Dijkstra: “You will be treated as grown-ups”

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1256.html

by ColinWright • 13 years ago

294 181 13 years ago

cs.utexas.edu

tel2• 13 years ago

I've been reading the EWD archives the last few months. I'm coming to find Djikstra to be a role model. I think I would do almost anything to have two hours of his undivided attention today.

geekam• 13 years ago

I follow this Twitter account and it helps me discover him more - https://twitter.com/DijkstraQuotes

tel2• 13 years ago

Me too : )

cschmidt• 13 years ago

In case you miss the link in the upper right, his EWD manuscript archive is here:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/welcome.html

evanmoran• 13 years ago

Reading these EWD manuscripts are the reason I believe Dijkstra's lectures would be life changing. A truly wonderful read.

For most professors this format would be terribly difficult. It is hard to teach. It is hard to listen and understand where students are and take them further.

Also, if I may, I'm struck by how similar pg's writing is to Dijkstra. Something about the rhythm of it and its directness.

rumbler• 13 years ago

Read Dijkstra, read Dijkstra. He is the master of us all.

ColinWright7• 13 years ago

For those who don't recognise this reference, it is a paraphrase of Laplace, who said,

    "Read Euler, read Euler.
     He is the master of us all."

stiff4• 13 years ago

And the irony is that Euler was a really poor mathematician by Dijkstra's standards...

fnordfnordfnord20• 13 years ago

I try to treat my students the same way. The fact that almost no one does so makes it tough. Average high school kids have a tough time adapting to it. But when they do, as Dijkstra says, they become much more effective.

Sometimes there is a group that gets it right away, and runs with it, but it usually takes some time.

There are usually a few who think they are smarter than average (they usually are), that their intelligence will compensate (it rarely does), and that they don't need to make any extra effort. They usually figure it out after a semester.

I also had a class mutiny once. I had a couple of intelligent, but spoiled and opinionated students who were vocally critical of my/this instructional style. There was also a larger than usual number of dullards in the class, who were easily led (by the dissenters). The self-nominated leaders managed to turn most of the class' attitude sour. That was the worst semester I've had yet. Everything became difficult. I had trouble maintaining my own discipline.

The real trick that I would like to learn, is how to turn more of the middle and bottom tier of students into better students.

1123581321• 13 years ago

What frustrates me as a student and sometimes teacher is that the role of even the most engaged student cannot be expanded to do the opposite of mutiny: engage the less able students in the class. Why is it that the relationship between an engaged student and a teacher is an individual one? Can the student become engaged with the class of which the teacher is a part? I believe this is the key to solving the problem you pose in your last sentence.

brandonbloom• 13 years ago

Can the student become engaged with the class of which the teacher is a part?

It's certainly hard. I love to teach & help, but most students don't view other students' input as collaborative or helpful. I've frequently experienced cases where a student asked a question and it was obvious (to me anyway) what that student was missing or misunderstanding. Then, it becomes obvious that the teacher doesn't understand the miscommunication. But if I step in to synchronize, such that neither party is speaking past each other, then the student views me as a know-it-all trying to show off and the teacher views me as trying to undermine his authority.

Ultimately, I gave up trying to help unless I know both the teacher and the student personally.

doki_pen• 13 years ago

In the case of mutiny, it is in the leaders interest to engage with his fellow student. In the case of the good student, he's competing with his fellow student, so it's in his best interest not to help them succeed.

fnordfnordfnord20• 13 years ago

even the most engaged student cannot be expanded to do the opposite of mutiny: engage the less able students in the class.

Sure they can. I try to leverage the better students in exactly this way. We're often encouraged to engage students in this way (there is usually a seminar about it at least semi-annually).

Why is it that the relationship between an engaged student and a teacher is an individual one?

FERPA, And I think that's mostly the right way to do things. Instructors shouldn't make direct references to other students, even though it is often impossible not to.

LockeWatts4• 13 years ago

"What frustrates me as a student and sometimes teacher is that the role of even the most engaged student cannot be expanded to do the opposite of mutiny: engage the less able students in the class. "

Why not? I hosted working sessions for everyone in my software engineering class to work on their projects. The number of people who ran into similar bugs and were able to say "Oh, yeah, you have it configured wrong. Here, let me show you" was actually pretty amazing.

