5 ms·

It's always interesting seeing the textbooks that are renowned by professors/people with prior knowledge, yet disliked by actual students. The Feynman Lectures

It's always interesting seeing the textbooks that are renowned by professors/people with prior knowledge, yet disliked by actual students. The Feynman Lectures on Physics is a pretty famous example (iirc, the actual course was received pretty negatively by students). I wonder how many people have actually sat down with a bunch of students and done a real experiment with textbooks. It's quite easy to think that a textbook is good when you already understand the material. Only by getting feedback from real students can you truly figure out whether a textbook is good. It'd be interesting to do a course with two different textbooks and the exact same professor and compare feedback/results. Perhaps they could even take the same final exam. Preferably at an average university. One problem with using textbooks written by MIT professors (such as Artin, Strang, etc.) is that MIT students are far stronger than average and can generally skip certain elided steps that other students cannot.

mesaframe 8y ago
> MIT students are far stronger than average and can generally skip certain elided steps that other students cannot. They are stronger at what? Either they know things already or they don't. If they know things already then they can skip steps and if not then they can't or can use guesswork. And that's what any other human being will do.
- hopler 8y ago
  They are stronger at thinking -- higher IQ for pattern matching, problem solving, and creativity. Better ability to remember something after just one or few exposures, and recognize it when it is hinted at indirectly. Better ability to visualize without being given illustrations. More able and willing to spend time and paper on working out missing details. Any or all of the above.
  - mesaframe 8y ago
    Source citing any or all of above properties?
    - pbh101 8y ago
      http://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-GPA http://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-GPA (First google result, I didn’t verify further) It is admittedly only a proxy, but the entrance SAT math scores for MIT students are 770 for the 25th percentile and 800 at the 75th percentile. Put another way: the test that is a helpful differentiator of intellectual ability of the general college population is not a good differentiator for the MIT population because a large proportion max out the scale.
      - quickben 8y ago
        Raven's progressive matrices and similar are differentiator of intellectual ability. SAT scores correspond to time spent on chair doing homework.
        deleted 8y ago
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    - mhuffman 8y ago
      Wow! You really need sources to prove to yourself that MIT students are smarter on average than a typical first-year student chosen at random from any University or Community College in the US?
      - randcraw 8y ago
        Not in my experience. I've met numerous MIT grads, and invariably they're smarter than the average grad from a less demanding school. Obviously that also applies to Caltech, Chicago, most Ivies, etc. But part of that equation is that the MIT alum learned not only how to survive that greater workload, but they learned more because of it. So they have a head start on several counts.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  > They are stronger at what? Lifting heavy books, of course.
jimhefferon 8y ago
You are absolutely right that there is a tendency for people to respond to a recommendation request with a book that is too much for the requester, and I've sometimes thought may have been too hard for the answerer on their first time through the material. I see that on /r/math, for instance, it seems to me. (That phenomenon needs a name.) That said though, let me say that for me personally SICP was mind-opening. I think about it a lot; it has had a major influence on me. An example is that I am working on a Theory of Computation book and I am trying to emulate some aspects of it (while keeping the presentation accessible). I certainly will admit, though, that when I read it I expect that I was in a different place than the post's author or than the typical student.
CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
I watched the SICP lectures after a few years as a java developer and absolutely loved them. I also remember doing a course on functional programming (SML) when studying that did absolutely nothing for me. You’re probably correct, you need to have mastered the mechanics of programming before having the brain capacity and experience to appreciate the finer details and subtleties of the craft. I had a similar experience with karate training. When siting on the bench and watching my son train it looks rather straight forward, just remember to focus. Then after a term I decided to join the training and suddenly it feels like you have five arms to coordinate, and processing any verbal input from the sensei is just out of the question.
- tzjmetron 8y ago
  >a course on functional programming (SML) Grossman's course on Coursera? If so, yes, that was pretty useless.
wolfgke 8y ago
> Only by getting feedback from real students can you truly figure out whether a textbook is good. The problem is (also in my experience) that students often cannot grasp the depth of the textbook/topic when they here the lecture. I openly admit that I only could appreciate the depth of the topics taught in some math lectures 5-10 years later (but already at the time that I heard them, I loved hard lectures - in oppposite to many classmaters). So if you want to get feedback, ask the students not before 5 to 10 years after they heard the lecture - otherwise the answers will in my opinion be meaningless.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
My Physics III prof: “I won’t lecture from the book. I wrote the book. I know what’s in the book. It is your job to read the book.” Worst book ever. Ugh.
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Academia is double Dunning-Kruger. Most students don't know what they don't know about the topic, and most professors don't know what they don't know about teaching it. It's amazing anyone gets out alive.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  An accidental double blind leading the blind study.
mamcx 8y ago
> people with prior knowledge, yet disliked by actual students This is the key!. I was about to say SICP was great then, yeah, I read it only when get interest in build compilers and after 20 years on the craft. I think you need a progression on material: 1- Start with a highly practical book more alike build little experiments/programs "Build a pacgam game" "Make a calculator", etc... ie, do a single pass for the minimal amount of info necessary to build a practical yet rewarding project. 2- Now the student have accomplished their first success, slowdown a little and put a small amount of theory here and there, but put focus on: "Discipline and follow good practices" then re-do the projects right this time. To build a analytic mindset move to: 3- How a computer think, using debuggers, disassembles, etc. You get your hands dirty and see the magic behind the magic And at the final step (is necessary to put some more steps before, just wanna get to the point): 4- Finish with a well round, deep and wide treaty about the field like SICP, so with some practique behind you can actually see what you have done and how it relate to the new info you are getting now. Also, this will broad your horizons and open the appetite to get in the deep more. ---- I think is to be like how is learn to cook. You start doing simple yet good dishes, without worry to learn first the theory. You move to more challenge, learn techniques tools and tricks of the trade. Finally, move to see the theory behind, round your mental framework and challenge yourself in come with exotic, new dishes...
- _hardwaregeek 8y ago
  That’s very well put. I’ve actually really wanted a “cookbook” for compilers. Basically small, self contained lessons for writing a particular part of a compiler. I.e. here’s how to write a typechecker, or how to write a garbage collector. The closest to that I’ve found is Crafting Interpreters. A lot of the compilers textbooks focus on the theory or general concepts, which is great, but I want to get my hands dirty. I’m not reading the book to learn the theory of compilers; I’m reading to book to write a compiler.
  - mamcx 8y ago
    I agree for the cookbook. I'm building a lang I have scavenged so much info from so many places, but all is kind of disconnected. Or worse, all stop at generate the AST, and barely interpret the AST at the level of a calculator and maybe simple functions. For example, I need like 5 different sources to finally have a grasp in how pattern match, and build a solution that later found in another paper.
atq2119 8y ago
Knuth's math textbook has commentary from his students in the margins. Some of it is hilarious.
gus_massa 8y ago
The Feynman Lectures on Physics is an amazing second book for each course. The usual combination in my university for a Physics course for a degree in Physics is * The "main" book of the subject * The Landau book about it * The relevant chapters of The Feynman Lectures on Physics * The Shaum's Outline book about it. The idea is that you study from the main book, and use the Landau book as an auxiliary short version with only the important points. The Shaum book has a lot of exercises. [Some people don't like to recommend Shaum's book.] After that, you can read the relevant chapters of the Feynman book. It's like a book with fairy tales for physicist [or physicist students] that you read before going to bed. Each chapter is amazing and you enjoy it a lot, but it is very difficult to study using it as the first read about the topic. It's very useful to have a deep understanding of a few difficult key topics, after you are familiar with the subject and the mathematical part. [I really grok the difference between phase velocity and group velocity reading the Feynman. The definition of each velocity is easy so it's not so difficult to pass the exam, but understanding what they really mean took me a few years.]

