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Fine. Good researchers? Sure, they have to learn the new stuff, and typically they do it on their own, often without exercises or polished texts. Lesson: Su

by graycat 10y ago

Fine. Good researchers? Sure, they have to learn the new stuff, and typically they do it on their own, often without exercises or polished texts. Lesson: Such self-teaching is doable, common, and for some careers necessary. And here at HN, my guess is that 75+% of what the people know that is technical they taught themselves. So, for yet another programming language, sure, write "Hello World" and get it to work. Then see how that language handles if-then-else and do-while, elementary data types, arrays, trees, objects, functions, memory allocation, threads, locks, exceptional conditions, file I/O, direct access files, interacts with SQL database, gets to TCP/IP, sends Web pages, etc. what libraries and APIs are available, etc. Lots of people at HN have done that for several langages. Can do much the same for undergraduate math such as described in the Princeton materials.

analog31 10y ago
I'd be curious to know how successful self learning is in different fields. HN represents the survivors. Maybe I could have learned math on my own, but I'm not sure I would have wanted to perform that experiment on myself, given my level of motivation and persistence at the time. I saw no good reason to let myself be punished for my character flaws. Perhaps in any field, you get past a "learning how to learn" stage, so the early learning prepares you for independent learning later on. I'm at a stage in music where I can advance my abilities pretty well on my own, having developed the foundation of a correct physical approach to the instrument from a teacher.
- graycat 10y ago
  In K-8, I was a poor student. So, in 9th grade algebra, a subject I liked and found easy, I didn't have the usual school study habits so just taught the stuff to myself from the book. Next year was plane geometry, and I liked it so much I was in heaven. The teacher was the nastiest human I've even known, so I ignored her, slept in class, and never admitted doing any of the homework. In fact, I did all the non-trivial problems in the front of the book and then ALL of the more challenging supplementary problems in the back of the book. I totally loved the subject. That was a good start in teaching myself that did me a lot of good. Maybe the best part was I was able to do publishable research. So, in grad school I took a problem I'd seen in a course, a problem with no obvious solution, and asked for a "reading course" to attack it. Well, I did more, got a clean solution and also proved a nice, surprising theorem. That was two weeks, and I was done with the "reading course" and the last I needed for a Masters. It looked publishable and it was -- later I published it. Doing that research gave me a nice halo that served me well for the rest of my grad school time. So, that independent study/research ability totally saved my tail feathers. For music, once I heard a little Beethoven, I fell in love with classical music. Later at Indiana University, with its terrific music school, I took a beginning course in violin. So, I had to start with how to hold the violin and the bow, tune the violin, etc. I got through the A major scale in first position! Later I continued on my own. I got through about 3/4 of the Bach E major Partita, in time and in tune! Then I got through most of the Bach Chaconne also in time and in tune. Really liked the central D major section. Then I went for some lessons: Conclusion, I needed more practice! But the self teaching seemed to work again! And, yes, at one time I taught several sections of computer science at Georgetown University. Taught it? Yes. Had ever taken it? No. Sure, like no doubt nearly all of the HN audience, I had taught the stuff to myself.

by graycat 10y ago

analog31 10y ago

I'd be curious to know how successful self learning is in different fields. HN represents the survivors. Maybe I could have learned math on my own, but I'm not sure I would have wanted to perform that experiment on myself, given my level of motivation and persistence at the time. I saw no good reason to let myself be punished for my character flaws. Perhaps in any field, you get past a "learning how to learn" stage, so the early learning prepares you for independent learning later on. I'm at a stage in music where I can advance my abilities pretty well on my own, having developed the foundation of a correct physical approach to the instrument from a teacher.

graycat 10y ago
In K-8, I was a poor student. So, in 9th grade algebra, a subject I liked and found easy, I didn't have the usual school study habits so just taught the stuff to myself from the book. Next year was plane geometry, and I liked it so much I was in heaven. The teacher was the nastiest human I've even known, so I ignored her, slept in class, and never admitted doing any of the homework. In fact, I did all the non-trivial problems in the front of the book and then ALL of the more challenging supplementary problems in the back of the book. I totally loved the subject. That was a good start in teaching myself that did me a lot of good. Maybe the best part was I was able to do publishable research. So, in grad school I took a problem I'd seen in a course, a problem with no obvious solution, and asked for a "reading course" to attack it. Well, I did more, got a clean solution and also proved a nice, surprising theorem. That was two weeks, and I was done with the "reading course" and the last I needed for a Masters. It looked publishable and it was -- later I published it. Doing that research gave me a nice halo that served me well for the rest of my grad school time. So, that independent study/research ability totally saved my tail feathers. For music, once I heard a little Beethoven, I fell in love with classical music. Later at Indiana University, with its terrific music school, I took a beginning course in violin. So, I had to start with how to hold the violin and the bow, tune the violin, etc. I got through the A major scale in first position! Later I continued on my own. I got through about 3/4 of the Bach E major Partita, in time and in tune! Then I got through most of the Bach Chaconne also in time and in tune. Really liked the central D major section. Then I went for some lessons: Conclusion, I needed more practice! But the self teaching seemed to work again! And, yes, at one time I taught several sections of computer science at Georgetown University. Taught it? Yes. Had ever taken it? No. Sure, like no doubt nearly all of the HN audience, I had taught the stuff to myself.