MIT is a very good school, but shouldn't be fetishised. After several years of hiring people in the Boston area, I've seen just as many mediocre MIT grads as mediocre BU grads. In fact, the only person at my company to be fired for incompetence was an MIT graduate

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#70

Post by jotm »

asciimo wrote: post #67

> Those who do not become computer scientists to the second degree risk turning into programmers who will only implement the ideas of others. The horror! Maybe this was truly a terrible fate in 1997.

Engineers will always work for someone with social/people skills or someone who can sell. At least for the next century I guess.
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