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The author is Grant Sanderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Blue1Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Blue1Brown) who has an undergrad degree in math from Sta

by gbjw 7y ago

The author is Grant Sanderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Blue1Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Blue1Brown) who has an undergrad degree in math from Stanford and worked at Khan Academy before starting his YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown. Also, the student who is mentioned in the video (Lisa Sauermann) as having solved this problem at the 2011 IMO (and attaining the only perfect score) just recently started as a Prof. at Stanford (http://web.stanford.edu/~lsauerma/ http://web.stanford.edu/~lsauerma/) as a 27 year old.

jedberg 7y ago
Wow. She went straight from getting her PhD at Stanford to teaching there. That's almost unheard of. She must not only be a brilliant mathematician but an amazing teacher too.
- vecter 7y ago
  Academics are given tenure-track positions at top universities for the quality of their research, not because they're amazing teachers. Lisa is undoubtedly brilliant. She may also very well be an amazing teacher also, I don't know. My point is just that one should not assume that.
- rsj_hn 7y ago
  Not only do teaching skills play no role in getting tenure at a place like Stanford, teaching is actually a threat to research productivity and research universities will hire professors who do as little teaching as possible, leaving most of it to older who professors who are no longer productive researchers or to post docs, teaching assistants or other staff. To understand how this works, the researcher will apply for some grant, say $300,000 to study some question in geometry. Now, why does a mathematician need grant money when their only tools are a paper and pencil (maybe a laptop with Tex installed)? First, the university gets 1/3 of that money as "overhead", so the researcher is left with $200,000. Then, the researcher will pay to "buy out" his teaching load which is more money paid to the university, say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year. With the remaining $50,000, he may spend money to fund a post doc to come and assist him for a semester. Again, that money goes to the university. So the researcher may get $300,000 but it all ends up in the pocket of the University, which in turn pays him a good salary with the assumption that he keeps the grants coming. A place like Stanford gets about 1/3 of its funding from these research grants, 1/3 from its endowment, and 1/3 from tuition. It hires researches to get the grants, grad students and adjuncts to teach, and the sports teams and other events help with endowment. Thus research professors are hired on the basis of their ability to avoid teaching loads, not on their teaching skills.
  - jimmyvalmer 7y ago
    Yes, this. Neither students nor teachers are well served by this grossly inefficient enterprise that wears young faculty so thin that it effectively violates several OSHA guidelines. I've always believed the college lecture format is an utter waste of time for everyone. I dream of a day when universities all become pure research institutions, and undergrads teach themselves with the help of AI feedback systems.
    - toxik 7y ago
      That sounds dystopian and unlikely to ever work. Learning is a social endeavor.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to guess that she is also a good teacher.
    - jimmyvalmer 7y ago
      > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes Since when? The hard-and-fast rule is junior faculty are assigned intro classes. We often give youthful teachers higher marks than crusty, doddering emeriti, perhaps for good reason, perhaps not. > I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to > guess that she is also a good teacher. GP did not question her teaching ability, but your inference of said ability from her impressive ascent at Stanford. It's a bit like inferring LeBron James must really be mature since he entered the NBA straight from high school.
    - boyobo 7y ago
      > > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Not really sure what you're saying. The fact that she's teaching just means that she isn't using (or doesn't have) a research grant to `buy out' of teaching. > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. Again, I don't know where you got this idea from. Usually (in a math research department such as the one at Stanford) whoever's arranging the teaching assignments doesn't look at an instructors teaching credentials at all, unless they are egregiously bad. So all we can conclude is that she isn't absolutely awful at teaching. The fact of the matter is that many researchers (due to their incentives) view teaching, especially lower division courses, as a chore, so really anyone in the department who wants to teach such a course is not going to get much opposition.
dannykwells 7y ago
Lisa is great but the role she holds is not tenure track. Its closer to a postdoc. https://professorpositions.com/szego-assistant-professor-at-department-of-mathematics,i2542.html https://professorpositions.com/szego-assistant-professor-at-... I'm sure she will get a tt job when she wants however.
jpxw 7y ago
Assistant Professor* Quite a big difference

by gbjw 7y ago

jedberg 7y ago

Wow. She went straight from getting her PhD at Stanford to teaching there. That's almost unheard of. She must not only be a brilliant mathematician but an amazing teacher too.

vecter 7y ago
Academics are given tenure-track positions at top universities for the quality of their research, not because they're amazing teachers. Lisa is undoubtedly brilliant. She may also very well be an amazing teacher also, I don't know. My point is just that one should not assume that.
rsj_hn 7y ago
Not only do teaching skills play no role in getting tenure at a place like Stanford, teaching is actually a threat to research productivity and research universities will hire professors who do as little teaching as possible, leaving most of it to older who professors who are no longer productive researchers or to post docs, teaching assistants or other staff. To understand how this works, the researcher will apply for some grant, say $300,000 to study some question in geometry. Now, why does a mathematician need grant money when their only tools are a paper and pencil (maybe a laptop with Tex installed)? First, the university gets 1/3 of that money as "overhead", so the researcher is left with $200,000. Then, the researcher will pay to "buy out" his teaching load which is more money paid to the university, say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year. With the remaining $50,000, he may spend money to fund a post doc to come and assist him for a semester. Again, that money goes to the university. So the researcher may get $300,000 but it all ends up in the pocket of the University, which in turn pays him a good salary with the assumption that he keeps the grants coming. A place like Stanford gets about 1/3 of its funding from these research grants, 1/3 from its endowment, and 1/3 from tuition. It hires researches to get the grants, grad students and adjuncts to teach, and the sports teams and other events help with endowment. Thus research professors are hired on the basis of their ability to avoid teaching loads, not on their teaching skills.
- jimmyvalmer 7y ago
  Yes, this. Neither students nor teachers are well served by this grossly inefficient enterprise that wears young faculty so thin that it effectively violates several OSHA guidelines. I've always believed the college lecture format is an utter waste of time for everyone. I dream of a day when universities all become pure research institutions, and undergrads teach themselves with the help of AI feedback systems.
  - toxik 7y ago
    That sounds dystopian and unlikely to ever work. Learning is a social endeavor.
- jedberg 7y ago
  > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to guess that she is also a good teacher.
  - jimmyvalmer 7y ago
    > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes Since when? The hard-and-fast rule is junior faculty are assigned intro classes. We often give youthful teachers higher marks than crusty, doddering emeriti, perhaps for good reason, perhaps not. > I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to > guess that she is also a good teacher. GP did not question her teaching ability, but your inference of said ability from her impressive ascent at Stanford. It's a bit like inferring LeBron James must really be mature since he entered the NBA straight from high school.
  - boyobo 7y ago
    > > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Not really sure what you're saying. The fact that she's teaching just means that she isn't using (or doesn't have) a research grant to `buy out' of teaching. > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. Again, I don't know where you got this idea from. Usually (in a math research department such as the one at Stanford) whoever's arranging the teaching assignments doesn't look at an instructors teaching credentials at all, unless they are egregiously bad. So all we can conclude is that she isn't absolutely awful at teaching. The fact of the matter is that many researchers (due to their incentives) view teaching, especially lower division courses, as a chore, so really anyone in the department who wants to teach such a course is not going to get much opposition.

dannykwells 7y ago

Lisa is great but the role she holds is not tenure track. Its closer to a postdoc. https://professorpositions.com/szego-assistant-professor-at-department-of-mathematics,i2542.html https://professorpositions.com/szego-assistant-professor-at-... I'm sure she will get a tt job when she wants however.

jpxw 7y ago

Assistant Professor* Quite a big difference