Demonstration of Setting Encompassing Weights

Cross-posted from here.

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list.

Summary:

In preparation for the imminent release of our Probability & Statistics course, I have a bunch of encompassing weights to set today, so I figured I’d take this as an opportunity to make a little video demonstrating how it’s done. (tip: 1.5x speed)

(The encompassing weights control how much spaced repetition credit is propagated backwards from a more advanced topic to a simpler prerequisite topic when a student does a spaced repetition on the more advanced topic.)

If this seems tedious… yeah, it is. I’ve set over 10,000 of these weights, it’s sucked as much as it sounds, it’s not a particularly fast process, it does take quite a bit of work, it’s is cognitively taxing.

But hey, that’s sometimes what you’ve got to do when you want to build a solution that actually solves a problem. You have to put in the hard work.

Of course you want to try to work smarter when possible, but sometimes it comes down to you approaching the problem as cleverly as possible and pushing the boulder across the finish line requires human effort.

So you suck it up, put in that human effort, give it to your model, and now your model knows what’s going on, and now your model can make good decisions.

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list.