Article: "How Elon Musk Learns Faster and Better Than Everyone Else"
-
I just saw this article for the first time last night, and it really resonated with me in terms of the philosophy of our courses and Prof. Loh's teaching style. There is a method to the madness, a logic to the smorgasbord of math topics that Prof. Loh will typically cover in just one day, pulling in geometry to solve an algebra question and combinatorics to solve a probability question. Elon Musk's powerful way of learning involves something called "learning transfer" (taking what we learn in one context and applying it to another) and looking at "contrasting cases. By looking at lots of diverse cases when we learn anything, we begin to intuit what is essential and even craft our own unique combinations."
Prof. Loh follows this learning and teaching style as well. Rather than showing isolated sets of similar practice questions, he gives us varied questions that, in combination, reveal the principles of math through this "contrasting cases" approach. Unlike a linear learning style, this "network" learning style shows how topics in math are interconnected and coaxes mathematical intuition out of us.
-
wow I kind of would be intimated by either Elon Musk or Prof. Loh if I met them lol
-
@The-Darkin-Blade Prof. Loh is really easy to talk to in real life actually!
-
No I don't mean by easy to talk to. It's just that anyone no matter how nice they are intimidates me if they are better than me at something, like Prof Loh is a LOT better than me at a lot of things and I kind of want to work at Tesla as an Intern at the least when I grow up
-
@The-Darkin-Blade I see... Well don't worry... Prof. Loh isn't intimidated by anyone, even those who are a lot better than him (and it doesn't have to do with how good he judges himself to be). He's met a lot of people much better than him, too!
-
Elon Musk's factories/companies/websites/games:
1.Blaster
2.Zip2
3.PayPal
4.Tesla
5.Solarcity
6.SpaceX -
@sinceretapir Yup, I would probably be pretty intimidated if I ever met him
-
@cleverunicorn It's also really interesting that this attitude of being not intimidated by things is something Elon Musk has himself... I was reading about this just the other day in a Quora post written by Jim Cantrell, one of the top experts in the space rocket industry and one of the people who helped start SpaceX. Jim left SpaceX because he and Elon differed in their philosophy.
"What separated us, I believe, was his lack of even being able to conceive failure. I know this because this is where we parted ways at SpaceX. We got to a point where I could not see it succeeding and walked away. He didn't and succeeded. I have 25 years experience building space hardware and he had none at the time. So much for experience."
This confidence and lack of fear doesn't necessarily come from intelligence, though, does it? It's a personality trait, an attitude. So if you want to be more like Elon Musk, maybe try to be more fearless.
-
@debbie Wow, I never knew that!! Thanks for sharing! I think we'll all try to be a little more fearless after reading that article.
-
@debbie: Yeah, that's really true because I once asked him to take a picture with me and he said yes!
