this is disrupting education. you can get a better undergraduate education in STEM on youtube than my paid education 20 years ago. I think those visualizations can even pull forward a bunch of stuff into high school.
Well, I get the point and find it appealing but I don't agree.
When my kiddo was a sophomore in HS he decided that he wanted to be an engineer, and I thought that it would be really good for him to learn calc- my feeling was that if he got out of HS without at least getting through Calculus he'd have a really hard time.
So _I_ learned calculus. I started with basic math on Kahn and moved to the end of the Calc AB syllabus. I have, like, 500K points there. And I've watched a whole lot of STEM on YT.
Yesterday I finished a lab with Moritz Klein's Voltage Controlled Oscillators, where I was able to successfully understand the function of all the sections in the circuit.
I've been trying to follow Aaron Lanterman's Georgia Tech lectures on analog electronics.
The issue is that I have other stuff going on in my life. Like, my son studies more than I work at my full time job.
And I don't really have the pressure on me to learn the more advanced math that he's using. In fact, in the couple of years since he graduated HS, I've not really found a use for calc in my day-to-day work on any of the technical things I've done (mostly programming) and so I've lost a lot of it.
So, by contrast, my son who will be graduating as a BS in ME in May, has a far better and deeper understanding of the engineering material than I do.
And it's not just a time issue- I quit my programming job last summer because I have just enough work as a musician to pay the rent, which leaves me plenty of time to do stuff. And it's not that I don't know how to learn at a college level- I taught in an English Dept for 8 years and quit a PhD in the humities ABD.
That's all just my experience.
I love STEM (and trades education) material on Youtube, but I really think that it's missing something to think that you could get " a better undergraduate education in STEM on youtube".
1. With advanced math I feel I retain at the n-1 level. Unless I’m using it, it fades. That’s frustrating but I don’t think it’s the fault of the deliverer.
I do think working through problems has to be part of the practice, I’ve bought workbooks to have something to try to drive the knowledge into muscle memory. It still fades, but maybe not as much.
2. Calculus, in particular seems super unimportant to real life. Stats and Linear Algebra, somewhat similar in Math Level, seem much more applicable. I’m very happy to see Stats being offered in high school now as an alternative to Calculus. For Calculus, you almost need to learn 3-4 rules and someone says “trust me, just memorize these, don’t spend too much time on this.” And you would be able to live a happy productive life.
I think it's important to separate the motivation pill from the content delivery. You can buy a motivation pill for cheaper than $160k or whatever a degree costs these days. And we get to compare the very best tryhard youtubers to the median lecturer who is grinding it out.
This was the point I made earlier. Consider Richard Feynman lectures. Why didn't universities collectively took the decision to create pre-made/cooked lecture videos for topics that don't change and show these videos during normal lecture which otherwise would be the job of professor to revise / prepare the topics the night before and deliver. The professor spends so much time in doing the same thing again and again everyyear. This would have freed them to have more discussion, office hours and so on.
Actually there is a tortoise and hare race going on. Entertainment is outpacing education. Education is getting better and better with modern technology but so also is distraction i.e. entertainment.
