10 ms·

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathemati

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it halfway as well. Perhaps the real motivation to keep up with the material comes from actually enrolling the university? Has anyone completed such type of lectures by themselves? How do you stay consistent and disciplined? I find courses in some platforms (coursera/khanacademy) a bit more motivating because they kind of push me with deadlines. I guess I am used to deadline-oriented studying. If anyone else is struggling with attention span and is looking for shorter lectures (although they may not have the same depth): https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorDaveExplains/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorDaveExplains/playlists

globalnode 1y ago
Its so hard to be self disciplined like that, I find I have to enroll to force myself to engage. I know its a weakness.
rhubarbtree 1y ago
“A world class education available for free, to the undistractable.”
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Hmm. One could think of the cost as a hack to force you to not be distracted so much.
William_BB 1y ago
In my experience, coursera/khan academy courses have never been able to compete with a rigorous university course. They're great resources when you need alternative explanations, but never stood up on their own. I think long lecture playlist is a feature, not a bug. It's much harder to commit to such material when you're not full timing education.
- barrenko 1y ago
  My 5 cents, the value of KA is that it gives you some sort of basic curriculum you can follow. To finish calculus (the "basic", single variable) I've had to pull in lots of other books, youtube channels, courses from other universities, but it still has it's worth. It's like a rope bridge over a high river. Major weaknesses are some cool sections like Linear Algebra that have no exercises in their respective "tree", but that's very rare.
onetimeuser24 1y ago
I got through a few lectures by recognizing that I didn’t have the mathematical training/practice to finish up one video in one sitting. Often times I would need to scurry on over to have some basics explained to me on another site. I did one lecture over several days (weeks if I had to). I think most of the discipline comes from expectation management. Expect to get stuck and need a few moments or days or weeks to mull something over until it becomes more intuitive. Keep a list of things you do and don’t understand (a simple text file / paper is enough) and keep doing it for a few months if you have to and you’ll get there.
t8q8 1y ago
I completed an earlier version of this class and found structure to be helpful. Found consistent time and place each day to spend some time learning and that helped a ton, but still had weeks of not touching it so the struggle is real :) A bit of a side note but I find that the lectures are not the most interesting/useful part of those courses. The problem sets and the time spent trying to solve them ended up solidifying so many ideas that I had fooled myself into believing I understood. So I highly recommend heads-down solving some problems. It sinks much more time than the lectures but you come out of it better off
vouaobrasil 1y ago
I love math, completed a PhD, and am very self-disciplined. But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start. For some reason, it seems like you need to reach a "critical mass" of knowledge first before you can do that, and I've observed that a crucial component is being in a program with others, and definitely having a very experienced mentor. Without a very experienced mentor, I think it's very difficult to get to the independent-learning stage with math. That's the key. You need someone to go through your work, correct you, and make sure you don't go off in a very wrong direction. So my advice is find at least a graduate student in math to help you. It's like a piano teacher, if you've ever taken piano, you know it's absolutely mandatory to have a teacher. People who self-learn from the start end up being able to play but not very well. Edit: one other crucial component is time. If you're really interested in knowing something like linear algebra, analysis, or calculus with fluency, expect to spend at least 10 hours per week on it for a year. Two hours per week will give you a cursory and very weak understanding only.
- ktallett 1y ago
  I would say that you need to start at a lower level when self learning with a simpler resource. Something like Openstax. People get far too obsessed with the name attached to a resource than whether it is the right method of learning.
- j7ake 1y ago
  Like piano it’s important to tackle courses that are appropriate for your level Self taught people often skip too much of the basics so they struggle to properly tackle the fancy stuff
  - vouaobrasil 1y ago
    Even if they don't skip, they adopt weird hand positions that are hard to correct. There is just too much motor movement that needs to be done right that cannot really be explained or learned by watching a video or reading a book. It's actually similar to math in a certain way, where motor memory is replaced by subtle steps in logical reasoning.
WillAdams 1y ago
This course has been a _huge_ help to me in my current project (a G-code previewer and programmatic 3D modeling system written for (Open)PythonSCAD). I would recommend pairing it with: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretati... and some additional online resources which I've found very helpful: - https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm... - https://www.motionmountain.net/ https://www.motionmountain.net/ and of course https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/ and https://www.gutenberg.org/ https://www.gutenberg.org/ --- for a benchmark on why, well, when my father retired to a rural Virginia county, the library was a metal carrel of books in the basement of the old courthouse, and my favourite books during the summer (when I didn't have access to the school libraries) were Hal Clement's _Space Lash_ (which my father found in a tower at the prison where he worked where reading material was forbidden) and an English textbook containing a number of short stories which my mother purchased from a table of remaindered books in a department store in a town 26 miles away to which we might drive once a month or so.
FilosofumRex 1y ago
Explore use of LLM instead of passive viewing of videos. Pass the link to LLM and ask to summarize it and generate a synopsis and quiz you. We don't learn from lectures, we learn from problem solving Also, be modest and assume you're dumber than you think you are - start with courses where you already know at least 50% of materials covered.
Epitaque 1y ago