Make sure to clear it with the professor, invite him to come by, make it clear nobody is straight copying or anything. But collaborative effort should be encouraged, not reprimanded.

djt• 13 years ago

From having tutored a LOT of students, I would say that one class at university usually wont make a difference to low and middle students as most of the skills they learn that allow them to become top students come from good parenting and several good teachers in primary/secondary school.

zwtaylor• 13 years ago

I was fortunate enough to have a teacher at a public high school whose methods were very similar to your's and Mr. Dijkstra's. The professional attitude and crisp procedure he brought to the classroom extended to even peripheral considerations; he wore a suit every day and addressed each student as "Mr." and "Ms.". Respect and attentiveness were obligatory, but reciprocated.

Though a chronically absentminded student in nearly every other subject, I excelled under his system and completed homework every night, an accomplishment I can say with certainty I never once again achieved in high school. While the knowledge acquired from other courses has atrophied over the years, those classes are still as lucid as ever in my mind.

It may take an initial period for students to become acclimated to this environment, there may even be some push-back, but I think a very formal, cerebral learning climate is beneficial in many cases.

MaysonL3• 13 years ago

The real trick that I would like to learn, is how to turn more of the middle and bottom tier of students into better students.

One useful method is to remind them that they find the subject difficult not because they are stupid, but because the subject is hard, and that with some hard work, it will become easier.

HarryHirsch3• 13 years ago

Dijkstra describes when instruction at a university ought to look like. However, this requires an experienced lecturer and properly enculturated students, and where do you get them from if you haven't got them already?

If I go too fast, it is your duty to slow me down

Haven't we all met inexperienced TAs who mention the salient points but not what makes them salient, and when you call them out they hide behind their great self-confidence?

If I give homework, I give you tasks of which I believe that working on them is very instructive for you

I think everyone has had their share of ill-set or plain pointless homework at uni.

I will not use the overhead projector

A colleague had a student mutiny because he refused to put up his lecture slides for download. The students were complaining that they had to copy lecture notes from a friend if they didn't show up.

dman• 13 years ago

I honestly never understood the TA thing. Why not just reach out to the professor in their open hours or before / after the lecture?

munin• 13 years ago

this presumes that:

- professors have open hours

- professors can be found before or after the lecture

- professors respond to your email

- professors ever go to their offices

HarryHirsch3• 13 years ago

Because the professor doesn't scale, not in an introductory class with > 100 students. Most all problems with the material that arise there can be dealt with with the help of the TA. At graduate level it's different, of course.

greenyoda3• 13 years ago

A competent TA might have more of a rapport with a student, since they'd be closer in age and experience. It's likely that a grad student TA has recently taken the same classes and done the same kind of assignments. Also, a TA may have more time to spend with a struggling student than a professor has. (I've been a TA.)

Fomite• 13 years ago

One thing that hasn't been mentioned - sometimes it helps to have a second voice explaining things, if you didn't get it the first time. If there's something about the professors explanation that is the problem, even if they're accessible it may not help.

A good TA can help approach things from a different direction.

ronaldx3• 13 years ago

A colleague had a student mutiny because he refused to put up his lecture slides for download.

I am an educator:

It's important for accessibility and educational reasons to offer information in written form as well as lecture form.

When Dijkstra says "You will be treated as grown-ups" - this is precisely an example of where you must take this advice and assume that students are asking for genuine reasons.

It's entirely reasonable to offer freestyle lectures (as Dijkstra apparently did), but the only reason to avoid giving students full access to a complete set of written educational material for the course is through laziness/inability to do a proper job or a wish to inappropriately exert power in the student-teacher relationship.

The students were absolutely right to complain here.

kragen3• 13 years ago

It's important for accessibility and educational reasons to offer information in written form as well as lecture form.

Isn't that what the textbook is for? I mean, writing math problems on the blackboard to show how to solve them is dynamic and animated in a way you don't get from a textbook, but you also won't get that from downloaded lecture slides.