mesaframe 8y ago

> MIT students are far stronger than average and can generally skip certain elided steps that other students cannot. They are stronger at what? Either they know things already or they don't. If they know things already then they can skip steps and if not then they can't or can use guesswork. And that's what any other human being will do.

hopler 8y ago
They are stronger at thinking -- higher IQ for pattern matching, problem solving, and creativity. Better ability to remember something after just one or few exposures, and recognize it when it is hinted at indirectly. Better ability to visualize without being given illustrations. More able and willing to spend time and paper on working out missing details. Any or all of the above.
- mesaframe 8y ago
  Source citing any or all of above properties?
  - pbh101 8y ago
    http://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-GPA http://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-GPA (First google result, I didn’t verify further) It is admittedly only a proxy, but the entrance SAT math scores for MIT students are 770 for the 25th percentile and 800 at the 75th percentile. Put another way: the test that is a helpful differentiator of intellectual ability of the general college population is not a good differentiator for the MIT population because a large proportion max out the scale.
    - quickben 8y ago
      Raven's progressive matrices and similar are differentiator of intellectual ability. SAT scores correspond to time spent on chair doing homework.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - mhuffman 8y ago
    Wow! You really need sources to prove to yourself that MIT students are smarter on average than a typical first-year student chosen at random from any University or Community College in the US?
    - randcraw 8y ago
      Not in my experience. I've met numerous MIT grads, and invariably they're smarter than the average grad from a less demanding school. Obviously that also applies to Caltech, Chicago, most Ivies, etc. But part of that equation is that the MIT alum learned not only how to survive that greater workload, but they learned more because of it. So they have a head start on several counts.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> They are stronger at what? Lifting heavy books, of course.

jimhefferon 8y ago

You are absolutely right that there is a tendency for people to respond to a recommendation request with a book that is too much for the requester, and I've sometimes thought may have been too hard for the answerer on their first time through the material. I see that on /r/math, for instance, it seems to me. (That phenomenon needs a name.) That said though, let me say that for me personally SICP was mind-opening. I think about it a lot; it has had a major influence on me. An example is that I am working on a Theory of Computation book and I am trying to emulate some aspects of it (while keeping the presentation accessible). I certainly will admit, though, that when I read it I expect that I was in a different place than the post's author or than the typical student.

