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Comment by aspaceman | Hacker News Reader

You can still get value from a book that doesn’t give you all the answers. You can even get more value. Christ the answers have been all solved in papers, in literature, it’s all out there in small baby words what to do.

But the whole damn point of math is learning to do it on your own. It’s like bitching that an art textbook doesn’t include draw by numbers in the back pages.

“I just want to know I’m doing it right“ Then check your work? Proofs can be checked. People did math alone before you.

I really view this mentality as pretty childish. Life doesn’t have a solutions guide. Get over it. This is easily one of the best written books on the subject. And I love that the problems remain difficult and meaningful, _because_ there’s not just a solution guide out there for every problem.

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Why are you so mad. Your argument is so overblown that even the modicum of value that is in your argument is rendered useless.

Why don’t you ask people to invent math, then, and not show them the way? Why even teach anything? Of course people learn by checking their proof and being thorough, but it’s up to them. Solutions can provide certainty for people, much like how peers and peer review system can in science. Even the most decorated academics need a second opinion, and you are pretending like that isn’t a thing.

I think you need to stop being so harsh and get over yourself. Not everybody uses a solutions manual the way you think.

I TAed for this course. That's why I'm so mad. I have a personal stake in this game and you're talking out of your ass. I ain't asking them to invent math any more than I ask a painter to invent painting, or a writer to invent writing. Do they have solutions guides?

I'm not asking anyone to invent math. I'm asking them to work through the solutions and attempt to find a proof themselves. A _proof_. Not a solution. Christ.

Reading only solutions for proof-based mathematics misses the entire point of writing proofs. It's learning how to write. Do essay based courses have solution guides? Does your English course have a solution guide for the essay? How do you get better at writing? You read the written word. You read examples. Just like the examples Jeff works out tirelessly in every single chapter for you. Then you're expected to do it yourself.

Read the actual damn exercises in the book instead of talking out of your ass from the comment section. Each question requires at least a couple paragraphs of articulation. Some require multiple pages - single spaced. Are you asking Jeff to provide a 5000 page solution guide for these problems? Some of these are even research problems, writing all the solutions to them would likely award Jeff a Turing Award.

Just like writing, there's a lot of other resources and books to read out there. Plenty of things to reference and places to find inspiration in. But it has to be on your own. You can't just pull out "Great Gatsby Essay Solutions Guide" and use it to write your essay. I don't care if that's "just how you learn".

Christ. I'm so angry because every one wants to teach every subject like it's fucking Calc 1. And that's plain idiocy. The entire value I got out of this course in undergrad was technical writing. Learning how to actually "write" a proof, and not just nonsensically sling notation at a poor soul. Comparing Jeff's writing with mine, seeing where I tripped up, and trying again.

When I TA-ed for the course, I had to fail so many students who "had the right solution" and they did. They had the perfect answer, that they copied from the fuck next door and couldn't write about to save their life. The alegbra was exquisite, the typesetting immaculate, the writing and logic completely incomprehensible. 1/5 points. Every time. Most of them couldn't compose a single full sentence.

Fuck the solutions. And fuck your mentality.

I won't comment on your attitude, to not stir up your emotions even more. I'll just pick a little paragraph from your comment:

> The entire value I got out of this course in undergrad was technical writing. Learning how to actually "write" a proof, and not just nonsensically sling notation at a poor soul. Comparing Jeff's writing with mine, seeing where I tripped up, and trying again.

Specifically:

> Comparing Jeff's writing with mine, seeing where I tripped up, and trying again.

Hey, you get it! You spent an entire screen trying to pretend that having model solutions is wrong and useless and pointless, but you made a slip up and admitted you've known the value all along! Oopsie.

But yeah, I understand your point (kind of), but you yourself seem to find value in comparing your solutions with the 'correct' ones — not only the contents, but the formulation as well. Do you find it so hard that others, maybe some that aren't from Illinois at all and just like the book, would do the same?

My entire point is he’s written all the model solutions you need. They’re in the notes. That’s what I compared with. I didn’t have additional resources I’m talking about here. Just comparing my proofs with the ones given in the notes above.

You can’t possibly write all the other ones. It’s not humanly possible. Try it. You’ll get a Turing award if you do.

Your analogies are actually terrible. If you can’t see it, I am sorry.

And also, this is not reddit or Twitter. Hell, the reason why you are being this angry is probably because it’s a forum like this. People here won’t respond to your anger like a troll. If you like the response, keep going. Everybody has their own psychological quirks.

I honestly don’t have time to read the entirety of a book I am commenting on. I never said I read the book. So you clearly know more about the book, more about the professor, etc.

But that doesn’t give you the fucking right to rage, does it.