LockeWatts4• 13 years ago

"A colleague had a student mutiny because he refused to put up his lecture slides for download. The students were complaining that they had to copy lecture notes from a friend if they didn't show up."

Everyone has sick days from work. When you take a sick day, your work is sitting there when you get back. It hasn't moved.

Students don't have that luxury. The material keeps marching on without them. So not only are they having to learn material they aren't properly prepared for, they also have to go back and relearn what they missed.

Providing slides online in the 21st century is literally one of the most basic things a professor can do. Literally. Install dropbox, put the slides in the dropbox folder. Make the folder public. Done. This requires zero technical know-how, and maybe 2 minutes of signup?

The unwillingness to do that is indicative of a bad professor. Barring unreasonable requests, a professor should try to enable students to do well.

As far as saying, "just get them from a friend." This presents a few problems. 1. You need to have a friend in the class. Not always the case. 2. That friend needs to be there. Sickness travels through social groups very effectively. My friend is more likely to be sick than I am. 3. That friend needs to be at least on my level of competency for the notes to be meaningful. Not everyone's friends are as smart as they are. In fact, unless all the friends are of identical intelligence, this must be the case.

Just put the damn notes online. How lazy can you really be?

gcb0• 13 years ago

Knowing academics in a few countries, i can see how those notes are needed in the us.

Students here are really passives and have weird expectations about course work. And teachers usually don't even show up at their classes leaving all the teaching to TAs.

stiff4• 13 years ago

You can see how well that worked out in practice here (video lectures by Dijkstra, not from any course though):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNCAFcAbSTg

and here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nHv5MUw7Nc

nugget• 13 years ago

Why do we celebrate this theme of Professor as omnipotent, benevolent dictator of the classroom? My last year in school the combined cost of tuition, books, and room and board hit $40,000. At what point do you become not just a student, but also a fee for service consumer, with an appropriate set of expectations for some level of responsiveness and customer service?

GuiA4• 13 years ago

See, that's one of the problems I have with outrageous tuition: it creates dumb expectations from students.

In most European countries, your education is quasi free, and as a result students don't complain about professors not providing "customer service". You go to the university to learn from some of the most eminent figures of your field, people who have devoted their life to it, and you do as they say. If you're not happy, well you can just leave. And sure, some of them are quirky or do dumb stuff, but you're 19- you'll live. And TBH, even the professors I had in college who exposed me to the most BS are nothing compared to some of the BS I've experienced in the real world, with clients/bosses/etc.

If you're going to University of Phoenix, sure, feel entitled to some degree of "customer service". But if you're studying under Dijkstra, just suck it up and soak in as much as you can, even if the "customer service" leaves to be desired. Again, you're 19- you'll live.

Sorry, this is a bit abrasive, but I've been on multiple sides of the equation (student in EU university, student in US university, TA in EU university, TA in US university), and the students who say things like "I pay tuition, I'm a paying customer, professors have to do X/Y/Z for me" are rarely the ones at the top of the class (and rarely aspire to do so).

Sven7• 13 years ago

When it comes to profs of the stature of Dijkstra it doesn't matter what you pay the school.

mkohlmyr• 13 years ago

Conversely, in Sweden where it is indeed mostly free that has created a culture where university is just "something you do" and where the education provided is not valued in the same way by students and has become commoditized in a way which I would argue is detrimental. There's a balance to be struck somewhere. I'm from Sweden but studying in the UK and I think the university culture here is far superior. That being said the recent hike in fees here is probably a move in the wrong direction.

tomjen33• 13 years ago

So just because you are only 19 your money isn't as good as somebody who is older? And here I thought one of the best things about capitalism is that it doesn't discreminate.

Anyway fuck that, customer service matters if the professor can't deal with that he can go back to typying out papers.

eruditely2• 13 years ago

Implying that being at the top of the class is some aspiration that should be sought after for everybody, debasing life into some competition.

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

No, god no. This idea that researchers should be teaching is just horrible, they're not significantly overlapping skill sets. Unless I have a specific research interest, I'm going to learn a lot more from someone who knows the material I'm trying to learn and has been trained in how to teach effectively than I am from someone who knows the material I'm trying to learn and a lot of other material that's not relevant.