CuriousSkeptic 8y ago

I watched the SICP lectures after a few years as a java developer and absolutely loved them. I also remember doing a course on functional programming (SML) when studying that did absolutely nothing for me. You’re probably correct, you need to have mastered the mechanics of programming before having the brain capacity and experience to appreciate the finer details and subtleties of the craft. I had a similar experience with karate training. When siting on the bench and watching my son train it looks rather straight forward, just remember to focus. Then after a term I decided to join the training and suddenly it feels like you have five arms to coordinate, and processing any verbal input from the sensei is just out of the question.

tzjmetron 8y ago
>a course on functional programming (SML) Grossman's course on Coursera? If so, yes, that was pretty useless.

wolfgke 8y ago

> Only by getting feedback from real students can you truly figure out whether a textbook is good. The problem is (also in my experience) that students often cannot grasp the depth of the textbook/topic when they here the lecture. I openly admit that I only could appreciate the depth of the topics taught in some math lectures 5-10 years later (but already at the time that I heard them, I loved hard lectures - in oppposite to many classmaters). So if you want to get feedback, ask the students not before 5 to 10 years after they heard the lecture - otherwise the answers will in my opinion be meaningless.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

My Physics III prof: “I won’t lecture from the book. I wrote the book. I know what’s in the book. It is your job to read the book.” Worst book ever. Ugh.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

Academia is double Dunning-Kruger. Most students don't know what they don't know about the topic, and most professors don't know what they don't know about teaching it. It's amazing anyone gets out alive.

jacques_chester 8y ago
An accidental double blind leading the blind study.

mamcx 8y ago

> people with prior knowledge, yet disliked by actual students This is the key!. I was about to say SICP was great then, yeah, I read it only when get interest in build compilers and after 20 years on the craft. I think you need a progression on material: 1- Start with a highly practical book more alike build little experiments/programs "Build a pacgam game" "Make a calculator", etc... ie, do a single pass for the minimal amount of info necessary to build a practical yet rewarding project. 2- Now the student have accomplished their first success, slowdown a little and put a small amount of theory here and there, but put focus on: "Discipline and follow good practices" then re-do the projects right this time. To build a analytic mindset move to: 3- How a computer think, using debuggers, disassembles, etc. You get your hands dirty and see the magic behind the magic And at the final step (is necessary to put some more steps before, just wanna get to the point): 4- Finish with a well round, deep and wide treaty about the field like SICP, so with some practique behind you can actually see what you have done and how it relate to the new info you are getting now. Also, this will broad your horizons and open the appetite to get in the deep more. ---- I think is to be like how is learn to cook. You start doing simple yet good dishes, without worry to learn first the theory. You move to more challenge, learn techniques tools and tricks of the trade. Finally, move to see the theory behind, round your mental framework and challenge yourself in come with exotic, new dishes...

_hardwaregeek 8y ago
That’s very well put. I’ve actually really wanted a “cookbook” for compilers. Basically small, self contained lessons for writing a particular part of a compiler. I.e. here’s how to write a typechecker, or how to write a garbage collector. The closest to that I’ve found is Crafting Interpreters. A lot of the compilers textbooks focus on the theory or general concepts, which is great, but I want to get my hands dirty. I’m not reading the book to learn the theory of compilers; I’m reading to book to write a compiler.
- mamcx 8y ago
  I agree for the cookbook. I'm building a lang I have scavenged so much info from so many places, but all is kind of disconnected. Or worse, all stop at generate the AST, and barely interpret the AST at the level of a calculator and maybe simple functions. For example, I need like 5 different sources to finally have a grasp in how pattern match, and build a solution that later found in another paper.

atq2119 8y ago

Knuth's math textbook has commentary from his students in the margins. Some of it is hilarious.

gus_massa 8y ago

The Feynman Lectures on Physics is an amazing second book for each course. The usual combination in my university for a Physics course for a degree in Physics is * The "main" book of the subject * The Landau book about it * The relevant chapters of The Feynman Lectures on Physics * The Shaum's Outline book about it. The idea is that you study from the main book, and use the Landau book as an auxiliary short version with only the important points. The Shaum book has a lot of exercises. [Some people don't like to recommend Shaum's book.] After that, you can read the relevant chapters of the Feynman book. It's like a book with fairy tales for physicist [or physicist students] that you read before going to bed. Each chapter is amazing and you enjoy it a lot, but it is very difficult to study using it as the first read about the topic. It's very useful to have a deep understanding of a few difficult key topics, after you are familiar with the subject and the mathematical part. [I really grok the difference between phase velocity and group velocity reading the Feynman. The definition of each velocity is easy so it's not so difficult to pass the exam, but understanding what they really mean took me a few years.]