The “three things” exercise for getting things out of talks (2011)
math.stanford.edu
math.stanford.edu
And of course, sometimes you are presented with a wonderful theorem, that just makes you open the book/paper and start seeing why it is true.
Isn't the article assuming you already are a practitioner?
People in different areas of maths have radically different languages and ways of thinking about things. And subareas will develop their own ways of thinking and talking about things. If you are a young researcher, you almost certainly have to learn these, if you want to understand the area. A more mature researcher can be confident enough to understand the new area in their own language.
I never passed a math class after my second try at pre-calculus. Before that I never even had to look at a book. Looking back I think it was a failure for me to ask the right questions or a failure of the teachers to help me visualize how to work out the systems starting from basic principles. I couldn't solve anything without starting from scratch. Still can't. I get paid ludicrously well for making a marketable skill out of that form of reasoning, so I can't think it's either a mental flaw or laziness that prohibited me from grokking calculus in 12th grade. Somewhere in there was a failure to provide the reality handle that mapped to something I could reinvent if necessary.
[edit] fwiw I think I've reinvented trigonometry at least six times when I needed to for games. I never remember how it worked the last time.
One kid just groks the math. One kid groks the fun(){} ...in a perfect world, those brains should just complement each other, I guess.
I do recall when first taking calc they briefly mentioned delta-epsilion proofs and limits but really hand waved past it, which i guess would be hard if you want everything on solid foundations.
As the teacher looked at the results, he said I should receive a Nobel for my work. As my son told me that, I had a very long sigh...
I don't think you deserve a Nobel, but I do think that teaching your son to solve lots of different problems with algorithmic recursion is going to help him much more in life than memorizing the way to solve one problem on a math test.
I don't think I ever understood math except where it was logical, within the bounds of what I could deduce. But when I learned to write recursive algorithms, that capacity for deduction expanded exponentially.
(Eventually math switchs much more to be about proving things [inb4 someone yells howard-curry], but that is more mid-undergrad degree.)
This does sound like a psychological crutch 'living in the moment' technique of feeling good that you've achieved something (learning 3 things) rather than understanding the material or atleast the nature of the area/problem described in the talk.
Would the same benefits be had from skipping the talk and reading the conclusions slide?
I view this really as a trick for the more obtuse talks. I can fully take and benefit from notes on something i understand. But if i end up in a talk that is going to be beyond me, having the goal of not taking notes, but picking tidbits is often the only way to get anything out of it. If i take full notes i forget to listen as there's simply far too much to write down. If i take no notes, then after the next couple talks I've totally forgotten everything i "learned". If i take very few, short notes then i can still pay enough attention to try understanding but i also have a couple anchor points from which to remember the talk.
It's just a balancing act, especially when you're in a conference where you have to pick a new talk every 30 minutes for six hours a day for 4 days. It can get pretty ridiculous and having a better strategy than "just remember it" or "well write everything down" can be very useful when the most interesting talk to you is in the middle on day 3.
If you were listening to such a talk, you might get excited about following in their footsteps, or about going on a different hiking trip entirely. You'd learn some useful advice, gain confidence, and understand better how to cope when something went awry.
But you wouldn't mistake listening for having been on the trail yourself.
My Everest is not safe to climb. We make it somewhat safe for tourists on the backs of many dead or mistreated locals, a lot of litter that cannot be safely cleaned up, and a bunch of other harms that I can't remember.
The ideas in the article here still apply, but being 'late' is not a thing.
Decent video + helpful chat community = all you need for Maths/CS stuff (below research level). You don't need university lectures where you need to madly cycle across campus to make it on time.
You're right to suggest that video can be a good replacement for in-person lectures. But it's a terrible replacement for a transcript or other way of publishing content in two dimensions rather than binding it to the progression of time.
I've been working through an applied linear algebra textbook on my own this summer and have at multiple points encountered subjects that the book simply could not communicate to me well. I go search a video on the topic and find that the man who wrote the book also made video lectures from the time he released the book, so it's not like the book sucks and the videos are $100,000 dollar productions. If anything the book is ridiculously better produced than the videos. It's just him talking into what sounds like a crackly phone mic and drawing on pieces of paper under a bright but inconsistent light.
But you know what, I'll be damned if those videos didn't make sense of every difficulty i had in the book. And it's explicitly the benefits of video, he shows the process while talking and there's no editing for brevity or page count, just the raw facts that come into his head as he progresses. It's so good that I've honestly switched to the videos for at least a chapter. I find they're more succinct and usable, and i learn much faster from them. And that's nowhere near a 3b1b level of video!