It should be that you do your basic degrees with people who are primarily teachers and then you go and do your more research based work with people who are good at that sort of research, if you want to get into that.

The other way around is just people wasting their talents and their student's time by being really inefficient.

The rest of this just seems to be, 'oh they're 19, they'll live... oh we all have to put up with bullshit.' Maybe they will, maybe we do. It's a fully general argument for anything that's not going to kill you.

Life is shit - therefore don't go along with and keep quiet about the shit bits or it'll keep being shit.

ronaldx3• 13 years ago

the students who say things like "I pay tuition, I'm a paying customer, professors have to do X/Y/Z for me" are rarely the ones at the top of the class (and rarely aspire to do so).

I would suggest this is biased, since the top-rated students who understand their needs and are proactive about it won't be around to complain.

The only reason you can get away with providing a worse service to 19-year olds (as you mention twice) than you would to adults is because you have a naive, captive audience who have limited freedom of choice.

tommi• 13 years ago

I sort of agree. For that amount of money, you should have your progress checked every once in a while and given advice. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it's the professors job but that of other supporting structures. Also Dijkstra did suggest that he will answer to questions.

pasbesoin• 13 years ago

Some years ago, I took a course in the nature of continuing education. At my own -- not inconsiderable -- expense, at a well-regarded university (not a for-profit venture or the like). The professor was, IIRC, a member of the tenured, full-time faculty.

A considerable portion of each class was devoted to his lamenting the difficulties of an ongoing move in residence he was undergoing. He seemed quite preoccupied with this.

The course text was in C. He admitted to cribbing lecture notes from another faculty member -- I no longer recall whether these used C or C++. As a result, he often didn't seem to understand the lecture notes he was using.

He "decided" that the two languages were "close enough" that we should do our work in C++. Needless to say, for many of the students, this was more than a bit confusing.

I left that class partway through, as a thorough waste of time. And, as it turned out, of money.

Never again...

I am quite sympathetic to grievances with the position in which universities are putting younger, untenured -- nor even full-time nor insured -- faculty and instructors. It's downright abusive.

The other side, for all that there are many good faculty and administrators, is a level of arrogance and ignorance that... at a minimum, does not deserve the financial remuneration it is receiving.

The system is rotten, from both sides -- entitlement, and exploitation.

----

P.S. I'll add that, previously, I'd taken a maths course from that same university and campus that was taught by a part-time instructor / lecturer / I-forget-the-title-they-used. Despite the instructor's... "lesser rating", he was first rate and was really engaged in and with the class. It was excellent.

bgilroy26• 13 years ago

It could have been an adjunct professor, folks who can be 4 to an office or have no office at all. Some of my best teachers in college were adjunct professors.

ColinWright7• 13 years ago

The service you seek is to gain knowledge and abilities. There is a body of evidence to suggest that you cannot gain that knowledge and experience without making considerable effort, and that the role of the instructors, be they professor or lowly TA, is to give you the opportunity. As such, getting easy-to-understand explanations, perfectly produced and complete notes, and attending entertaining lectures, is not the best way of achieving the stated goal.

Many lecturers are indeed less than ideal, and many instructors similarly fall short, but just because the students give them poor ratings, and complain about work loads, that does not mean that they are not being given exactly what is needed to achieve their stated goals.

You don't get physically fit by listening to work-out videos and watching people jog in the park. You have to go out and do it yourself. People hire personal trainers to devise a plan, and then to shout at them to make them stick to it and to put in the work.

Maybe that's a good analogy. Maybe to get good at math (and programming) you actually need to put in the work, and true learning is born from the effort and confusion you go through before enlightenment.

zeteo• 13 years ago

Ah, if we could buy knowledge the way we buy a haircut! Your comment is a perfect example of how the consumer viewpoint has taken over our society. As incredible as it may seem, there can exist professional relationships that are fulfilling, meaningful - even useful - and do not take the form of an exchange of money for something else. They are not what your $40,000 pays for - most of that is administrative bloat these days.

