Saturday 26 January 2013

General: Learning to Learn

12/22/2012

As opposed to traditional methods of learning, such as lecture, homework, and projects, I've always had trouble learning via textbook. I am stubborn about reading every detail in the book, down to the last word, but often I will either lose focus mid-paragraph or fall asleep. Something has to change.

During this past finals week, I came across an article written by Cal Newport on "ultra learning" (oh, the irony). I was immediately enticed by the potential to master linear algebra in ten days. I realized my obsession with details was impractical; after a few books, there's essentially an infinite number of words, of which no one has the time to read in their entirety. I need to find the balance between understanding the big picture and being able to crank through the implementation (so, grinding through practice problems is not the solution).

This winter break, I decided to try and apply the ultra-learning techniques to Udacity's Artificial Intelligence course, with a focus on understanding the Extended Kalman Filter and the Particle Filter. 

Here are my favorite online-education websites:
Udacity
Coursera
edX
TopCoder
CodeForces

No comments:

Post a Comment