I echo this sentiment. One of my favorite periods of my life was college, actually getting to learn about some advanced topics in CS. Then I graduated and got a job and now I struggle so hard to learn new things (despite lecture videos and textbooks and LLMs existing) without a professor grading assignments/giving exams/that you can talk to, or classmates. I’m thinking about enrolling in an online college just for fun. Though the problem I have is that I think the Venn diagram of colleges that are online, aren’t expensive, have advanced CS/ML courses, have an experienced professor that you get to interact with is pretty much zero. If anyone has suggestions, do let me know.
- PeeMcGee 1y ago
  Georgia Tech has a great online MSc CS program (OMSCS) that's very affordable for what it is, though the amount of direct interaction with the professor varies from class to class.
- eumenides1 1y ago
  Try not to beat yourself up too much about it, I certainly have and it hasn't been very useful to do so. You have a finite amount of energy in a day and learning takes a lot of energy. It's why a kid's job is the learn. You could try front running the learning, but it will impact your energy levels at work. It still takes a monumental amounts of discipline, but you may have the energy to make it work.
- snozolli 1y ago
  Maybe the public commitment method would help. I kind of think that's fundamentally what makes college inherently motivating. This is about weight loss, but I think it can be applied to anything: https://www.medicspot.co.uk/weight-loss/behaviour-change/public-commitment https://www.medicspot.co.uk/weight-loss/behaviour-change/pub...
hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
>Perhaps the real motivation to keep up with the material comes from actually enrolling the university? For most people in most situations, the real motivation to keep up with the material comes from the wage premium one gets after getting the sheepskin. It is unsurprising you, a humble autodidact, are having a lot more trouble than an actual MIT student, because unlike an actual MIT student, you will not walk out of this course any closer to having an MIT degree. >I guess I am used to deadline-oriented studying. You can always reverse the curse, and promise to pay someone if you don't finish X material by Y date. You probably also want some kind of proof mechanism to show that you actually did it, like eg a graded test. >Has anyone completed such type of lectures by themselves? How do you stay consistent and disciplined? I've read through several textbooks cover to cover including problem sets since graduating. My motivation is mostly just burning curiosity. I can't stand the feeling of not only not knowing a thing, but knowing that I don't know it or feeling like I'm faking it every time I do act on what I know.
- jrvarela56 1y ago
  At first your comment rubbed me the wrong way, too cynical. But it is completely true. No one would ‘learn’ the way college courses are structured. The only reason these courses get completed is the pace/cadence, GPA requirements to get jobs and the degree. In the ‘real world’ you just learn enough to solve the problem in front of you and as you face more and more your knowledge tree expands. No one in their right mind would go through a syllabus-like sequence - it is just boring, dull as hell.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    >At first your comment rubbed me the wrong way, too cynical. It's only cynical if you think making money is bad! I think it's terrific that your average B student and up is mature enough to reliably take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and work hard for several years without any immediate reward, in exchange for a pretty reliable pathway towards high paying specialized labor for the rest of their lives. It spits in the face of the narrative that young people are too stupid, or too naive or whatever to have agency in their own lives. >The only reason these courses get completed is the pace/cadence, GPA requirements to get jobs and the degree. I cite The Case Against Education, as usual. [1] >In the ‘real world’ you just learn enough to solve the problem in front of you and as you face more and more your knowledge tree expands. No one in their right mind would go through a syllabus-like sequence - it is just boring, dull as hell. I cite too John D. Cook's "Just-in-case versus just-in-time" blog post. [2] I don't work through actual syllabi, but I love working through textbooks from start to finish. But you are also correct that I am emphatically not in my right mind, and my career has suffered for it. ;) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t957pTcJ0E&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t957pTcJ0E&t=2s [2]: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/03/03/just-in-case-versus-just-in-time/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/03/03/just-in-case-versu...
cgriswald 1y ago
Discipline is just making the same choice every time no matter how you feel or what thoughts enter your mind. Your mind will lie to you with thoughts and feelings about why you can’t attend to a lecture. Treat your mind like a child pretending to be sick to get out of school. Even if it is true that in the moment you aren’t focused or whatever other excuses your mind comes up with, so what? “Go to class” anyway. At worst you learn nothing but improve your discipline skills. Set a regular time to watch the lectures so you can’t lie to yourself about doing it later. I want to be clear, it isn’t about willing yourself through it despite everything even if it can read that way. It’s about honoring the choice you made to attend to the lectures and not accepting excuses from your mind. Recognizing that you can choose, recognizing that past you had good intentions for you and deserves you to honor those intentions, and recognizing that your thoughts and feelings in the moment may not be true and “aren’t the boss of you” even if they are true helps tremendously.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
I miss iTunes U from Apple (not iTunes, iTunes U, as in "University"). So many cool (free) courses and so easy to find, download.
somethingsome 1y ago
Part of the value of a university is exactly that. It builds momentum and incentives. Self paces lectures can be available, but it's extremely hard to follow them if you don't have a good evaluation at the end, or if you don't have deadlines to give assignments. But also remember, many of those lectures are at a slower peace, so one or two lectures per week. It takes time to internalize the material. People that don't follow university usually try to binge watch them, but this leads to low outcomes. I think the best strategy is to put deadlines and risks for yourself, and follow them at a natural peace. And, do the exercices.