Groxx• 13 years ago

Oy, people, this is obviously referring to the cases where such costs are reflected by disinterested / unhelpful teachers, which I at least would argue is the vast majority when compared against those who use their benevolent dictatorship to good effect. Such cases are a waste of time and money, and you have essentially no recourse, and no way to prevent it from happening to others.

Schools are not exclusively populated by wonderful teachers. Not even close. As nice as it is to give power to those that are, it also gives power to those that aren't, probably disproportionately so due to sheer numbers. Should we be celebrating and continuing a practice that is a net harm? Is it a net harm?

rwl• 13 years ago

You may be looking in the wrong place.

Faculty and other teaching staff are not usually paid directly by students paying tuition. At larger research universities, tuition might not even make up a significant portion of their salaries (which are also paid by things like government grants, interest on endowments, etc.). They are paid to do research, and their incentives are aligned not toward better teaching but toward publishing and bringing in grant money. Teaching is time-consuming and takes away from those activities, so not all professors like doing it or do it well.

The people who in my experience are most responsive to undergraduates (and their parents) qua paying customers are administrators and "development" people. These people are paid to bring in money in the form of tuition and donations from parents and alumni. With them, you can expect to get some pretty special treatment if you're willing to pay for it, though of course that special treatment isn't supposed to extend to how you're treated in the classroom. And there are good reasons for that: not everyone can pay full tuition, and students shouldn't get more attention/higher grades/etc. just because they're paying more.

I'm not saying this is the way things are everywhere, and I'm certainly not saying it's the way things ought to be. I do think that many faculty need to take teaching more seriously, and their incentives should be better aligned in that direction.

Still, I'm not convinced that education would improve if faculty started seeing students as fee for service customers. In the extreme, I think that would tend to increase faculty's tendency to pander to students, instead of creating and sharing new knowledge with them.

mahyarm3• 13 years ago

Then these overqualified research professors should not waste their time teaching and have this conflict of interest. They should be just mentoring the next generation of research professors and doing their research, since that is where most of their money comes from anyway.

I've gotten far superior instruction in math for example from dedicated instructors at community colleges than I ever got at my university. 30 people sized classes vs 300 sized and it was almost half price. These community colleges are only devoted to teaching and generally they do just fine. A dedicated 24/7 tutor lab and khan academy to be honest would of even been better in some aspects, since you can just tunnel through material, have a tutor help you in a spot you get stuck in and keep on tunneling.

fnordfnordfnord20• 13 years ago

Why do we celebrate this theme of Professor as omnipotent,

"We" don't

benevolent dictator of the classroom?

What do you suggest? Democracy?

My last year in school the combined cost of tuition, books, and room and board hit $40,000.

I think that it has never been communicated well what it really costs to deliver instruction, labs, etc. At least at state funded schools, tuition is only a small part of the cost of running the place. Of course, that money isn't always spent optimally, but that's another story.

At what point do you become not just a student, but also a fee for service consumer, with an appropriate set of expectations for some level of responsiveness and customer service?

Expect to pay a lot more for concierge level service. Also, I'm skeptical of the efficacy of that approach.

greenyoda3• 13 years ago

Would a professor who thought of himself as an "omnipotent, benevolent dictator" encourage his students to interrupt him whenever they didn't understand something? He seems to be asking his students to treat him more like a colleague than a superior, which is much the same relationship you'd have with a good PhD advisor or the leader of a graduate seminar.

And he seems to really care about the future success of his students: "But what I can probably achieve is showing most of you how to become mathematically much more effective, because the other courses in mathematics may teach you mathematics, but rarely teach you how not to waste your time."

Also, from the point of view of someone paying for an expensive product, why would I want the provider of the service to be able to dictate the details of how I use it? E.g., if I don't feel I'm getting any value from a particular homework assignment that I paid for, why should I be penalized for not doing it?

When I was a student in college, I thought of myself as an adult and didn't want to be treated like a child either by my professors or by my parents. I would have appreciated a professor like Dijkstra.

coldtea5• 13 years ago

Why do we celebrate this theme of Professor as omnipotent, benevolent dictator of the classroom? My last year in school the combined cost of tuition, books, and room and board hit $40,000. At what point do you become not just a student, but also a fee for service consumer, with an appropriate set of expectations for some level of responsiveness and customer service?

