Interesting Links for 23-02-2012

[andrewducker]

• Science Finds a Better Way to Teach Science. (Lectures are pointless. I wish I was even slightly surprised)
  (tags: academia teaching research science )
• The British idea that ordinary people don't need to understand mathematics causes appalling problems
  (tags: mathematics economics uk )
• How the European Internet Rose Up Against ACTA. (Gives me a warm feeling inside.)
  (tags: copyright acta europe internet censorship )
• The myth of the eight-hour sleep - humans may be adapted for two 4-hour naps, with a 2-hour gap in the middle
  (tags: sleep )
• What NOT to do when relaunching the Conservatives in Northern Ireland
  (tags: uk politics conservatives northernireland )
• A week of picking on trans people
  (tags: media uk lgbt transgender )
• The Only 4 Monitors You Should Buy
  (tags: lcd technology monitors )
• The iPhone umbilical cord charger. If I had an iPhone, I'd have one.
  (tags: awesome iphone )
• How Bots Seized Control of My Pricing Strategy
  (tags: pricing ai amazon )
• Orange, T-Mobile ready to launch 4G together in UK this year
  (tags: orange t-mobile 4g mobile_phones uk )

Comments

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

One of my lecturers was Prof John Brown, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. In our honours course we would have weekly two-hour lectures from him. These typically broke down as follows:

30 mins: waiting for professor to turn up
60 mins: listening to professor bitch about university politics
10 mins: general banter
20 mins: actual lecture

And yet I wouldn't have missed those lectures for anything.

What lectures teach you that books and notes don't is culture and style. I'm sure the formal content of Prof Brown's lectures on Bremsstrahlung radiation or modelling SS433 could have been delivered on paper, but the style of approaching problems in a particular way, the scientific and intellectual culture that forms the foundation of a way of approaching hard problems - these things are learned much better in person. And learning the astrophysical problem-solving style of the Astronomer Royal is more than worth the investment of time.

I'm not particularly wedded to the lecture per se, but I think that learning is about much more than just the transmission of information, and that contact time between students and senior researchers is incredibly valuable even if it seems terribly inefficient.

[andrewducker]

Had my lectures been "Observe a genius describe their thought processes" then that would have been useful.

As opposed to what they were which was largely "Watch someone read a bunch of notes to an audience."

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I don't know - as a non-genius I'd prefer to be taught by someone who understands how I think; conversely as a genius I'd prefer to be taught by another genius who understands how I think. Horses for courses? Any Mensa types care to comment?