a difficult lecture

Today the Business Data module started on my IMBA.  It’s taught by a Wu Lipeng.  He’s a Fudan professor, so he talks in Chinese.  We get two text books, one of which is in English, the other in Chinese.  They’re not equivalent.  We get a case study book, all in Chinese.  And we get handouts of the slides, also all in Chinese. 

 

In this course, we study simulations and modeling, statistical sampling, linear and nonlinear optimization…. I don’t think these sound like straightforward topics, especially in understanding how to make good use of these techniques in the real world.  This will be a little tricky.  In truth, the lecture slides, books and handouts should be in English.  There’s often variability, but this particular course takes variability to quite one extreme.

 

I have some choices to make in this type of situation.  A) Try to listen, follow, understand the material.  B) Ignore the lecturer, read the textbook and seek to understand the material.  C) ignore everything, and continue learning chinese quietly during lectures, and hope to struggle through the exam

 

I think I’m going to work on somewhere between options B and C.