We don't celebrate it since a long time.

Alas, we have lost it to the cry-baby, demaning consumer student attitude, you very well describe.

That's why university studies are going downhill. He is not there to learn. As a customer, he is, after all, always right.

And if the customer demands an A, he shall get an A. Or maybe a B, is the professor resists giving an A to a C minus student.

chunky1994• 13 years ago

Here's my two pence as a student,

I highly admire the approach of prof. Dijkstra here, since the purpose of going to University is to learn the most we can, from people who know the stuff they're teaching very well, or have the ability to understand said things at a deeper level than the student currently has.

Thus, I cannot see how paying tuition entitles us to demand a professor to do X/Y/Z for us, we're paying not for them to be at our feet, but for access to their understanding of subject matter, which often (depending on the prof./University) is world class.

I also do not see how the professor comes across as omnipotent here at all, he gives students complete control, as can be seen in If I use a word you don't recognize or a sentence you cannot attach a meaning to, it is your duty to ask for clarification. If I go too fast, it is your duty to slow me down.

We pay for our professor's time, and very often the professors who treat the students as adults are the most effective, and are contributing not just to the knowledge of the student, but to their growth as independent thinkers as well.

krmboya• 13 years ago

I'm a recent university graduate in a so-called 'third world country'.

You have no idea how much I'd give just to 'hang out' in the classes of someone the caliber of Dijkstra.

kragen3• 13 years ago

Well, the professor is the person in a position to judge which things are important for you to learn and whether you have learned them. This is a crucial difference from hiring someone to wash your car. If you are looking for a fee-for-service consumer relationship, I believe there are any number of diploma mills and for-profit schools with scandalous dropout rates who will be happy to oblige you.

But I'd appreciate it if you didn't attempt to interfere with people who are looking to be educated, which is to say, guided to develop into proper humans, rather than serviced.

It has been two thousand years, and there is still no royal road to geometry, Your Majesty.

rtpg• 13 years ago

It's called "office hours".

hypersoar• 13 years ago

I have a professor at a large state school who taught a couple of large (i.e. multiple hundreds of students) calculus classes a few years back. He assigned homework, but didn't make it part of their grade. It was just practice (the homework was through an online system). Lectures weren't required. Lots of students get stuck in these classes who shouldn't be, and he felt that they shouldn't be forced to sit through lectures that were a waste of their time. He left it up to them to decide whether they needed the lectures or not.

The result? Most of the students decided that they didn't need to do anything for the class aside from take the final exam. Most of them failed, including almost half of the engineering students (who, as a result, couldn't finish an engineering degree in 4 years), and there was a university-wide outcry.

chacham15• 13 years ago

Im sorry, but if you think that you can NOT attend a class and do well, you deserve whatever grade you get. It is not the teachers fault for not forcing you to go to class.

thrownaway24242• 13 years ago

Well, I don't know. I had an upper division thermodynamic class where the professor was an admitted bad lecturer. He had two policies. One was if you had an A grade already based on the mid-term exam and weekly assignments, you need not take the final exam. The other was if your final exam grade was higher than your mid-term + homework, you get the grade from the final. I personally rarely attended the lectures and walked out with an A prior to the final. Friends of mine also did not attended, but passed the final exam. A number of people who regularly attended the lectures failed the class.

From this experience I formed the belief that a university lecturer can actually be counter-productive to the students learning the subject.

maaaats• 13 years ago

Not sure what level of education we're talking about here, but at least in Norwegian universities lectures are mostly not mandatory. I never attend them. I do the required work and do well on the exam. The key is that: instead of spending 2 hours on a lecture where I'm sitting there passive, maybe not paying attention and the lecturer will only give the big picture and not the details (so I still have to read up on the subjects afterwards), I instead spend 1.5h reading/doing it by myself.

tomjen33• 13 years ago

I had one instructor who was so completely useless that I stopped attending his lectures. I ended up with the highest possible grade and, as he smilling me informed me, that was because I had clearly paid attention in his class (he had to had noticed me because just before I bailed I noticed that there were only about 5-10 students left).

