[ExI] mit's answer to the stanford ai class

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 12:05 PM, Jeff Davis <jrd1415 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The internet is clearly a paradigm altering information exchange
> innovation.  It is so new and its power so great that we can't see the
> forest for the low-hanging fruit.

Ain't that the truth!! And the Internet is just the first paradigm
shift in a century that will probably go down in history as famous for
them! I don't know what all of them will be, but I suspect it's going
to make the neolithic, invention of writing, renaissance, industrial
and information revolutions look like cake walks.

> Newspapers are dieing, and the reason is trivially obvious.  As
> obvious as Wikipedia.  And amazing.  Remember, Wikipedia -- with its
> evolving problems and evolving solutions -- is a free to make free to
> use, volunteer, not for profit, outside the old commercial paradigm,
> information co-op.  Hoorah!

When I first read about Wikipedia in Wired Magazine, I immediately
thought it was the greatest idea since TiVo... Fantastic concept, and
Seth Godin's more recent book on excess human capacity generalizes the
concept even further. Very fascinating what can be accomplished
outside of the capitalist (money driven) system... Of course Wikipedia
IS capitalistic, it's just that the capital is reputation, not cash.

>  Universities are, if not next, high up on the list for imminent
> obsolescence.  Hell!, there's probably a Wiki-versity already out
> there.  (I haven't Googled it.  I'll leave that to you.)

Yes, I've seen one. At least a Wiki for creating college text books on
every subject imaginable.

> Why is Harvard (or University X) a "good school"?  Top flight staff?
> To be sure.  But what about the top flight students? Surely they
> count.  Why does Harvard (or U of X) charge big bucks for tuition?
> Why don't the top flight students charge the Universities instead?
> For the privilege of having the best students there to make that
> school the top flight institution that it is?  After all, the students
> are the ones actually doing the work of learning.

"See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna
staht doin some thinkin on your own and you're gonna come up with the
fact that there are two certaintees in life. One, don't do that. And
Two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you
coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library."
- Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting

> A lecture series can be put on DVD.  The information is all in public
> domain.  The words coming out of the mouth of some Nobel laureate's
> mouth are the same when spoken by a talking head or voice synthesizer.
>  Curriculum, course notes, tests, texts can all be assembled in
> digital form from sources publicly available.  So why the big bucks
> for lecturers, etc?  Old paradigm inertia, nothing more.  (The UoP is
> trying to expand their business model.  Kudos.  But it's still an old
> paradigm model.  A dinosaur walking.)

Yes, but having someone with "authority" answering the questions, well
that harkens back to the Theocracy memes... SOMEONE has to have the
right answers, and I'll pay to get those over answers that have a
lower probability of being right, because I don't want to end up in
hell!!!

> The internet isn't even an infant yet.  It's barely "crowning".

Yup. I think the next evolution of the Internet will likely involve
something that makes data as accessible as text is now. I've often
thought it would be an internet enabled version of Excel, but I guess
we'll see.

> As an undergraduate at Case Tech, I took the standard thermo course.
> Crappy teacher.  I passed, but I didn't "get" it.  Paused for a stint
> in the military, and then resumed my engineering studies at UC
> Berkeley, and decided to do Thermo again in the hopes of "getting it"
> the second time.    another crappy "professor".  A grad student
> actually, whose notion of teaching was to use the hour to transcribe
> the book onto the chalkboard.  I passed, but still didn't "get it".
> Then I went to SF State, a cheesy little school with a cheesy
> engineering dept.  Took Thermo yet again, this time from Jerome Fox a
> former hot shot project manager from Bechtel or some such big league
> firm.  Best teacher bar none I have ever encountered.
> (Inter-personally a monster, but that's another story.)  Took things
> small step by small step, proceeded quickly from one to the next, and
> had the students to work problems in class at every step.  He never
> screwed up by missing a step.  Never skipped a "link" necessary for
> assembling the "chain" of learning. Never let his comprehensive
> familiarity with the subject cause him to  skip something long since
> useless in application but essential in moving along the path from not
> knowing to knowing and understanding.

The best teacher I had at BYU was Alan Ashton, who was president of
Word Perfect at the time. There's something about a professor that's
actually done it or better is still in the process of DOING it that
excites the mind of a student!

> He had a bad ticker and was always at risk of dropping dead.  This was
> the early eighties -- no internet yet -- and my three different tries
> at Thermo made me peculiarly aware of the striking variations in
> teaching quality/effectiveness "out there".  I wanted to get Prof Fox
> on video tape (early eighties remember) to preserve, for the future
> legions of engineering students, the astonishing resource that was his
> teaching ability.  He made Thermo ***easy***.  I mean easy as in well,
> ... easy.

LOL... yes, easy.

> So what I see as the Wiki-versity is a micro-payment, for-profit site
> where **anyone** can submit a lesson/lecture for sale.  No need to be
> a University Prof.  Joe Nobody could do it.  The proof of the pudding
> is in the eating.  If your submission is most effective, then it sells
> to the folks who need and want it.  If you price it at a dime or a
> dollar -- cheap enough to buy rather than "pirate" -- in the internet
> market of 7 billion, you're gonna make some money.

Micropayments, if anyone ever figures it out, is going to change the
world. I really hope someone figures it out... sigh.

> Little side point.  The Meyers-Briggs 4 by 4 matrix generates 16
> personality variants, and it's not hard to suppose that each has its
> own learning style that needs a teaching style to fit.  So, for any
> given subject, there should be a whole slew of lessons to choose from
> to find something that fits.

Oh, it's worse than that, because you have people who learn visually,
auditorially, even kinesthetically. I'm sure there are other
dimensions like learning from lectures, or learning hands on... it
goes on and on... there are probably a dozen dimensions that you can
slice to determine how you best learn. I like mailing lists, others
like Facebook... go figure.

> Bye-bye newspapers, bye-bye Universities.  What's next?

I hope not mailing lists... LOL!

-Kelly