new years resolutions

[Cliff Wells]

On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 13:18, Laura Creighton wrote:

> Some basic tendancy in me to generalise causes me to suspect that this
> places me alongside everybody else ...

There you go, generalizing again ;)

> 
> > Anyway, my rather arbitrary division (perhaps mis-equated) was useful
> > for making a particular point.
> 
> Yes, but my life would have run an awful lot easier if I had understood
> when accepted to both Science and Engineering schools, that the fact
> that I like building things was significant.  I suppose I was expected
> to figure this one out for myself, but I didn't ...

I'm sorry I ruined your life <wink>.  I sometimes forget the power of
the Internet.

> <snip>
> > 
> > >From my own experience, it isn't so cut-and-dried as far as type of
> > personality.  I tend to dislike applied mathematics (preferring pure
> > theory), but get bored by CS theory, preferring actual applications.  
> > But then I spend all day on the 'net and don't get anything done anyway
> > ;)
> 
> Nothing wrong with simply loving mathematics for its own sake in my
> book ...  but it is tough to teach an algorithm class when you are
> convinced that you are the only person in there who wouldn't rather
> be _anywhere_ else.

Cheer up.  It's not the material that's boring, it's probably just you,
so there's still hope for future generations <big wink!>

> And a friend of mine, who was asked to fill in for a professor who
> was away at a conference for an algorithm course, had this interesting
> experience.  When he got to class, he discovered that, due to some
> sort of miscommunication, the class he had prepared had already been
> taught by the absent professor.  The students were expecting to hear 
> a lecture about some other algorithm which he didn't know very well
> and was in no position to teach.  He said 'ooops'.
> 
> But, rallying for the occasion, he decided that if he couldn't teach
> what the students wanted, and it was pointless to teach what they
> already had studied, he would give them 'what he thought they should
> know which isn't on any course'.  And he taught them 'how to write a
> unit test', with emphasis on 'write the test first, and the code
> second'.  Come term end, guess what class was rated as the best for
> that course?  It is not computer science, but it is still something
> worth learning ....

I've had classes where we finished the material early, so the instructor
just kind of winged it and explained a lot of stuff that we normally
wouldn't have seen for a couple more terms (or at all).  Most
interesting part of the class, and better yet, it gave a sort of
direction to some of the abstract things we had learned.  I suspect I
did better on the tests (which didn't cover this material) as a result
of this.

-- 
Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at attbi.com>