
"10 Lessons of an MIT Education" by Gian-Carlo Rota - hhm
http://www.math.tamu.edu/~cyan/Rota/mitless.html
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mynameishere
_What matters most is the ambiance in which the course is taught; a gifted
student will thrive in the company of other gifted students._

This sentiment comes up time and time again. The first occurance of it being
explicitly stated (to my knowledge) was Thoreau, who said that the advantage
of Harvard was simply that: The association of the generation's best. But I
believe he stated this in a chapter entitled "Economy", and it ended with,
"...and the association of other students costs nothing." No one else points
out that important point, and it amounts to this: Charging smart people just
for gathering them together is a ripoff.

The same is true with housing. Hey, I'd love to buy one of those foreclosures
in detroit for 8 thousand dollars, but the problem is, no other smart people
are _that_ smart [1], and so you have to live with crackheads.

[1] Unless they do later, and I become a successful land speculator. That's
not the goal, however.

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edw519
"Mathematics is still the queen of the sciences"

Absolutely. Yet somehow, even Rota (in his isolated world) doesn't fully
comprehend the magnitude of this remark...

Cariovascular or strength training for physical exercise.

Meditation or religion for spiritual exercise.

Mathematics for mental exercise.

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byrneseyeview
Alternative view:
[http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/w/c/wchuang/News/...](http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/w/c/wchuang/News/college/MIT-
views.html)

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comatose_kid
Here are a few more essays by Rota:

<http://www.rota.org/hotair/hotair.html>

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richcollins
> One: You can and will work at a desk for seven hours straight, routinely

Sign me up. Nothing I like better than being routinely forced to work for 7
hours straight so I can make the grade.

Maybe this is why the smartest people I know drop of out school to learn and
work on their own terms.

~~~
neilc
If you'd think of the work you need to do to get an MIT degree as "forced
work" that you need to put in just to "make the grade", then yes, I'd agree
you'd be better off dropping out, or going to somewhere where the standards
are more lax.

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damon
"There is some satisfaction, however, for a faculty member in encountering a
recent graduate who marvels at the light work load they carry in medical
school or law school relative to the grueling schedule they had to maintain
during their four years at MIT."

This reminds me of people who dropped comp sci to drink beer and scam chicks
over in "business school".

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ahsonwardak
<em>Lesson Five: You don't have to be a genius to do creative work.</em>

Creative work is not the providence of genius alone. It's part luck, part
risky personality, and part intelligence.

I've begun to write on this extensively on my blog:
<http://myphdblogged.blogspot.com>

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comatose_kid
This is a great article. Thanks.

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nikolaj
how academic to claim that programmers only implement ideas of others.. is the
insight in the new theory, or the revolutionary application of the abstract
theory?

~~~
hhm
That's a way to read it, but I don't think that's what he necessarily says. He
says: "Those who do not become computer scientists to the second degree risk
turning into programmers who will only implement the ideas of others." You can
also read it as: "There are two kind of programmers; if you are a computer
scientist to the second degree you risk turning into a second-type
programmer."

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kashif
Mathematics and mathematicians are both over-hyped. Actually, in my opinion
the mathematical notation is the worst 'language' ever.

~~~
redneck
Mathematical ideas are among the most timeless and beautiful of all the things
discovered by civilization. The fact that such pure knowledge (often
researched for purely recreational or aesthetic reasons) has so many useful
applications in so many areas is something profoundly surprising and humbling.