globalnode 1y ago

Its so hard to be self disciplined like that, I find I have to enroll to force myself to engage. I know its a weakness.

rhubarbtree 1y ago

“A world class education available for free, to the undistractable.”

AnimalMuppet 1y ago
Hmm. One could think of the cost as a hack to force you to not be distracted so much.

William_BB 1y ago

In my experience, coursera/khan academy courses have never been able to compete with a rigorous university course. They're great resources when you need alternative explanations, but never stood up on their own. I think long lecture playlist is a feature, not a bug. It's much harder to commit to such material when you're not full timing education.

barrenko 1y ago
My 5 cents, the value of KA is that it gives you some sort of basic curriculum you can follow. To finish calculus (the "basic", single variable) I've had to pull in lots of other books, youtube channels, courses from other universities, but it still has it's worth. It's like a rope bridge over a high river. Major weaknesses are some cool sections like Linear Algebra that have no exercises in their respective "tree", but that's very rare.

onetimeuser24 1y ago

I got through a few lectures by recognizing that I didn’t have the mathematical training/practice to finish up one video in one sitting. Often times I would need to scurry on over to have some basics explained to me on another site. I did one lecture over several days (weeks if I had to). I think most of the discipline comes from expectation management. Expect to get stuck and need a few moments or days or weeks to mull something over until it becomes more intuitive. Keep a list of things you do and don’t understand (a simple text file / paper is enough) and keep doing it for a few months if you have to and you’ll get there.