So how did I get that grade? Simple, I read the text book (and found it rather obvious and slow-going) and made many notes.

Shish2k• 13 years ago

And lo, the students learned a lesson which will be more important to them in the real world than any amount of math would have been.

MaxScheiber• 13 years ago

I really wish I could agree with you. My gut tells me that a good number of the students that failed probably decided that it must have been because they're not good at math or engineering.

pjscott• 13 years ago

This is why you have multiple exams, and don't assign too much weight to the first one. The traditional role of first exams is a kick in the pants: "Hey kid! You thought you were passing this class? Well, you're not; get it together!"

This sort of thing is also popular with students, since it means that the final exam isn't all-important.

kragen3• 13 years ago

It seems like it would work better to have a two-problem quiz every week: one problem in what you supposedly just learned, and another on something from earlier in the course you might have forgotten. This seems like it would take only about twenty minutes per week and give the students much better information on their progress, so I wonder why it isn't widely adopted.

10098• 13 years ago

This is the way we were taught pretty much every subject in our university. It doesn't work. What happens is, nobody studies anything during the semester (because nobody checks their progress), then there's a one or two week cram session before the oral exam, and after that you forget everything forever.

P.S.: I'm not from US, in our country you could get education for free

kenster07• 13 years ago

Just because someone is brilliant does not mean they are a good educator.

bryceneal• 13 years ago

* If I am unable to find you in the classroom. I will proceed to search every adjacent desk recursively until I find you.

clubhi• 13 years ago

It seems more cost efficient to just read one of this books and pay him $500/hour for private tutoring.

soheil• 13 years ago

I'd imagine almost any other 70 old year teaching a math class would pass around a very similar syllabus.

vlasev3• 13 years ago

Great person != great teacher. To be honest, if you watch [1] his lecture, he doesn't grab me as a good teacher. In fact I would probably fall asleep in his lectures. I've seen a lot of professors and how they teach during my undergrad and graduate mathematics education. It's not uncommon to witness a professor who has numerous awards for their research but who is awful as a teacher. It could be lack of motivation on their part for all I know. Dijkstra could be the very best out there in some matters but it doesn't mean we should take after his style of teaching.

To be more specific, Dijkstra's organizational matters make him seem to me as somewhat cold and detached. Watching his lectures on youtube confirms this feeling. He also TEACHES in that way and frankly this is not the best way to get knowledge into students' heads. Nor will students ever feel like he really cares.

Perhaps such a person will be more engaged if he teaches a graduate course with topics from his research but from what I've seen, this is not always the case. In fact, the worst course I ever had was by a professor with numerous awards, who's also great at giving presentations and talks, but who taught his research topics like absolute crap.

[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNCAFcAbSTg

ColinWright7• 13 years ago

    > In fact I would probably fall
    > asleep in his lectures.

It's not his job to entertain you. It's his job to make the material available for you to study and assimilate, and to provide insight you would find difficult to gain simply by reading from a text. You falling asleep is your problem, not his.

Everything you say sounds plausible, but a recent paper[0] shows that two teachers delivering identical material, one in an organized and engaging manner, the other disorganized and unengaging, received exactly the evaluations you'd expect, but their styles resulted in exactly the opposite.

In particular, lecturer A was engaging and organized, and got excellent evaluations. Lecturer B was disorganized and unengaging. And yet in subsequent courses it was the students of lecturer B who went on to get the higher grades.

Thinking someone is an excellent lecturer is not the same as being taught effectively.

[0] HN submission[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6041803

[1] Direct link: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/scarrell/profqual2.pdf

fnordfnordfnord20• 13 years ago

Thinking someone is an excellent lecturer is not the same as being taught effectively.

This a thousand times. Most student evaluations are garbage.

It's not his job to entertain you. It's his job to make the material available for you to study and assimilate, and to provide insight you would find difficult to gain simply by reading from a text. You falling asleep is your problem, not his.

