Hacker News Reader

Comment by ninkendo | Hacker News Reader

> classes which have you regurgitate what you learned to pass

I think that's what school is, no?

I'm not trying to be glib, I think this is just a reality of how education works in pretty much all subjects (typical US academia, YMMV etc.) Can you name a major that doesn't work this way?

View on HN

I had to write real proofs (tho I didn't fail completely if it wasn't free of errors) for my U.S. math undergrad degree.

Did those proofs have to be novel, or were the proofs of already known concepts?

I'm sure those proofs at the time were novel to the student but obviously not the professor who assigned the problem. That's how the student learns.

Novel to the student up to a point—math students are taught a variety of proof techniques in each of their subjects, theorems that students are required to prove generally fall to very similar techniques.

They have to be novel in my experience.

I have a BS in Mathematics from a mediocre school (University of Arizona) and exams were always "prove this fact (which you have never heard of before)", never "what is the proof of XYZ theorem (which we studied)"

there is so much room for questions, it's quicker to write the proof than to search an answer. And a readily found answer would, for undergrad, less likely be in proof form, or too distinct for specific topics later on. And the instructor might become suspicious and interogate you, in which case, if the material helped you to understand, that's the point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com