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Qiaochu Yuan
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Regarding different flavors of approach 1, here are some words from Halmos.

I have taught courses whose entire content was problems solved by students (and then presented to the class). The number of theorems that the students in such a course were exposed to was approximately half the number that they could have been exposed to in a series of lectures. In a problem course, however, exposure means the acquiring of an intelligent questioning attitude and of some technique for plugging the leaks that proofs are likely to spring; in a lecture course, exposure sometimes means not much more than learning the name of a theorem, being intimidated by its complicated proof, and worrying about whether it would appear on the examination.

Many teachers are concerned about the ... amount of material they must cover in a course. One cynic suggested a formula; since, he said, students on the average remember only about 40% of what you tell them, the thing to do is to cram into each course 250% of what you hope will stick. Glib as that is, it probably would not work.

Problem courses do work. Students who have taken my problem courses were often complimented by their subsequent teachers. The compliments were on their alert attitude, on their ability to get to the heart of the matter quickly, and on their intelligently searching questions that showed that they understood what was happening in class. All this happened on more than one level, in calculus, in linear algebra, in set theory, and, of course, in graduate courses on measure theory and functional analysis.
Qiaochu Yuan
  • 118.2k
  • 40
  • 447
  • 741