Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cs.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 207 posts

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

#81

Post by chongli »

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…

This is fun to do during lectures but in my experience only about 5-10% of my learning happened in math class. The other 90% happened at home as I worked through the problem sets.

Essentially the lectures served as an inefficient way of delivering me a set of notes which I’d then reference during homework sessions. I could often predict what was coming next in the lecture but the really hard parts were the key parts in some technical lemmas that were necessary to complete the theorem. Learning how to figure out a key step like that had to come completely on my own (with no spoilers).

In a lot of ways, math lectures really started to turn into an experience similar to watching a Let’s Play of a favourite video game. Watching those can tell you exactly what you need to do to get past the part where you’re stuck but they don’t in general make you better at video games. For that you need to actually play them yourself.

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

#82

Post by hammock »

ebertucc wrote: post #70
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…

This is good advice for the LSAT too, and baked into LSAT Demon's app. If you can predict an answer before looking at the choices, you're probably on the right track.

Required for success at games like Jeopardy. Guess the answer before you read the whole thing

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

#83

Post by criddell »

wafflemaker wrote: post #25
random9749832 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've met lot of smart guys never getting anywhere, because they were always looking for a shortcut and not to do the real work. Linux instructor Jason Canon wrote once that there's a lot of people who spend 90% of the time reading articles on how to learn Linux, but only 10% really practicing. OTOH it's a really cool way to stay focused and engaged with the lecture.

I think a lot of writing online about productivity is like this. Some people seem to have a near endless appetite for writing on pens and notebooks, note taking systems, text editors, desk accesssories, every day carry, etc…

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

#84

Post by yodsanklai »

Almondsetat wrote: post #12

The real truth is that the good advice has always been dispensed, it's just that students don't want to listen. 1. Follow actively the lessons. 2. Study and exercise every day what you covered in the previous lessons Every one of us has been given these age old platitudes, but, as spaced repetition, testing, and active recall prove, they are actually an excellent starting point for good performance

> 1. Follow actively the lessons.

It sounds obvious, but I wonder if this works for everyone. I've always had a very hard time to follow lessons (I studied maths then CS), but did work hard on the side and ultimately did quite well at tests and national exams.

I think the lecture format didn't work well for me, and I would have been better off with the just material, and access to a professor for questions.

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

#86

Post by hammock »

alyxya wrote: post #19

The most important advice is at the end. > Undergrads tend to have tunnel vision about their classes. They want to get good grades, etc. The crucial fact to realize is that noone will care about your grades, unless they are bad. For example, I always used to say that the smartest student will get 85% in all of his courses. This way, you end up with somewhere around 4.0 score, but you did not over-study, and you did n…

In university, how can you get a 4.0 with an 85% average? In high school they added 1.0 to honors courses but I don’t remember the same thing happening in undergrad.

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

#87

Post by loupol »

gretch wrote: post #73
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…

Agree with this comment but follow up to this tip: Only use this as a learning technique. Do not accidentally let this bleed over into personal 1:1 conversations. I know some people in my life who are "smart" and they will cut people off in the middle of conversation to the effect of "oh yeah I already know what you are going to say, let me go ahead and cut you off so I can respond faster". On top of being completely…

I take it you are not a member of the Church of Interruption[0] then.

https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

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

#88

Post by momo_O »

hammock wrote: post #82
ebertucc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice for the LSAT too, and baked into LSAT Demon's app. If you can predict an answer before looking at the choices, you're probably on the right track.

Required for success at games like Jeopardy. Guess the answer before you read the whole thing

Jeopardy is a bad example because you're required to wait until the end of the question before buzzing in, or else you are penalized.

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

#89

Post by vector_spaces »

chongli wrote: post #81
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…

This is fun to do during lectures but in my experience only about 5-10% of my learning happened in math class. The other 90% happened at home as I worked through the problem sets. Essentially the lectures served as an inefficient way of delivering me a set of notes which I’d then reference during homework sessions. I could often predict what was coming next in the lecture but the really hard parts were the key parts…

The viewpoint of a lecture as an inefficient note delivery system is a pretty common and reductive view. Your "Let's Play" analogy was pretty apt though.

I think their (potential) value seems pretty clear when you look at language courses -- you can't possibly hope to develop fluency in a language by studying it in isolation from books -- forming your own sentences and hearing how other human beings do the same in real time is pretty decisive.

With math classes, YMMV, especially since they are rarely so interactive at the upper division and graduate level, but at the very least seeing an instructor talk about math and work through problems (and if you are lucky to have a particularly disorganized one, get stuck, and get themselves unstuck) can go a long way. But to be fair I regularly skipped math lectures in favor of reading too, heh

Post reply on HN