I think it must be aimed at beginners and not someone like me. Class 1 was just laughable, but Class 2 started to get into the real skill of searching: thinking about synonyms and alternative phrasings and how someone else would write what you want, and Class 3 (finally) covered the most useful operators like negation and site:. The midterm was easy, but with the basics out of the way, I’m hopeful that 4-6 may teach me something new and so I’m going to continue (as much as it’s otherwise been a disappointment).
I also think the exercises & questions are skimpier than they ought to have been. Testing your syntax understanding is fine, but surely more can be done?
I finished the final exam just now. It was harder than the exercises, which was a good thing (although I still don’t see how one could answer one of the book questions).
Overall, my opinion remains the same. Good for beginners, for power users who already know Boolean operators and site: etc, not such a good use of time. Also, probably everyone should skip the videos and read the documents instead (unless they’re very fond of videos). It was a nice touch that they tried to teach about confirmation bias.
I signed up for the course, without ever watching the videos or reading the transcripts. A few minutes ago, I thought this might be a good time to finally get started. So I came back to the original LessWrong post to find the link to the course. But after reading gwern’s comments, it’s become clear to me that the course is not worth it.
Lesson: unless you have strong reasons for committing immediately to some time-consuming course or activity, wait until others whose judgment you trust have reviewed the course or activity.
I think it must be aimed at beginners and not someone like me. Class 1 was just laughable, but Class 2 started to get into the real skill of searching: thinking about synonyms and alternative phrasings and how someone else would write what you want, and Class 3 (finally) covered the most useful operators like negation and
site:. The midterm was easy, but with the basics out of the way, I’m hopeful that 4-6 may teach me something new and so I’m going to continue (as much as it’s otherwise been a disappointment).I also think the exercises & questions are skimpier than they ought to have been. Testing your syntax understanding is fine, but surely more can be done?
I finished the final exam just now. It was harder than the exercises, which was a good thing (although I still don’t see how one could answer one of the book questions).
Overall, my opinion remains the same. Good for beginners, for power users who already know Boolean operators and site: etc, not such a good use of time. Also, probably everyone should skip the videos and read the documents instead (unless they’re very fond of videos). It was a nice touch that they tried to teach about confirmation bias.
I signed up for the course, without ever watching the videos or reading the transcripts. A few minutes ago, I thought this might be a good time to finally get started. So I came back to the original LessWrong post to find the link to the course. But after reading gwern’s comments, it’s become clear to me that the course is not worth it.
Lesson: unless you have strong reasons for committing immediately to some time-consuming course or activity, wait until others whose judgment you trust have reviewed the course or activity.