Timeline for What is the point of a lecture when you have a textbook?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 20, 2018 at 18:05 | comment | added | Chan-Ho Suh | @Ovi Unguided practice can be dangerous if you learn bad habits. That's not to say it's a mistake to study on your own, just be aware you may be doing things that are counter-productive in the long-run. If you have trouble following lectures, there are probably things about the material you aren't really getting. Digesting other people's explanations helps grasp concepts more fully, and so does explaining to other people. Ideally a good student-teacher relationship provides that. | |
| Jan 4, 2018 at 4:56 | comment | added | Ovi | @Chan-HoSuh Hmm "Unguided practice is generally useless and often worse than useless" is very worrying. Could you please elaborate on how this relates to mathematics? I usually have trouble following lectures and study on my own; I want to make sure this is not a mistake. | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 17:29 | comment | added | Mark Meckes | I don't see a contradiction in the views of Serre's books here. Exemplary mathematical writing is not the same as exemplary mathematical textbook writing. | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 14:05 | comment | added | Chan-Ho Suh | @JeffE I never said I agreed with that either, but it's undeniably true a great many mathematicians think they are exemplary. Anyway, whether you disagree with Korner or me is beside the point. You presented your comment as a summary of my answer (which is summarizing Korner). It was a bad summary, contrary to the entire spirit of the answer. | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 14:03 | comment | added | JeffE | Serre's textbooks are considered amongst the most exemplary examples of mathematical writing — I respectfully but forcefully disagree. Serre's books—and I've read several—are horrible textbooks, in my opinion. | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 13:54 | comment | added | Chan-Ho Suh | @JeffE that's your opinion of what a good textbook is. J.P. Serre's textbooks are considered amongst the most exemplary examples of mathematical writing, but certainly they tend to present the material as "timeless". His style is to present the material as cogently and concisely as possible, i.e. a cleaned-up version, not how it was really done. Many mathematicians would say that is an important part of mathematics. Also, many good mathematical textbooks give fairly complete proofs. This will require at times going through details that are not essential to the ideas of the proof. | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 13:41 | comment | added | JeffE | @Chan-HoSuh But almost all of the specific criticisms compare good lectures to bad textbooks. Good textbooks help the reader speed past the easy parts. Good textbook authors are forced to concentrate on the essentials. Good textbooks present mathematics as a growing thing and not a timeless snapshot. Good textbooks show how mathematicians do mathematics. The only thing a good textbook can't do—at least, not yet—is realize when the reader is confused and adapt. | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 13:38 | comment | added | Chan-Ho Suh | @JeffE I don't agree with that "TL;DR". Korner's overall point is that even an excellent textbook will be written to convey information and involve the reader in a different way than a good lecture. | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 10:54 | comment | added | JeffE | tl;dr: Good lectures are better than bad textbooks. | |
| Sep 4, 2015 at 15:19 | comment | added | Kimball | (cont'd) We learned to think in unison with him as he spoke, as if following the demonstration of a calisthenics instructor. Church's course permanently improved the rigor of our reasoning. | |
| Sep 4, 2015 at 15:18 | comment | added | Kimball | This remind me of what Rota said of Church: It may be asked why anyone would bother to sit in a lecture which was the literal repetition of an available text. Such a question would betray an oversimplified view of what goes on in a classroom. What one really learns in class is what one does not know at the time one is learning. The person lecturing to us was logic incarnate. His pauses, hesitations, emphases, his betrayals of emotion (however rare) and sundry other nonverbal phenomena taught us a lot more logic than any written text could. | |
| Sep 3, 2015 at 18:10 | history | answered | Chan-Ho Suh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |