Quote:
Originally Posted by Clarkey
That's a load of crappola and your professor is a moron. Maybe if you were taking a class in "how to entertain the loser egghead professor by figuring out how he's gamed the system" then that would be a worthy lesson. Otherwise that guy is a big tool.
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It's not a load of crap. It's completely true.
The point of how he taught the course was the need to learn the fundamentals of the subject and everything else can be found in the literature or through references (for this course...his other course I took was different). He didn't believe there should be any need for someone to memorize every single detail if they could simply apply first principles.
I should add that while the solutions manual certainly helped in telling you what the answer the other half to each question was explaining WHY it happened the way it did (not in the solutions manual). To be successful on the exam you needed to know both, but to answer the second part you'd need to answer the first part. And to answer the first part without a proper reference book you hadn't a hope of memorizing everything...you only had a hope of knowing a tiny fraction of it.
That was the entire point of the course. Don't get bogged down in all the tiny details, don't get frustrated if you don't know the entire answer but instead make sure you have a rock solid foundation to your understanding as that, in the end, is what is important. It was THE course that for the major (if you took it) taught you that the first thing to do when you don't know something is not to ask a friend, not to find an old exam, not to find an old assignment, not to go to the prof, not to throw your hands u in the air and give up but instead to hit the library and reference books, find it for yourself and knowing the first principles understand why.
As a TA for 4 years during grad school it is frightening how many students hadn't learned that lesson and instead wasted time going down all these other avenues...even in their final year! Heck, it takes many grad students a year or two to effectively use references and library resources. I for one was glad to be taught that lesson prior to grad school as were the other in that course. It was a huge help for grad courses and candidacy.
He's not a moron. His teaching awards and research awards speak for themselves. He uses the course to get the above point across. It's an important point and he crafted the course perfectly to demostrate it. A few of us just figured out his point before the rest of the class who learned the lesson on the final when the large amjority of students that have taken the course learned the lesson (the final btw was worth less than the lab of the course and less than the midterm and wasn't necessary to pass in order to pass the course so he doesn't screw anybody in teaching this lesson).