Out of personal curiosity, I have read your comments in other threads. You get angry. A lot. For no reason. If you are educated and have a lot of stake and experience, you should at least pretend to be humble so that you don’t throw dirt on educated people like yourself (e.g. your professor).

You are making us all look bad :)

Yes. A lot of textbook writers take the time to structure the exercises so that working them out yourself guides you to a much deeper knowledge and appreciation.

One day, out in the real world, you will be faced with problems for which there is no solution ready to go. A good education prepares you for that challenge.

> And I love that the problems remain difficult and meaningful

And there it is, your argument comes down to gatekeeping.

If all the problems have been publicly solved, as you said, then what's the harm of having a solutions guide? The cheaters can already find what they're looking for and it helps the self-learners who are actually trying to learn.

They haven't. A lot of the exercises are unsolved research problems.

You're missing the point entirely. You're just banging your head against "Different people learn in different ways". I am saying, that the thing this course, (that I took by the way), is trying to teach students is the skill of writing proofs effectively.

A solutions guide, as you imagine it, would not teach students to write proofs effectively. Since many of the problems in this book are of a research level, many are highly advanced. Many require many multiple pages of exposition to describe the solution effectively.

You would thus have to make a tradeoff. Remove the harder questions and write simpler explanations, so you can write a cost-effective and printable solutions guide. But then the "solutions" aren't actually solutions at all, but vague allusions towards the correct process. The student assumes that the "answer" are these vague allusions, "since that's what the solutions guide says" and the entire point of the class is bypassed in favor of passing more students.

It has absolutely nothing to do with gatekeeping, or cheaters. And quite frankly, I don't believe that advanced mathematics will ever able to be the most accessible thing in the world. And that's just its nature.

EDIT: Seriously if this was Calc, I'd totally agree with you 110%. A lot of people can only learn that stuff by staring at the answer being worked out. But that's not math man, and it's not what we want to teach people in this course.

Thanks for the more reasonable take, though I still have to disagree.

What you're saying directly contradicts the professor's own statement:

> Please do not ask me for solutions. With very rare exceptions, I will say no, even if you are an instructor. I recognize that my stance limits the utility of these materials, especially for self-learners, but I'm trying to optimize the learning experience of my own students at Illinois. The point of homework is not to solve that particular homework problem, but to practice solving a type of problem and get honest feedback on your progress. I've found that when solutions are available, my own students are much more likely to rely on them, rather than trying to figure out the problems themselves, which means they get both less practice and less honest feedback, which means they do worse on exams and in the course overall.

> And while I firmly believe that each student is ultimately responsible for their own learning, I also believe that it's my responsibility as an instructor to help them. Putting dessert on the table does not help anyone eat their vegetables.

tl;dr: students tend to rely on solutions when they are available, they don't learn as much and get worse grades which reflects badly on him.

It has _nothing_ to do with a tradeoff of writing simpler explanations for a more printable guide. He even acknowledges that it limits the utility for self-learners, which you disagree. He's a professor with obligations to his students so I understand his decision, just sucks that an amazing book won't be more accessible to people.

Thank you for engaging the other commenter and articulating my stance better than I could have. Also - while I have deep respect (I truthfully do) for the expertise of folks who teach this material - I have lost patience for their patronising tones and unhelpful assumptions about the folks that might read this book and books like it.

The world needs an algorithms book that shows a modicum of humility to its readers. A book that assumes that more than simple children are reading it (incidentally, and in a puzzling contradiction - also using needlessly convoluted English to express ideas). Hopefully I can do something about that ‘one day’.

Totally agreed, the academic world has always operated and depended on a walled garden approach and making things needlessly complicated. Thankfully the cracks are forming, the pandemic probably sped things up quite a bit with universities trying to charge students to essentially watch Youtube videos.

What's funny to me is that UIUC offers an online CS masters program now. Not having accessible solution guides seems like a disadvantage to these students.

Let me write these solutions to these research level problems....Just give me a couple years and some funding please. They don’t have solutions yet. Hello? You have to figure them out because the professor doesn’t know.

Are you even reading what I’m saying? How do they write solutions? I feel like a crazy person as everyone is talking about a walled garden. Like hello? Do you understand what, “there is no solution until you find it” means? Do you understand what, “there are many worked solutions in the text” means?

> And there it is, your argument comes down to gatekeeping

Bullshit. If you want to play basketball in the NBA, you have to practice your ass off to develop the necessary skills. If you want to be a successful car mechanic, you have to practice your ass off to develop the necessary skills. If you want to be a successful cook, you have to practice your ass off to develop the necessary skills.

The homework is a vehicle for practice. Effective practice is real work. Real work is hard. Therefore, the homework must be hard.

While I agree with you, you have to remember who the HN audience is. There's a reason why the top voted comment in any thread about math is someone asking for solutions.

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