For reasons that escape me, I can't seem to walk away from Think Again. Sort of like picking a scab, I keep coming back...........
The content in weeks 4 and 5 have fit quite neatly into the way my brain works. I even found most of the exercises for week 4 to be (mostly) clear and easy to understand, bushels of egregious obfuscatory negations and all.
However. The exercises for week 5? Oy vey.
Again with the egregious obfuscation, and not only via negation. Why does the point that "obfuscation makes it 'harder,' but NOT IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY" escape people who are supposed to be college professors? I heard a rumor that the exercises (and quizzes) are being written by grad students, and I believe it. Why are those grad students apparently getting no supervision by the actual professor(s)? I'd like to hear the answer........
It seems to me that the lectures in weeks 4 and 5 have spent a grossly inordinate amount of time going over and over and over and over (and over and over and over and over) the simplest things, while only the briefest of glossings are given to the actual concepts.
TONS of the "how it works" and essentially none of the "so what?"............. Sort of like explaining the four-stroke combustion engine over and over and over, to someone who's never seen a car, and then saying "oh, and you can use the car to get to work" as they walk out the door after class..........
When I took Model Thinking, I really wanted to be able to go to office hours for clarification on some points. In this class, I really want to go to office hours and yell "WTF????? WT*F*F, you )(*^$! Have you ever taught this before? SHAME on you!"
Do paying undergraduates today put up with this sort of treatment? I wonder....... (And, if so, why are their parents, who may well be the ones actually paying, down with it? Maybe they don't know?)
Anyway.
After you do a set of exercises, you get feedback which tells you why the answers you picked were right, or wrong. You can ponder the error of your ways, and take the same set of exercises again, presumably giving different answers to the questions you failed to answer correctly before, and get more feedback, which you can ponder.....
Note the editorial comments I've added, in pink -- you can take this exercise 10,000 times!
My better half wandered through, as I was working on the exercises, and said "NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO OFFER YOU AN ARGUMENT THAT HAS THREE NEGATIVES IN IT."
True. True, all true. (Well, except for in this class...........)
It took me four attempts to get 12 out of 12 on the second set of exercises for week 5. It only FELT like 500 or 600 tries.....
I now have an elaborate word document with the questions, the Venn diagrams, my answers, the feedback, my answers, the feedback, my answers, the feedback.....
Sheesh.
Now I'm facing the quiz for weeks 4 and 5 -- and then I'll "only" be 5 weeks behind......
I think we only get 5 attempts at the quizzes. I can't decide if I want to blow one now, or give myself a break (having already spent HOURS on this class today....).....
On the other hand, it is REALLY cold out, and the idea of going for a walk is not appealing. Even though the sun is out, at the moment......
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3 comments:
I feel your pain!
I slogged through those weeks listening to Ram read those silly tables without actually explaining them and then used the online text and exercises I sent you to get to where I actually understood the concepts. I didn't buy the book for this class (which they said wasn't needed, and I trusted them = big mistake #1).
I got really good at the truth tables and all that, did well on Quiz 2, sailed through induction and causal reasoning (although the fact that it was titled "casual reasoning" drove me craze every time I looked at it) ... and then started Week 8 ... got through all but the last video ... and have stalled in despair.
Not despair that I can't do this (I can if I spend an ungodly number of hours on it) but despair that I DON'T CARE.
I mean, ok, great, now I can figure out how many times I'll roll x on a throw of fair dice or the odds of getting x cards from a deck. Um ... and that relates to argument and reason exactly how?
Sure, sure, I know this stuff does relate, but not nearly to the extent that they seem to assume it does. People aren't whipping out their calculators and truth tables and tablets to draw Venn diagrams while in the midst of an argument, after all. We are creatures of emotion.
I was talking to a friend who took scads of graduate-level philosophy courses, and he said much of modern philosophy was sort of in response to this rigid way of presenting argument as logic formulas (i.e., divorced from reality).
As for the quality of teaching--I certainly hope they do better in their "real" classes. I accidentally came upon a video of Walter talking to a news crew at Duke about the course (it was filmed before it started), and one thing he said has tickled at the back of my mind and bugged me ever since--when asked if what they're doing will work, his response was that he hoped so but that if it didn't, they'd know what to do differently next time--he called it "a great experiment."
I guess that makes us the rats in the maze.
Maybe that's what's really going on: It's not a MOOC at all; it's an experiment for someone in the behavioral psych department at Duke to see how long we'll keep coming back and getting zapped before we learn to go away and not come back. ;-)
I guess I'm not through yet (I hate to be a quitter), but ... we'll see. I'll give it a week, and then I might shift over to another course. I'm thinking of taking Ariely's Irrational Behavior one. I need that about now!
jb
I feel your pain!
