4 ms·

There are some great notes on Mathematics taken from a former student at Cambridge (now doing a PhD at Harvard). They are ridiculously good quality and lecture

by NPDW 6y ago

There are some great notes on Mathematics taken from a former student at Cambridge (now doing a PhD at Harvard). They are ridiculously good quality and lecturers had to ask Dexter to take down notes a term at a time to ensure students weren't skipping lectures. The notes cover a lot more than what a standard student would do over 3 years undergrad + 1 year graduate (masters). http://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes http://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes

ruang 6y ago
These are great. I wonder why he didn't just handwrite the notes. These are much better, but they seem like they would take a long time unless you can type latex quickly.
- NPDW 6y ago
  He, infamously, wrote these notes realtime in lectures.
  - montalbano 6y ago
    To add, here is an interesting resource on how one might go about doing that using Vim and LaTeX: https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/
    - necrotic_comp 6y ago
      This is fantastic. Writing notes has always been a bugbear of mine, because 1) my handwriting is terrible and 2) writing notes takes me out of the lecture. It seems like this is more than fast enough to keep up with the lecture and have something to review properly after the lecture is over.
    - part1of2 6y ago
      >> These lecture notes — including figures — are made while attending the lecture and have not been edited afterwards. This is truly incredible to me.
alisonkisk 6y ago
That's a great endorsement for marketing his notes as an accessible alternative to a Canmbridge education. Sad that the professors are so jealous and petty.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> lecturers had to ask Dexter to take down notes a term at a time to ensure students weren't skipping lectures This is just... Stupid. Instead of admitting what a poor job you're doing, you're trying to suppress a student, unpaid student, that did a better job than you. (the you is of course the lecturer) Anecdote: I was a professor of Computer Science from 2004 to 2006, for two years. I was teaching Compilers. I was 25 years old when I started, and Compilers was the worst possible course to teach. I was paid the miserable sum of 1,600 eur per year, which is why the usual "university mafia" wasn't interested in putting someone else in that position (it happened at the end of my second year anyway, when the course was assigned to a full-time professor). I didn't want my students to pay $150 for the book, as this was Italy in early 2000s and students didn't have a lot of money (probably true today), so I created a big handout book that they could download and print, free of charge, and released it with a Creative Commons license. Or you could order the printed version on Lulu (although, for some reason, this one had to have an "all rights reserved") [0]. Anyway, at some point a professor in the Math department threatened me because students were using my handout to study regular expressions, and it was (in his mind) hurting the sales of the book they were using for his course; that book was of course authored by the professor, and he was making some money from it. How shameful. Oh, yes: of course I ignored the threats. [0]: https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab-linguaggi-di-programmazione-e-compilatori-informatica-unipgit/ebook/product-159pjmjj.html?page=1&pageSize=4 https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab...
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > I was paid the miserable sum of 1,600 eur per year, which is why the usual "university mafia" wasn't interested in putting someone else in that position > Anyway, at some point a professor in the Math department threatened me because students were using my handout to study regular expressions, and it was (in his mind) hurting the sales of the book they were using for his course; that book was of course authored by the professor, and he was making some money from it. How shameful. It sounds like you missed a potential revenue stream here haha! The fact that the math professor was mad about it meant that you had a potential market! Also, aren't regex just documented everywhere on the internet? Maybe not in Italian...

by NPDW 6y ago

ruang 6y ago

These are great. I wonder why he didn't just handwrite the notes. These are much better, but they seem like they would take a long time unless you can type latex quickly.

NPDW 6y ago
He, infamously, wrote these notes realtime in lectures.
- montalbano 6y ago
  To add, here is an interesting resource on how one might go about doing that using Vim and LaTeX: https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/
  - necrotic_comp 6y ago
    This is fantastic. Writing notes has always been a bugbear of mine, because 1) my handwriting is terrible and 2) writing notes takes me out of the lecture. It seems like this is more than fast enough to keep up with the lecture and have something to review properly after the lecture is over.
  - part1of2 6y ago
    >> These lecture notes — including figures — are made while attending the lecture and have not been edited afterwards. This is truly incredible to me.

alisonkisk 6y ago

That's a great endorsement for marketing his notes as an accessible alternative to a Canmbridge education. Sad that the professors are so jealous and petty.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

> lecturers had to ask Dexter to take down notes a term at a time to ensure students weren't skipping lectures This is just... Stupid. Instead of admitting what a poor job you're doing, you're trying to suppress a student, unpaid student, that did a better job than you. (the you is of course the lecturer) Anecdote: I was a professor of Computer Science from 2004 to 2006, for two years. I was teaching Compilers. I was 25 years old when I started, and Compilers was the worst possible course to teach. I was paid the miserable sum of 1,600 eur per year, which is why the usual "university mafia" wasn't interested in putting someone else in that position (it happened at the end of my second year anyway, when the course was assigned to a full-time professor). I didn't want my students to pay $150 for the book, as this was Italy in early 2000s and students didn't have a lot of money (probably true today), so I created a big handout book that they could download and print, free of charge, and released it with a Creative Commons license. Or you could order the printed version on Lulu (although, for some reason, this one had to have an "all rights reserved") [0]. Anyway, at some point a professor in the Math department threatened me because students were using my handout to study regular expressions, and it was (in his mind) hurting the sales of the book they were using for his course; that book was of course authored by the professor, and he was making some money from it. How shameful. Oh, yes: of course I ignored the threats. [0]: https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab-linguaggi-di-programmazione-e-compilatori-informatica-unipgit/ebook/product-159pjmjj.html?page=1&pageSize=4 https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab...

908B64B197 6y ago
> I was paid the miserable sum of 1,600 eur per year, which is why the usual "university mafia" wasn't interested in putting someone else in that position > Anyway, at some point a professor in the Math department threatened me because students were using my handout to study regular expressions, and it was (in his mind) hurting the sales of the book they were using for his course; that book was of course authored by the professor, and he was making some money from it. How shameful. It sounds like you missed a potential revenue stream here haha! The fact that the math professor was mad about it meant that you had a potential market! Also, aren't regex just documented everywhere on the internet? Maybe not in Italian...