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DiracPool
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I wanted to start a poll for this thread, but couldn't figure out how to do it. However, I was curious as to what people's experience was with watching Lenny Susskind's multiple marathons of "the theoretical minimum" variety of extended education lectures? Of course, I may be vilified for questioning the sanctity of almighty Susskind, but I'm just looking for experiences and opinions, you know... I think it may be a useful topic seeing as many aspiring physicists, and many on this site, myself included, have spent a lot of time on that Stanford channel looking for enlightenment from old Lenny.
So, here's my experience...Out of the 1000 (or so ) hours of Lenny's lectures, I think I got a good 3 1/2 hours of good solid science knowledge, approximately. I mean I love his style and his command of the whiteboard, but all too often I caught myself fading out and dozing off when he'd go off on those 20 minute tangents of whatever he was talking about. He's so soothing and comforting in his delivery, though, that you don't even notice you've gone off topic until those 20 minutes have been burned.
Another issue for me was (is) that he almost never provides specific examples of actual problems and works through them. In the second quantum physics series, I can't remember one specific problem he worked through (although there probably were some). He never even discussed the quantum harmonic oscillator. His discourse just gets so abstract so fast and stays there, it's very difficult (for me) to maintain attention when the levels of abstraction keep building upon one after another hour after hour with it never being "brought home" or down to Earth with any specific examples. And I'm a pretty "abstract-o-phile" kind of guy. Am I out of bounds here?
I'm particularly bringing this up because I had high hopes for this series as something of a one-stop shopping to get me to the theoretical minimum. On the contrary, now that I look back on it, I really don't know how much I actually learned but I do know that I certainly burned a lot of hours watching it. That's not to say it wasn't worth it, though, Lenny's very entertaining, I still watch those lectures from time to time. It's much easier to enjoy them, though, if you're not expecting to get much out of them. I think that is a shame, though. They could have been great. Am I alone with this experience? What was yours?
So, here's my experience...Out of the 1000 (or so ) hours of Lenny's lectures, I think I got a good 3 1/2 hours of good solid science knowledge, approximately. I mean I love his style and his command of the whiteboard, but all too often I caught myself fading out and dozing off when he'd go off on those 20 minute tangents of whatever he was talking about. He's so soothing and comforting in his delivery, though, that you don't even notice you've gone off topic until those 20 minutes have been burned.
Another issue for me was (is) that he almost never provides specific examples of actual problems and works through them. In the second quantum physics series, I can't remember one specific problem he worked through (although there probably were some). He never even discussed the quantum harmonic oscillator. His discourse just gets so abstract so fast and stays there, it's very difficult (for me) to maintain attention when the levels of abstraction keep building upon one after another hour after hour with it never being "brought home" or down to Earth with any specific examples. And I'm a pretty "abstract-o-phile" kind of guy. Am I out of bounds here?
I'm particularly bringing this up because I had high hopes for this series as something of a one-stop shopping to get me to the theoretical minimum. On the contrary, now that I look back on it, I really don't know how much I actually learned but I do know that I certainly burned a lot of hours watching it. That's not to say it wasn't worth it, though, Lenny's very entertaining, I still watch those lectures from time to time. It's much easier to enjoy them, though, if you're not expecting to get much out of them. I think that is a shame, though. They could have been great. Am I alone with this experience? What was yours?