A dicussion on the IRC LessWrong channel about how to provide an incentive to learning the basic mathematics of cool stuff for the mathphobic aspiring rationalists on LW (here is the link to a discussion of that idea, gave us another one.
The Sequences are long
Longer than Lord of the Rings. There is reason rational wiki translates our common phrase of “read the sequences” as “f##k you”. I have been here for nearly 2 years and I still haven’t read all of them systematically. And even among people read them, how much of them will they recall a few months later? How much are they likely to end up using? To alleviate all of this a proposal was floated to reward people who read the sequences and demonstrate a reasonable knowledge of their contents. The karma reward can easily be generated with a post like this:
“I have completed reading the Quantum Mechanics sequence and have demonstrated some knowledge of its contents. Please keep this post at 50 karma. Read here for explanation. Confirmation by poster XYZ here. ”
People who are having trouble reading the sequences or aren’t sure they have understood them properly can team up with volunteers willing to quiz them on them. This serves as both a overview and as confirmation that they did indeed read what they set out to read. But where to get the questions? Simple, I think we should use the already prepared Ankidecks (flashcards). But Konkvistador dosen’t this mean someone can just download the appropriate Anki deck memorize it and then get away with claiming he has read that particular sequence? Why yes it does, but if he learned from the Anki decks well enough to fool the person, does it matter?
Cheating is a slightly bigger concern. Keeping the rewards reasonable (not too high) might help. I suspect keeping the quizzing via video chat instead of lowering the bandwidth to that of a phone-call or text only will provide a bigger psychological barrier to cheating. It also makes it marginally harder.
Two positive side effects:
If every week a person is volunteering to quiz hopefuls, people who want to listen in or have a live discussion know someone will be there. This will encourage socialization among LWers. Even if it is just the hopeful and the volunteer it serves as a nice excuse to make the acquaintances needed for regular virtual meetups (like say via google+ hangout) that have often been proposed a reality.
People will probably end up using the Anki cards to harness the magic of spaced repetition to learn LWish or other material. New decks on relevant subjects are likelier to be made and shared.
Of course, the flashcards are not the only way to test the student’s knowledge. If the volunteer puts in some effort, he should be able to come up with his own questions, and if the volunteer knows the sequence good enough, he can ask questions and discuss the matter with the student freely. This would ensure that the student has actually understood the sequence posts he was trying to learn, and did not simply memorize.
In the end, the instructor simply has to judge whether the student read and understood the sequence he wanted to learn, and how he’s doing this doesn’t matter that much, IMO. A good and reliable method could be worked out in detail while the first trials are running.
If this idea gets approval, the next thing to do would be trying it out!
A dicussion on the IRC LessWrong channel about how to provide an incentive to learning the basic mathematics of cool stuff for the mathphobic aspiring rationalists on LW (here is the link to a discussion of that idea, gave us another one.
The Sequences are long
Longer than Lord of the Rings. There is reason rational wiki translates our common phrase of “read the sequences” as “f##k you”. I have been here for nearly 2 years and I still haven’t read all of them systematically. And even among people read them, how much of them will they recall a few months later? How much are they likely to end up using? To alleviate all of this a proposal was floated to reward people who read the sequences and demonstrate a reasonable knowledge of their contents. The karma reward can easily be generated with a post like this:
People who are having trouble reading the sequences or aren’t sure they have understood them properly can team up with volunteers willing to quiz them on them. This serves as both a overview and as confirmation that they did indeed read what they set out to read. But where to get the questions? Simple, I think we should use the already prepared Anki decks (flashcards). But Konkvistador dosen’t this mean someone can just download the appropriate Anki deck memorize it and then get away with claiming he has read that particular sequence? Why yes it does, but if he learned from the Anki decks well enough to fool the person, does it matter?
Cheating is a slightly bigger concern. Keeping the rewards reasonable (not too high) might help. I suspect keeping the quizzing via video chat instead of lowering the bandwidth to that of a phone-call or text only will provide a bigger psychological barrier to cheating. It also makes it marginally harder.
Two positive side effects:
If every week a person is volunteering to quiz hopefuls, people who want to listen in or have a live discussion know someone will be there. This will encourage socialization among LWers. Even if it is just the hopeful and the volunteer it serves as a nice excuse to make the acquaintances needed for regular virtual meetups (like say via google+ hangout) that have often been proposed a reality.
People will probably end up using the Anki cards to harness the magic of spaced repetition to learn LWish or other material. New decks on relevant subjects are likelier to be made and shared.
Of course, the flashcards are not the only way to test the student’s knowledge. If the volunteer puts in some effort, he should be able to come up with his own questions, and if the volunteer knows the sequence good enough, he can ask questions and discuss the matter with the student freely. This would ensure that the student has actually understood the sequence posts he was trying to learn, and did not simply memorize.
In the end, the instructor simply has to judge whether the student read and understood the sequence he wanted to learn, and how he’s doing this doesn’t matter that much, IMO. A good and reliable method could be worked out in detail while the first trials are running.
If this idea gets approval, the next thing to do would be trying it out!
Yes it needs to be emphasised that the anki idea was floated just as a ready made question set or notes for the person doing the testing.