Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

I have a tip for following lectures (or any technical talk, really) that I've been meaning to write about for a while.

As you follow along with the speaker, try to predict what they will say next. These can be either local or global predictions. Guess what they will write next, or what will be on the next slide. With some practice (and exposure to the subject area) you can usually get it right. Also try to keep track of how things fit into the big picture. For example in a math class, there may be a big theorem that they're working towards using lots of smaller lemmas. How will it all come together?

When you get it right, it will feel like you are figuring out the material on your own, rather than having it explained to you. This is the most important part.

If you can manage to stay one step ahead of the lecturer, it will keep you way more engaged than trying to write everything down. Writing puts you one step behind what the speaker is saying. Because of this, I usually don't take any notes at all. It obviously works better when lecture notes are made available, but you can always look at the textbook.

People often assume that I have read the material or otherwise prepared for lectures, seminars, etc., because of how closely I follow what the speaker is saying. But really most talks are quite logical, and if you stay engaged it's easy to follow along. The key is to not zone out or break your concentration, and I find this method helps me immensely.

Every learning method you can think of has been thought of before and all variations have been implemented in classrooms throughout time. It is mostly pseudo-science. You either put in the effort to learn and struggle until you succeed or you don't. There is no secret sauce.

I've met lot of smart guys never getting anywhere, because they were always looking for a shortcut and not to do the real work.

Linux instructor Jason Canon wrote once that there's a lot of people who spend 90% of the time reading articles on how to learn Linux, but only 10% really practicing.

OTOH it's a really cool way to stay focused and engaged with the lecture.

I'm not saying it's a learning method. And I don't see how anyone could mistake this for science, so why would it be pseudoscience? It's not really about effort either.

It's just a trick that helps me pay attention in lectures, which a lot of people struggle with. Certainly you have to put the work outside of the classroom as well.

This isn't true. I put in a great deal of effort in college and struggled to learn. After college I changed the way I interacted with information, and found that I could learn and remember orders of magnitude better by using studying and practice techniques that mapped more closely with how I thought about information.

There are are a 100 different ways to struggle to learn. Some of them are better than others. I don't see how that's pseudoscience.

I've seen this a lot over the years and I've been guilty of it myself. I do still look at articles and find good stuff from it, but I've replaced it with paid courses that offer hands-on examples.

My technique was to write tons of notes during the lecture. In college, I would have many pages of notes for each lecture and because writing is more of an active process than just sitting or spacing out for an hour, I rarely had to study for an exam.

Well said. And it makes sense, if you define intelligence as the ability to successfully predict the future.

And how interesting that that is literally how LLMs are trained during pretraining. Like Ilya said: To predict the name revealed as the murderer at the end of a detective novel, you must have followed the plot, have world knowledge about physics, psychology, etc..

And that’s what you’re pointing at here. Testing yourself on the ability to predict during a lecture is like running a loss function to keep you on your toes.

Learning is a loop of reading/listening > applying/questioning. The rest is gobbledygook.

And when I say learning, I mean understanding the material, not just remembering a bunch of information for an exam.

There are 100 different sources to learn from. And they certainly aren't as good as one another.

There being 100 different ways to learn though is questionable.

> To predict the name revealed as the murderer at the end of a detective novel, you must have...

Wait, can people do this??

This is good advice for the LSAT too, and baked into LSAT Demon's app. If you can predict an answer before looking at the choices, you're probably on the right track.

There were times in university where I had figured out the material on my own (maybe even several lectures ahead), and the confirmation actually felt a bit disappointing.

Agree with this comment but follow up to this tip:

Only use this as a learning technique. Do not accidentally let this bleed over into personal 1:1 conversations.

I know some people in my life who are "smart" and they will cut people off in the middle of conversation to the effect of "oh yeah I already know what you are going to say, let me go ahead and cut you off so I can respond faster".

On top of being completely obnoxious on the face of it, they are wrong enough times in their predictions to where it completely fucks the conversation.

It’s usually none of the people you can think about (otherwise it’s a very bad plot).

This is fun to do during lectures but in my experience only about 5-10% of my learning happened in math class. The other 90% happened at home as I worked through the problem sets.

Essentially the lectures served as an inefficient way of delivering me a set of notes which I’d then reference during homework sessions. I could often predict what was coming next in the lecture but the really hard parts were the key parts in some technical lemmas that were necessary to complete the theorem. Learning how to figure out a key step like that had to come completely on my own (with no spoilers).