:-)
I slogged through those weeks listening to Ram read those silly tables without actually explaining them and then used the online text and exercises I sent you to get to where I actually understood the concepts. I didn't buy the book for this class (which they said wasn't needed, and I trusted them = big mistake #1).
Ah, but it's only a mistake if the concepts are presented better in the book than in the lectures....
And then, only if you care that you "got" all the info...................
I got really good at the truth tables and all that, did well on Quiz 2, sailed through induction and causal reasoning (although the fact that it was titled "casual reasoning" drove me crazy every time I looked at it) ...
Yes, me, too! Oy vey!
and then started Week 8 ... got through all but the last video ... and have stalled in despair.
Not despair that I can't do this (I can if I spend an ungodly number of hours on it)
That's the thing. Or one of the things. I *can* but do I wish to spend precious and irreplaceable hours of my life this way?
but despair that I DON'T CARE.
Well, you know, we don't have to care about everything............................. At some point, we are allowed to say "This is bs and I've wasted enough time!"
I am thinking that time/energy spent on learning something is probably not wasted, at least, not entirely. New brain cells, and all that. And practicing perseverance in the face of adversity at least *can* be a good idea..................
The question is -- is that a strong-enough argument? lol -- see? I'm using what I heard Walter say, yesterday, about Inductive Arguments.....................
I mean, ok, great, now I can figure out how many times I'll roll x on a throw of fair dice or the odds of getting x cards from a deck. Um ... and that relates to argument and reason exactly how?
Given that I just watched the beginning of Inductive Arguments yesterday, I would guess -- understanding the probability of [something] event lets you know how strong an argument with that [something] as a premise might be. :-)
Sure, sure, I know this stuff does relate, but not nearly to the extent that they seem to assume it does. People aren't whipping out their calculators and truth tables and tablets to draw Venn diagrams while in the midst of an argument, after all.
This class doesn't seem to have a lot of ... practical application..............
And -- I thought it would have a lot more than it does. Hence part of my frustration with it -- I thought it was going to be more practical. Less with the esoteric causes/details, more with the practical "Here's a way to present this sort of argument which may be more convincing"......
We are creatures of emotion.
So true.
When I was signing up for this class, my husband said that unless the class was full of ideas about convincing people who have never had (and have never wanted!) a rational thought in their lives, it was worthless..................
Sadly, I think he's probably right.
I was talking to a friend who took scads of graduate-level philosophy courses, and he said much of modern philosophy was sort of in response to this rigid way of presenting argument as logic formulas (i.e., divorced from reality).
When I was working on an exercise yesterday, I googled Immediate Categorical Inference, and the only reference is a google docs copy of the 1857 Encyclopedia Britannica. lol..... Talk about dry and rigid..........
It made me think of Academia's reputation for being nit-picky and dry and meaninglessly rigorous and ... irrelevant..............
I've been thinking a lot, lately, about why people want you to do things. An insurance guy who recommends something to you because it pays him a bonus to do it, rather than because it is the best thing for you. An investment advisor, who recommends things to you for the same reason. A surgeon wanting to operate on your dog for a torn ACL, when less invasive (but more time-consuming) care may have a better long-term result. Etc, etc. Organizations which take on a life of their own, and want to continue to thrive and grow -- the Pentagon eager to go to war in Mali.
An awful lot of stuff going on that isn't happening for what *I* would say are the best reasons....
Philosophy professors, keeping themselves in business, strikes me as being rather too much like the Pentagon eager to go fight in Mali...........
As for the quality of teaching--I certainly hope they do better in their "real" classes.
YES. I am boggled by the disparity between what is taught in Ram's lectures, and what the exercises expect us to know. Daunted by the notion of taking that quiz!
I accidentally came upon a video of Walter talking to a news crew at Duke about the course (it was filmed before it started), and one thing he said has tickled at the back of my mind and bugged me ever since--when asked if what they're doing will work, his response was that he hoped so but that if it didn't, they'd know what to do differently next time--he called it "a great experiment."
I guess that makes us the rats in the maze.
Not my favorite thing to be, or place to be.....................
Maybe that's what's really going on: It's not a MOOC at all; it's an experiment for someone in the behavioral psych department at Duke to see how long we'll keep coming back and getting zapped before we learn to go away and not come back. ;-)
Well, at least they've got enough subjects for their results to have statistical significance.... :-)
I guess I'm not through yet (I hate to be a quitter), but ... we'll see. I'll give it a week, and then I might shift over to another course. I'm thinking of taking Ariely's Irrational Behavior one. I need that about now!
jb
But one more week -- then there are only two weeks left, right? (Said she, who began week 6 yesterday.....)
My husband has read all of Ariely's books. I've encouraged him to take that class..............
I don't know how long I'll stick with Think Again. I do think I've learned some interesting things, but whether it's worth the hours and the frustration............... I dunno. But I can't seem to walk away. At least so far.........................
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