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

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

#91

Post by tuhgdetzhh »

tehnub wrote: post #62
randomtoast wrote: post #44

To me it seems Andrej Karpathy is like the new AI guru. In this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45619329 he predicted the future of AI a decade ahead. Do not get me wrong, I do think he is very knowledgable on the subject.

Is guru being used in some special sense here? Cuz Karpathy has been an AI luminary for at least 10 years. This post for instance taught RL to a whole generation https://karpathy.github.io/2016/05/31/rl/ .

I think he means Guru in the sense of crystal ball Guru telling you the future.

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

#92

Post by hammock »

momo_O wrote: post #88
hammock wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but if you don’t know the answer by the time the light goes on (the question is finished read), you will never get in. And if you buzz in without knowing the answer you will lose points. So you have to know the answer before the light goes , then be ready to buzz as soon as eligible. Jeopardy is a good example.

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

#93

Post by chongli »

vector_spaces wrote: post #89
chongli wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

I rarely skipped math lectures in university (only when the prof was really bad; but then I watched video lectures taught by a different prof from a previous term).

The lectures in the hardest math classes I took did not feature any “working through problems.” They were 50 minute pedal-to-the-metal proof speedrun sessions that took me 2-3 hours of review and practice work to fully understand. I don’t know how anyone can see a lecture like that and not see it as an inefficient note delivery system.

I did have math classes where profs worked through problems but those were generally the much easier applied math classes. Those were the ones I least needed to attend lectures for because there you’re just following the steps of an algorithm rather than having to think hard about how to synthesize a proof.

For language learning it’s hard to beat full immersion. When we learn our first language (talking to our parents as children) we don’t learn it by theory (memorizing verb conjugations), we learn it by engaging the language centre in our brains. I think language classes are more useful if you want to learn to write and translate in that language, where you need a strong theoretical background. If your main goal for language learning is being able to speak with loved ones or being able to travel and speak fluently with locals, then sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture seems like a very difficult way to do that.

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

#94

Post by hirvi74 »

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…

I had a math professor in college that would often say to our class, "You cannot be like Michael Jordan by just watching Michael Jordan. If you want to be better at basketball, you have to practice. Math is no different." No matter how you spin it, he was correct -- unless you are like Ramanujan and a Hindu god just reveals a solution to you.

Honestly though, I believe I learn better in a similar manner to what you described. I would rather just read the textbook and learn on my own. I find that to be a far more efficient learning style for me. However, I typically always went to class for a handful of reasons:

1. To signal that I cared about the subject to the professor (whether I honestly cared or not). Though I had some classes that actually penalized a lack of attendance.

2. There is comradery in group struggle. It was nice way to meet other students that had a common goal. I made many friends during my time. Some of which I still keep in touch with a decade later. In fact, I met my SO in one of my classes -- all because we studied together.

3. The main reason being, I paid for the class, and I wanted to get my money's worth out of it. While passing the course and learning the material was the goal. I'd hate knowing I just paid to teach myself everything. I could have done that for free, so I wanted something more out of the deal.

One of thing I should add is that I am poorly disciplined and have poor executive functioning, so I probably picked up more in class that I would admit -- I didn't have a control to compare against. Still to this date, I rely heavily on solutions to the problems. Not in a way that allows me to cheat, but I would likely be unable to be certain I was teaching myself correctly if I didn't have the answers or know of a method to verify my work. I am confident that I cannot be confident in my answers to nearly anything. I am prone to too many mistakes.

If one goes far enough in math, one will encounter solutions where there are not clear answers and one must use all of their knowledge and abilities to support their answers. And that my YN friends, is why I am not a mathematician despite my love for the subject.

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

#96

Post by jocaal »

epolanski wrote: post #56
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…

This posts sums up everything that's wrong with grading and modern colleges.

The act of grading itself is what's wrong with colleges. Different people learn at different paces. Forcing everyone to work at the fastest rate and then judging them for not performing is what kills interest in subjects. People should be allowed to write tests when they want to, learn at the pace they want to decide for themselves when it's time to move on, because lets face it, not everyone cares about some prof's pet subject.

The problem is that higher education became something marketable and universities decided to sell diplomas instead of giving people a chance to learn skills they think might help them reach their goals.

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

#97

Post by lazyasciiart »

normie3000 wrote: post #68
leobg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. And it makes sense, if you define intelligence as the ability to successfully predict the future. And how interesting that that is literally how LLMs are trained during pretraining. Like Ilya said: To predict the name revealed as the murderer at the end of a detective novel, you must have followed the plot, have world knowledge about physics, psychology, etc.. And that’s what you’re pointing at here. Testi…

> To predict the name revealed as the murderer at the end of a detective novel, you must have... Wait, can people do this??

Oh yea. A good detective novel gives the reader all the necessary information to know the answer. Many lousier novels just keep some essential information hidden until the monologue, because they haven’t got a tricky enough mystery, and really shitty ones just accidentally reveal it, often by over-using tropes or having silly patterns like “it’s always the dark and brooding guy”. Ever read any Dan Brown? In Angels and Demons he gives it away on the first page with an anagram.

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

#98

Post by lazyasciiart »

criddell wrote: post #83
wafflemaker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yak-shaving.

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

#99

Post by whatever1 »

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…

Which is why I hate the PowerPoint presentation-based lectures. Speaker typically goes too fast, and their brain does not actually break down the arguments into logical steps. They just read the slides.

Chalk and board is the way.

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

#100

Post by jatins »

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

Yeah, it's like most people know exercise is good for body. But good luck my rational mind getting me to the gym on most days

That said I do think even the seemingly obvious need to be repeated often because the audience keeps changing. So it is _new_ for someone, it may change someone's perspective

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