In a lot of ways, math lectures really started to turn into an experience similar to watching a Let’s Play of a favourite video game. Watching those can tell you exactly what you need to do to get past the part where you’re stuck but they don’t in general make you better at video games. For that you need to actually play them yourself.

Required for success at games like Jeopardy. Guess the answer before you read the whole thing

I think a lot of writing online about productivity is like this. Some people seem to have a near endless appetite for writing on pens and notebooks, note taking systems, text editors, desk accesssories, every day carry, etc…

I take it you are not a member of the Church of Interruption[0] then.

https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

Jeopardy is a bad example because you're required to wait until the end of the question before buzzing in, or else you are penalized.

The viewpoint of a lecture as an inefficient note delivery system is a pretty common and reductive view. Your "Let's Play" analogy was pretty apt though.

I think their (potential) value seems pretty clear when you look at language courses -- you can't possibly hope to develop fluency in a language by studying it in isolation from books -- forming your own sentences and hearing how other human beings do the same in real time is pretty decisive.

With math classes, YMMV, especially since they are rarely so interactive at the upper division and graduate level, but at the very least seeing an instructor talk about math and work through problems (and if you are lucky to have a particularly disorganized one, get stuck, and get themselves unstuck) can go a long way. But to be fair I regularly skipped math lectures in favor of reading too, heh

Yes but if you don’t know the answer by the time the light goes on (the question is finished read), you will never get in. And if you buzz in without knowing the answer you will lose points. So you have to know the answer before the light goes , then be ready to buzz as soon as eligible. Jeopardy is a good example.

I rarely skipped math lectures in university (only when the prof was really bad; but then I watched video lectures taught by a different prof from a previous term).

The lectures in the hardest math classes I took did not feature any “working through problems.” They were 50 minute pedal-to-the-metal proof speedrun sessions that took me 2-3 hours of review and practice work to fully understand. I don’t know how anyone can see a lecture like that and not see it as an inefficient note delivery system.

I did have math classes where profs worked through problems but those were generally the much easier applied math classes. Those were the ones I least needed to attend lectures for because there you’re just following the steps of an algorithm rather than having to think hard about how to synthesize a proof.

For language learning it’s hard to beat full immersion. When we learn our first language (talking to our parents as children) we don’t learn it by theory (memorizing verb conjugations), we learn it by engaging the language centre in our brains. I think language classes are more useful if you want to learn to write and translate in that language, where you need a strong theoretical background. If your main goal for language learning is being able to speak with loved ones or being able to travel and speak fluently with locals, then sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture seems like a very difficult way to do that.

I had a math professor in college that would often say to our class, "You cannot be like Michael Jordan by just watching Michael Jordan. If you want to be better at basketball, you have to practice. Math is no different." No matter how you spin it, he was correct -- unless you are like Ramanujan and a Hindu god just reveals a solution to you.

Honestly though, I believe I learn better in a similar manner to what you described. I would rather just read the textbook and learn on my own. I find that to be a far more efficient learning style for me. However, I typically always went to class for a handful of reasons:

1. To signal that I cared about the subject to the professor (whether I honestly cared or not). Though I had some classes that actually penalized a lack of attendance.

2. There is comradery in group struggle. It was nice way to meet other students that had a common goal. I made many friends during my time. Some of which I still keep in touch with a decade later. In fact, I met my SO in one of my classes -- all because we studied together.

3. The main reason being, I paid for the class, and I wanted to get my money's worth out of it. While passing the course and learning the material was the goal. I'd hate knowing I just paid to teach myself everything. I could have done that for free, so I wanted something more out of the deal.

One of thing I should add is that I am poorly disciplined and have poor executive functioning, so I probably picked up more in class that I would admit -- I didn't have a control to compare against. Still to this date, I rely heavily on solutions to the problems. Not in a way that allows me to cheat, but I would likely be unable to be certain I was teaching myself correctly if I didn't have the answers or know of a method to verify my work. I am confident that I cannot be confident in my answers to nearly anything. I am prone to too many mistakes.

If one goes far enough in math, one will encounter solutions where there are not clear answers and one must use all of their knowledge and abilities to support their answers. And that my YN friends, is why I am not a mathematician despite my love for the subject.

Oh yea. A good detective novel gives the reader all the necessary information to know the answer. Many lousier novels just keep some essential information hidden until the monologue, because they haven’t got a tricky enough mystery, and really shitty ones just accidentally reveal it, often by over-using tropes or having silly patterns like “it’s always the dark and brooding guy”. Ever read any Dan Brown? In Angels and Demons he gives it away on the first page with an anagram.

