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| An observation on homework problems |
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| nctnico:
--- Quote from: rhb on March 02, 2019, 09:44:30 pm ---A very nice summary of where we are today and why. Thank you. --- End quote --- No, it is old people 'everything used to be better' thinking. Re-inventing the wheel to understand how the wheel works isn't a good use of time. Just know what kind of wheel you need for a certain situation and order that wheel off-the-shelve is a much better use of time. Let a wheel specialist figure out how to design & make the wheel. |
| tpowell1830:
As nctnico observed, this does sound a bit like 'everything used to be better' thinking. However, as a person that did not get the level of education that RHB has, I have found that the key to all of my successful completion of all my projects was focus. Focus can be learned, and although working those problems for hours is an exercise, as RHB put it, the key was focus. As I have mentioned in the past, I am an old fart at 65, but my accumulated knowledge is a result of working the problem in a focused manner. Albeit I have good intuition for how things work, sometimes it is not obvious and that is where things grind down to a slower pace. I do agree that the problems that are already solved are there for the picking, but we should always look at things with a critical eye to be sure that what we see is optimized, and don't take the word of the original designer/engineer. Also, ask the hard questions whether it is best optimized for our solution in the project. Again, there is a lot of ageism out there where young people don't trust old people, but there are gems out here that can be utilized if needed. I never said that older people are always right, but, we do have a lot of experience that we can share for the right person and situation. We are what we are, no more, no less. my 2 cents... |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: tpowell1830 on March 02, 2019, 10:18:17 pm ---As nctnico observed, this does sound a bit like 'everything used to be better' thinking. However, as a person that did not get the level of education that RHB has, I have found that the key to all of my successful completion of all my projects was focus. Focus can be learned, and although working those problems for hours is an exercise, as RHB put it, the key was focus. As I have mentioned in the past, I am an old fart at 65, but my accumulated knowledge is a result of working the problem in a focused manner. Albeit I have good intuition for how things work, sometimes it is not obvious and that is where things grind down to a slower pace. I do agree that the problems that are already solved are there for the picking, but we should always look at things with a critical eye to be sure that what we see is optimized, and don't take the word of the original designer/engineer. Also, ask the hard questions whether it is best optimized for our solution in the project. --- End quote --- Agreed. I think it is more important to be able to analyse a problem and recognise a good solution rather than being able to master every detail of the solution. The latter can actually be counter productive because it is easy to loose sight of the big picture. |
| Kjelt:
--- Quote from: rhb on March 02, 2019, 08:36:20 pm ---A very common homework problem asks the student something they have been taught, but places it in a different context so they have to look for the relationship. The most common problem simply asks the student to apply the information they have been given to solving a problem. --- End quote --- Actually IMO many math and physics highschool homework asignments are nowadays just comprehensive reading asignments where the student has to extract the parameters for the formulas from the "story". I already had a different topic about this so will not elaborate here. I agree with most part you wrote after that. --- Quote ---Playing a musical instrument is the same way. If you don't play every day your skills diminish rapidly. --- End quote --- I played piano for years, stopped a few years and picked it up now and then. The oldest pieces I played for a long time are still there, I believe they are somewhere embedded in my subconsciousness , if I rationaly try to think what key I need to play and when, it is gone, if I just do it, it is all still there. Strange how the human brain works. I must admit it takes time to regain the speed and precision but ut will probably never be gone. Just like swimming or riding a bicycle. I agree that practice makes the master, what was it 10000 hours to master any subject ofcourse if not limited by physical ability and/or brainpower. |
| rhb:
FWIW I have 1 hour of WATFIV FORTRAN as my sole computer related credential. I've gone from a BA in English lit to an MS in hard rock geology to reflection seismology, which makes the DSP that most EEs do look like an afternoon nap. I fear complexity for the same reason Ken Thompson feared complexity. We are now dependent upon things that no single person is able to understand. I spent a lot of time fixing bugs in million line code bases. I share Thompson's discomfort with anything over 10-20 thousand lines. I just learned to swim through the mess. @kjelt the real world doesn't give you the formula. What you get is a bunch of information which is often incomplete and much of which is extraneous. Quickly determining if you have enough information is valuable. I'd loved to give examples from geology, but I'd get banned again if I did. |
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