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Comment by jobs_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

> Weird math/physics homework that was like 3-5 super hard questions that I often couldn't figure out, demoralizing

Had this experience at an elite uni as well for math courses. At the time I felt like it pushed me to really grow, and it was absolutely necessary to do well in that specific course (tests often had questions that ~required you to know how to do all the uber-hard homework problems), but I wonder what the research actually says about this sort of homework vs your more standard variety.

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> I wonder what the research actually says about this sort of homework vs your more standard variety.

I have a vivid memory of one of the question on a final being basically “sketch the outline of this important thing we studied”. I couldn’t do it. I took the class but didn’t see the forest for the trees.

Later I met people who talked about things with each other, including the big picture. That’s the community I was missing when I took the class solo.

In retrospect, I could have gotten something more out of those problems that I thought were so hard.

I think it also depends on what the professor's and the student's goals are; and if they're aligned.

Is the course about learning the material at hand, or laying the foundation for graduate level courses in the same subject? About teaching the most efficient way or getting a student used to deriving equations when there's not a plug and play formula.

I'm sure we can draw similar parallels between csci college courses, big tech interviews, and professional software development. Even though it's all the same pipeline, each stage/stakeholder has different goals, motivations, etc... If you're having a discussion about the pros and cons of an approach, you have to make sure the goals are aligned else you'll just be talking past each other.

I had classes with take-home tests of three impossible questions, and standard tests of disguised regurgitation. The impossible questions are the ones that will really test your understanding of the fundamentals. It's the different between "add two numbers together", and "what does adding mean"?

I found out I can't stretch my brain to truly understand the fundamentals, so I stopped after a bachelors and don't use my degree at all. I don't mind. It takes truly special people to push the limits, and a lot of not so special people to keep the world running for them.

I have wondered this too as a person who has attended a regular (non-honors) Calculus II course at a fairly top-rank private university and then again at a community college.

From what I remember, the university course also had some rote exercises for homework so it isn’t like everyone is only focusing on working the trickier exercises.

This also reminds me of the story Donald Knuth has around working every exercise in the book for a calculus class.

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