Yak-shaving.

Which is why I hate the PowerPoint presentation-based lectures. Speaker typically goes too fast, and their brain does not actually break down the arguments into logical steps. They just read the slides.

Chalk and board is the way.

I consider the value in math lectures to come from the speaker’s explanation of why to expect certain things. Is this an obvious fact in another context, rewritten for this application? Is this a surprise? What reasons besides the rigorous argument are there for believing the theory?

Your quote:

> Every learning method you can think of has been thought of before and all variations have been implemented in classrooms throughout time. It is mostly pseudo-science.

This is wrong. Not every "learning method" is pseudo-science, neither is comparison of the efficacy of different learning methods. As a trivial example, flat lecture and individual textbook reading is inferior to one-on-one discussion and tutoring with a native speaker if the aim is to learn a foreign language.

You missed the keyword "mostly".

This is a fantastic tip, thank you for sharing! It reminded me of an article similar to this one:

Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact (The minds of social species are strikingly resonant): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synch...

"... when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns ..."

"The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain."

"Synchrony may be a sign of shared cognitive processing ..." "The mouse study suggested another level of meaning for synchrony: it predicts the outcomes of future interactions."

This is exactly how I read research papers and how I advocate others read them as well. As you read try to figure out how you would solve the problem outlined and what experiments you would need to perform.

There’s a whole science of learning, and this barely scratches the surface.

Spaces repetition for memory work.

Problem solving skills just be strengthened somehow.

A lot of the theorems I learned in school weren’t particularly amenable to intuitive explanations like that.

For example, take Galois theory. The fact that a polynomial’s solvability by radicals depends on the solvability of its Galois group is surprising and not intuitive at all. The fundamental theorem of Galois theory is a very technical result utilizing purpose-built mathematical structures that were developed specifically to study the solutions of polynomial equations.

That monologue curtain pull is a hallmark of Sherlock Holmes. I wouldn’t call Doyle’s books lousy for that though. Creating brain-teasers for the audience isn’t really the point. It’s all about a character Doyle found insufferable but the audience loved!

I like this idea but I always struggled to keep up with note taking. And the teachers were struggling to get through all the material. There was a race on both sides! But that was many years ago. If I were doing it today, I'd take pictures with my phone, use a computer to transcribe it, and then I'd have enough time to do what you said.

Great advice! Personally, I got immense value from writing notes but never when I wrote them during the lecture. 30 minutes after the lecture has ended is a perfect time time to sit down in the library and write notes for what the lecture was about. This gives enough time to reflect about the big picture, but not so too much time that the details are lost.

- I find that writing notes in class helped me learn just through the physical action of my hands. (I think there is some formal study of this as a phenomenon). I am poorly disciplined so at least getting that hour or so of writing notes is probably more than I would have managed alone.

- In class, sometimes the lecturer provides helpful intuition for something through informal speech or even intonation. For example I struggled with the concept of ergodicity from a textbook until I saw someone explain it to me like I'm 5. I find that often, textbooks are like man pages, in that they are almost afraid to provide informal/intuitive writing for fear of appearing unserious.

p.s. if ChatGPT existed 30 years ago I would have managed to learn so much more instead of spinning wheels on dry writing. ChatGPT is really good at being a "personalized manpage explainer"

Thanks for this.

I find having a name to certain phenomena makes them easier to understand and apply in the wild, and will definitely think ‘barker’ in the future haha

People who read detective novels do. Every other book the clues are not the point and so they are skipped - or more likely there is no investigation, you are just told and the plot moves on.

Incompatible communication styles (turn-taking vs. constructive overlapping) can be frustrating. Turn-takers may consider overlappers to be rude and aggressive and try to stop the overlap, which overlappers may in turn consider rude and aggressive; yet full-duplex is more efficient than half-duplex and even basic ACKs are important for reliable communication.

Unfortunately Zoom is 1/N-duplex, which ruins it for everyone.

And this is why someone made a ruleset for detective novels, so they can actually become brain-teaser https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/ronald-k...

I strongly agree - I started teaching from slides and shifted more and more to blackboard and chalk.

I found that they can also be combined well by showing a slide that gives some guidance where "we" are in the material, supplemented by writing and drawing on the blackboard to explain one or more bullet points or statements from the slides, and to answer student questions.

This also forces students to take additional notes, which helps them per muscle memory.

That may require some experience, which you can obtain gradually by reading lots of papers, some good, some bad, to see how they do it. Eventually, you can tell if an experiment is suitable for showing strong support of the RQ or not.

