Partners in scholarship - Search and Find

post by TrE · 2011-09-09T12:50:38.844Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 11 comments

Pondering the question of how to do efficient scholarly study, I figured a good way for me may be having something like a chavruta although not quite the same, a partner with which to study a field of science together, helping each other at answering questions which arise, searching for useful articles, in general, being more awesome together than each of us could be alone. Such a scholar partner should, for me, have a similar state of knowledge, i.e. the difference should be small enough to overcome it in a short amount of time, have similar interests as well as a similar amount of motivation, have enough spare time, live in a similar time zone and ideally be of similar age and nationality/language. In case others are searching for a scholar partner as well, I'm posting my personal information in the comments instead of here.

 

What is your opinion on this type of cooperation? What might be pitfalls in this approach? Did I forget any important criteria for a useful scholar partner?

11 comments

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comment by TrE · 2011-09-09T12:51:22.398Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Post here if you search for a scholar partner.

Replies from: Morendil, lessdazed, TrE
↑ comment by Morendil · 2011-09-09T20:56:46.847Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I would very much enjoy having someone to pair with me on software engineering scholarship. Which software development practices work, which don't; what determines long-term success in software development initiatives; what matters (language design, processes, psychology of SD, sociology of SD) versus what doesn't.

↑ comment by lessdazed · 2011-09-09T17:42:52.053Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Eastern standard time. Law student. I have saved dozens of math based wikipedia pages like this one that I want to understand on a technical level. Not too much time.

↑ comment by TrE · 2011-09-09T13:05:11.826Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

As mentioned above, here is what I am and what I search: I'm searching for a scholar partner to explore the area of machine learning, Solomonoff induction, K-complexity and the like, but would also be interested in other fields, I'm not yet settled for this, so if you'd rather like to explore metaethics, I'd probably be in for that as well.

I'm more or less a complete beginner and haven't read much more on these topics than what I stumbled upon on lw. I'm living in Germany and currently attending high school. I currently have lots of spare time for scholarly studies but that will change for a while as A-level exams are coming soon (in about half a year, that is) and I'll have to prepare for them, but until then, I'm in for intensive studying of something more interesting. If you're interested, reply or send me a pm.

Replies from: None, Alex_Altair
↑ comment by [deleted] · 2011-09-09T14:32:58.710Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

'm searching for a scholar partner to explore the area of machine learning, Solomonoff induction, K-complexity and the like, but would also be interested in other fields, I'm not yet settled for this, so if you'd rather like to explore metaethics, I'd probably be in for that as well.

I have signed up for a series of free online classes offered by a bunch of Stanford professors this year (with particular interest in the machine learning and AI class). I have also considered getting some serious thought done on the various metaethics material on LW, its one of the few sequences that I haven't really approached systematically.

My country of residence is Slovenia (which shares the Central European time zone with Germany). I'm a physics student in my (very) early 20s. I'm afraid my German has gotten rather poor with years of non use.

Replies from: TrE, Alex_Altair
↑ comment by TrE · 2011-09-10T15:10:12.288Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

That sounds great, I'm gonna enroll for the ai and ml classes. This will be taking much of my spare time, but until it starts, we could try if we can cooperate well and look at the metaethics sequence if you like.

↑ comment by Alex_Altair · 2011-09-09T23:20:54.557Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I have signed up for the Machine Learning Stanford class, too! Should we form a study group on LW?

Replies from: None
↑ comment by Alex_Altair · 2011-09-09T23:25:49.625Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I would be interested in trying this, in the fields you mentioned. Other areas I would include would be neural networks and statistical inference. I don't have much formal background in these areas. I'm living in America, and am a senior in college. My strongest areas are math and physics. What kind of form did you have in mind for studying? I plan to read mostly textbooks. Would you want to read the same one, and compare work on the problems? Or would you want to try different textbooks, and tell each other what the material is like so we could more efficiently choose ones to study? Or something totally different?

comment by [deleted] · 2011-09-09T14:34:21.004Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This seems a good idea. Even if its not better than some other forms of group learning, its likley to appeal to some people who wouldn't try other approaches.