Again, you're entitled to your opinion but i don't think the fact that you like books better gives you the ability to state the 'fact' that books are downright and unquestionably better than videos, podcasts, images, hell even vr some day maybe. Videos are also drastically more accessible. I can find videos on things that would cost me hundreds of dollars to get a comparable book on. It drastically lowers the barrier to learning and i think that's really important for children whose classrooms are not adequately challenging them
But yeah, I'd love written instructions with optional videos for each step.
I used Youtube to learn a lot of CS stuff. As a side effect, I also feel like I now have a solid understanding of Hindi.
Also, i knew they were talking shit about basically everybody cause the managers and professors couldn't understand what they were saying. One time the group leader came up to me all concerned to ask if i knew hindi because i guess i was laughing at a few too many of their jokes. I just nonchalantly didn't answer to keep em on their toes lol.
Really? This is the exact reason I hate so much knowledge is on Youtube instead of text + figures.
When I want to learn something like a woodworking technique video does help immensely to see someone do the physical thing they describe with the materials to get a level of understanding. Like oh that's how you position the wood on a jig to use your table saw like a jointer (an expensive tool I don't have). Rarely do I need to see the person/tools in play for anything software related.
Text is king for me when learning things regarding computers. Granted I learned CS the old fashioned way, in a lecture hall before google existed. I imagine for beginners maybe getting down early concepts is easier with video?
It's a simple mindfulness hack.
When I have taken part in a conference or a series of lectures, an aggregation or 'best of' selection takes place in my mind afterwards (this can also be only one point in the end) and the whole event was only a success for me if this 'one' thing can still be recalled days and weeks later.
Depth has its merits but it's not reasonable to expect the participant to retain all that knowledge. Let them come back for more once those few things they retained tickle their fancy!
After years of doing it I classified talks as of two types: first is where you know you want to listen to this person because that topic is already of great interest and you’re looking for the details. You already know how pluripotent stem cells came about but it was fun to hear Shinya Yamanaka describe the actual experiments and how they came about. Or perhaps it’s your competitors presenting their latest “ready to be public” findings where you’re trying to read between each line and dot in figures to guess what else they have up their sleeves they haven’t published yet.
The second category is of talks where you have some interest or hook but that’s it. Maybe it’s a Nobel laureate (I can assure you most Nobel talks are the most boring and useless ones you can go to). Maybe it’s an obscure topic but has some interesting keyword that intrigued you. So you just go there. Perhaps you get totally captivated in that talk, perhaps you learn some nuggets of information that you never knew about, but perhaps worst of all you zone out quickly because it’s too arcane or boring.
I still see the second category as the most rewarding. Maybe you’re bored in the talk, but that puts you in a place where you typically can’t leave, someone’s yapping and seeding your random thought generator with kernels of factoids that your imagination can run wild in. I often come out of these talks with other ideas only vaguely related. Some other times I’d have refined some of my own project ideas since I have nothing better to do.
None of these trials and tribulations have anything to gain from a contrived exercise to jot three things down though.
I remember when I first started my PhD, literally all of the talks were completely over my head, and I did not understand enough to engage as you describe here :)
Gathering three key takeaways would already require a good deal of effort :) and, I appreciate that the author of this post absolves you of having to have the speaker’s message as a key takeaway, since as a beginner grad student that is frequently beyond reach.
There is an exercise called three good things
And it’s the challenge of thinking/naming/saying three good things
About what? About anything
So for example, if you want to be a bit more social, you can apply it to meeting someone
As soon as you see them: think three good things about them or the moment
The idea is to flex our “liking” muscles, which makes us feel good and we can actually develop a habit of triggering consciously
We sit wayyyy too much in business and tech. There is not nearly enough movement. Yet our bodies are built for movement, not for sitting on our duffs for most of the day.
Imposing such an artificial and rigid structure when attending a talk will stress me out, get me less, and turn me off. I still remember my student days when the best lectures or talks served to inspire, and I'd often dig deep into a subject because of that.
This advice is for the audience, not the speaker. (There's lots of good advice out there on how to give a talk, too!)
If Ravi gave a seminar talk, and everyone listening wrote down their "three things", then I'm sure he would be delighted if everyone's note cards were different.
I've noticed that the tendency for most folks giving technical presentations is to want to advance to a new slide every 30 - 60 seconds for their entire speaking slot - usually 25 to 50 minutes. Not practical.
If, after its conclusion, most of the audience remembers just three important things then your talk will have been an unequivocal success!
Sometimes less really is more.
What a (necessarily) low bar, because talks are a lousy way to share knowledge