No, but at the same time, we can and should look to optimize the ways in which we deliver material.

vlasev3• 13 years ago

This is a very interesting study, thanks for sharing it. With risk to go against what I said earlier, I have to admit that I've seen the same thing in my own learning and that of some of my peers in my math program. The first two years of math courses were great and we did well and the more advanced ones were, of course, harder but we just couldn't do as well on them as we wanted. However, I'll argue strongly that it's not because our first few teachers were so good, from perspective of evaluation but because the later professors were not up to par.

You see, Calculus courses are taught so much that the material has been developed and optimized to an extent that when I took my Calculus courses, I fell in love with math. Even somewhat more advanced courses like Linear Algebra and Complex Analysis are quite optimized for learning. Go in a little deeper into things like Real Analysis, Group Theory, Abstract Algebra and Galois Theory, and all of a sudden, everybody teaches these courses differently. Of course, these courses are taught less and they are not as optimized. THIS, I will argue is the reason for the decreased performance in the "deeper subjects".

Let me use an analogy. Let's say your first big relationship is with a really easy-going happy person and you have great times but eventually you have to part ways for some arbitrary reasons. Some time later you get into a second big relationship and this time the other person is difficult. They are battling through a lot of childhood issues and have problems with self-esteem. All of a sudden, you find yourself unable to deal well with this person, eventually you break it off.

Now, was your lack of "performance" in the second relationship due to the first one being so good or due to the second one being so crap?

Now, from the paper's conclusion:

A final, more cynical, explanation could also relate to student effort. Students of low-value-added professors in the introductory course may increase effort in follow-on courses to help “erase” their lower than expected grade in the introductory course.

I have seen and experienced this all too often. Case in point - one of my friends got a C in Calc 1 but went on to get A's in the next few Calc courses.

kqr2• 13 years ago

Are there any books or lecture notes for the class? It sounds pretty interesting.

peterwwillis• 13 years ago

It's funny that he has to explicitly state that. It pretty much implies he knows they are not grown-ups. I imagine the average college student being scared shitless of interrupting the highly-esteemed professor to ask him wtf he's talking about.

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

The comments here are very illuminating about attitudes that some learners have to learning. Thanks to Colin for sharing the link.

Some instructors here ask how to set expectations so that students will be ready to take responsibility for their learning and work hard before giving up. This is a problem that consumes my attention as I offer advanced mathematics lessons (a prealgebra course using the Art of Problem Solving textbook

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/viewitem.php?item=p...

for third, fourth, and fifth graders). Many American elementary school pupils are not used to challenging mathematics lessons. I have to establish expectations appropriately to have any hope of success in class. (And I have enjoyed some gratifying successes with many of my alumni over the years.) To inform parents (and their children) in advance about what my classes are like, I have prepared some FAQ documents about mathematics learning

"Problems versus Exercises"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/ProblemsversusExercises.php

"Repetition and Practice"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php

"Links About Learning Mathematics"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/LearningMathematics.php

and

"The Explorer is the Person who is Lost, or Courage in the Face of Stupidity"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php

to help the learners get ready for the delight of taking on tough learning challenges. The last of the four FAQs is based on an inspirational speech given in various forms in various places by mathematician Paul Zeitz, a coach of the 1996 United States "dream team" to the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), still the only IMO team ever to achieve perfect scores among all six team members. His key word from his speech is featured prominently in the FAQ and in first-day-of-class messages I give live to all my new students. It is now the "inspirational word" for many of my students as they grow up into adult life.

impendia• 13 years ago

1996 United States "dream team"

1994 :)

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

Past my edit window. Thanks for the correction.

P.S. I do still have my edit window for THIS comment, so I'll add a (user-edited, alas) link to a description of the 1994 United States IMO team,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mathematics_Competitio...

and a link with IMO results from 1994:

http://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=1994

patcon• 13 years ago

> 1996 United States "dream team"
1994 :)

1992 :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men's_Olympi...

mathattack• 13 years ago

Has anyone here had Dijkstra as a teacher?

This note could be the intro to a phenomenal learning experience, or a pompous self-important jerk. Given his impact to the field, it could actually go either way.

Can anyone here speak to personal experience with the professor?

Dijkstra: “You will be treated as grown-ups”

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