(And you will also learn to read between the lines e.g. "Our resulst are PROMISING..." = there is much space for improvement etc.)

Watching someone up front and seeing them actually think is so inspiring.

If that is true, which sometimes it is, you having suspected about anyone except the actual murderer, and at the same time it is totally obvious who the culprit is on a second reading, then it is a very good plot.

Reading from slides is the absolute worst way of delivery anywhere, whether it’s a lecture or an internal presentation to your work team, doesn’t matter. The best power point slides have zero overlapping words with what the presenter is saying except perhaps some slide or section titles.

Chalk and board though is not necessarily the best. Power point supports magic hotkeys - B and W - and allows drawing on slides. When done properly with a stylus, it’s incrementally better in almost every way than chalk, though a proper lecture hall with multiple blackboards will still hold its own.

Good point! I used to be guilty of this myself, so now I'm pretty sensitive about other people doing it. I am now one of the more senior students in an academic research group, and some of the younger members would benefit from this advice. I think it's a symptom of sophomorism, and hopefully most will grow out of it.

I agree it's especially frustrating when they don't even get it right. That crosses the line for me, and I will admonish them to let me finish what I am saying.

This worked great for me.

It meant that I understood the scaffolding of the course: the broad goals of the subject, the main ways to tackle them, what is currently being explored, and why are we going in this direction at this moment.

There was one class where this started to fail, which was a class without slides or a book. This meant that, without notes, when I recalled a proof technique but not the details, I had to resort to asking others for their notes. Because it wasn't documented anywhere else.

I slightly disagree. Specifically, in the case of academic lectures, on:

> The best power point slides have zero overlapping words with what the presenter is saying except perhaps some slide or section titles.

Especially when not taking notes, having the slides effectively be lecture notes is great to allow you to go back to the content of the lecture days or weeks later.

That does not mean that I want a lecturer to just read from the slides. But I want the slides to be more than just a visual aid for the lecture. They need to be reference material as well. This is also generally accepted, and can be considered the reason so many other presentations where this is a bad idea, still have the bad lecture-style slides. Because its what is modeled to people during their education.

Note, for presentations to stakeholders, or presentations of results, or almost any other type of professional presentation. Slides should probably be visual aids only, and not reference material. But lectures are a special case.

> having the slides effectively be lecture notes is great...

This is usually considered a great sin by presentation gurus, even for lectures. For academic material, there would hopefully be a textbook as a reference material.

Although I would prefer the slides having no overlapping words, but doing it this way is very punishing for whoever that skip the class for whatever reason.

Looking at the slides no longer build enough context for you to learn and catchup on what you have missed, so in the end every lecture is unskippable.

I meant "problems" in a broad sense -- I loved disorganized professors who would pause and stare at their lecture notes in silence for a minute, realize their proof or example contained some flaw, and then have to correct it on the fly.

I found those moments really valuable if course-correcting was non-trivial -- the typical Definition-Theorem-Proof-Example format certainly is essential for organizing one's thinking and communicating new math in a way that's digestible to other mathematicians, but it is not how mathematicians actually think about math or solve novel problems

In the grad analysis sequence this "course correcting" mechanic was built into the course, since we were required to regularly solve a challenging problem and then present its proof to the class and withstand intense questioning from both the professor and peers. If you caught an error in someone's proof and could help the presenter arrive at a correct proof, you'd both earn points.

The thrill of surviving an incredulous "Wait a second..." from that particular professor (who later became my research advisor) was hard to beat

Anyway my intent was to analogize math lectures (whatever they might look like) with language courses or immersion in the sense that they are an opportunity to practice speaking and listening, and to immerse yourself in cultural norms. I think it goes a bit deeper than this, in that language is inextricably connected to most thought and vice versa -- we experience this in a very explicit way whenever we find our thinking clarified in the process of formulating a question, but it's always there

That said, pure immersion for language learning is actually easy to beat -- lots of research shows that immersion together with explicit grammar instruction has far better learning outcomes than immersion alone. Immersion alone misses lots of nuance -- and it relies on the speaker being acutely aware of the difference between their output and target forms.

With your verb conjugation example, lots of time can be saved by knowing that there's a thing called the subjunctive and that it is distinct from tense and it shows up in a myriad of places tending to concern hypotheticals

Similarly, I gain a lot from talking to mathematicians and attending conferences. But I also need to spend time alone consulting relevant theory, reading papers, and playing with examples. Both are important, but in math it seems you one get away with less immersion