t8q8 1y ago

I completed an earlier version of this class and found structure to be helpful. Found consistent time and place each day to spend some time learning and that helped a ton, but still had weeks of not touching it so the struggle is real :) A bit of a side note but I find that the lectures are not the most interesting/useful part of those courses. The problem sets and the time spent trying to solve them ended up solidifying so many ideas that I had fooled myself into believing I understood. So I highly recommend heads-down solving some problems. It sinks much more time than the lectures but you come out of it better off

vouaobrasil 1y ago

I love math, completed a PhD, and am very self-disciplined. But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start. For some reason, it seems like you need to reach a "critical mass" of knowledge first before you can do that, and I've observed that a crucial component is being in a program with others, and definitely having a very experienced mentor. Without a very experienced mentor, I think it's very difficult to get to the independent-learning stage with math. That's the key. You need someone to go through your work, correct you, and make sure you don't go off in a very wrong direction. So my advice is find at least a graduate student in math to help you. It's like a piano teacher, if you've ever taken piano, you know it's absolutely mandatory to have a teacher. People who self-learn from the start end up being able to play but not very well. Edit: one other crucial component is time. If you're really interested in knowing something like linear algebra, analysis, or calculus with fluency, expect to spend at least 10 hours per week on it for a year. Two hours per week will give you a cursory and very weak understanding only.

ktallett 1y ago
I would say that you need to start at a lower level when self learning with a simpler resource. Something like Openstax. People get far too obsessed with the name attached to a resource than whether it is the right method of learning.
j7ake 1y ago
Like piano it’s important to tackle courses that are appropriate for your level Self taught people often skip too much of the basics so they struggle to properly tackle the fancy stuff
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  Even if they don't skip, they adopt weird hand positions that are hard to correct. There is just too much motor movement that needs to be done right that cannot really be explained or learned by watching a video or reading a book. It's actually similar to math in a certain way, where motor memory is replaced by subtle steps in logical reasoning.

WillAdams 1y ago

This course has been a _huge_ help to me in my current project (a G-code previewer and programmatic 3D modeling system written for (Open)PythonSCAD). I would recommend pairing it with: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretati... and some additional online resources which I've found very helpful: - https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm... - https://www.motionmountain.net/ https://www.motionmountain.net/ and of course https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/ and https://www.gutenberg.org/ https://www.gutenberg.org/ --- for a benchmark on why, well, when my father retired to a rural Virginia county, the library was a metal carrel of books in the basement of the old courthouse, and my favourite books during the summer (when I didn't have access to the school libraries) were Hal Clement's _Space Lash_ (which my father found in a tower at the prison where he worked where reading material was forbidden) and an English textbook containing a number of short stories which my mother purchased from a table of remaindered books in a department store in a town 26 miles away to which we might drive once a month or so.

FilosofumRex 1y ago

Explore use of LLM instead of passive viewing of videos. Pass the link to LLM and ask to summarize it and generate a synopsis and quiz you. We don't learn from lectures, we learn from problem solving Also, be modest and assume you're dumber than you think you are - start with courses where you already know at least 50% of materials covered.

Epitaque 1y ago

I echo this sentiment. One of my favorite periods of my life was college, actually getting to learn about some advanced topics in CS. Then I graduated and got a job and now I struggle so hard to learn new things (despite lecture videos and textbooks and LLMs existing) without a professor grading assignments/giving exams/that you can talk to, or classmates. I’m thinking about enrolling in an online college just for fun. Though the problem I have is that I think the Venn diagram of colleges that are online, aren’t expensive, have advanced CS/ML courses, have an experienced professor that you get to interact with is pretty much zero. If anyone has suggestions, do let me know.

PeeMcGee 1y ago
Georgia Tech has a great online MSc CS program (OMSCS) that's very affordable for what it is, though the amount of direct interaction with the professor varies from class to class.
eumenides1 1y ago
Try not to beat yourself up too much about it, I certainly have and it hasn't been very useful to do so. You have a finite amount of energy in a day and learning takes a lot of energy. It's why a kid's job is the learn. You could try front running the learning, but it will impact your energy levels at work. It still takes a monumental amounts of discipline, but you may have the energy to make it work.
snozolli 1y ago
Maybe the public commitment method would help. I kind of think that's fundamentally what makes college inherently motivating. This is about weight loss, but I think it can be applied to anything: https://www.medicspot.co.uk/weight-loss/behaviour-change/public-commitment https://www.medicspot.co.uk/weight-loss/behaviour-change/pub...

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

>Perhaps the real motivation to keep up with the material comes from actually enrolling the university? For most people in most situations, the real motivation to keep up with the material comes from the wage premium one gets after getting the sheepskin. It is unsurprising you, a humble autodidact, are having a lot more trouble than an actual MIT student, because unlike an actual MIT student, you will not walk out of this course any closer to having an MIT degree. >I guess I am used to deadline-oriented studying. You can always reverse the curse, and promise to pay someone if you don't finish X material by Y date. You probably also want some kind of proof mechanism to show that you actually did it, like eg a graded test. >Has anyone completed such type of lectures by themselves? How do you stay consistent and disciplined? I've read through several textbooks cover to cover including problem sets since graduating. My motivation is mostly just burning curiosity. I can't stand the feeling of not only not knowing a thing, but knowing that I don't know it or feeling like I'm faking it every time I do act on what I know.

jrvarela56 1y ago
At first your comment rubbed me the wrong way, too cynical. But it is completely true. No one would ‘learn’ the way college courses are structured. The only reason these courses get completed is the pace/cadence, GPA requirements to get jobs and the degree. In the ‘real world’ you just learn enough to solve the problem in front of you and as you face more and more your knowledge tree expands. No one in their right mind would go through a syllabus-like sequence - it is just boring, dull as hell.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  >At first your comment rubbed me the wrong way, too cynical. It's only cynical if you think making money is bad! I think it's terrific that your average B student and up is mature enough to reliably take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and work hard for several years without any immediate reward, in exchange for a pretty reliable pathway towards high paying specialized labor for the rest of their lives. It spits in the face of the narrative that young people are too stupid, or too naive or whatever to have agency in their own lives. >The only reason these courses get completed is the pace/cadence, GPA requirements to get jobs and the degree. I cite The Case Against Education, as usual. [1] >In the ‘real world’ you just learn enough to solve the problem in front of you and as you face more and more your knowledge tree expands. No one in their right mind would go through a syllabus-like sequence - it is just boring, dull as hell. I cite too John D. Cook's "Just-in-case versus just-in-time" blog post. [2] I don't work through actual syllabi, but I love working through textbooks from start to finish. But you are also correct that I am emphatically not in my right mind, and my career has suffered for it. ;) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t957pTcJ0E&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t957pTcJ0E&t=2s [2]: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/03/03/just-in-case-versus-just-in-time/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/03/03/just-in-case-versu...

cgriswald 1y ago

Discipline is just making the same choice every time no matter how you feel or what thoughts enter your mind. Your mind will lie to you with thoughts and feelings about why you can’t attend to a lecture. Treat your mind like a child pretending to be sick to get out of school. Even if it is true that in the moment you aren’t focused or whatever other excuses your mind comes up with, so what? “Go to class” anyway. At worst you learn nothing but improve your discipline skills. Set a regular time to watch the lectures so you can’t lie to yourself about doing it later. I want to be clear, it isn’t about willing yourself through it despite everything even if it can read that way. It’s about honoring the choice you made to attend to the lectures and not accepting excuses from your mind. Recognizing that you can choose, recognizing that past you had good intentions for you and deserves you to honor those intentions, and recognizing that your thoughts and feelings in the moment may not be true and “aren’t the boss of you” even if they are true helps tremendously.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

I miss iTunes U from Apple (not iTunes, iTunes U, as in "University"). So many cool (free) courses and so easy to find, download.

somethingsome 1y ago

Part of the value of a university is exactly that. It builds momentum and incentives. Self paces lectures can be available, but it's extremely hard to follow them if you don't have a good evaluation at the end, or if you don't have deadlines to give assignments. But also remember, many of those lectures are at a slower peace, so one or two lectures per week. It takes time to internalize the material. People that don't follow university usually try to binge watch them, but this leads to low outcomes. I think the best strategy is to put deadlines and risks for yourself, and follow them at a natural peace. And, do the exercices.