Right this moment’s submit is in my sequence on utilizing Claude Code for the kind of analysis that utilized social scientists discover necessary, however this time it gained’t be analysis. Reasonably will probably be utilizing Claude Code to make your classroom lecture slides. I will likely be illustrating it “reside coding” so to see what’s doable. This lecture I’m targeted on is day 2 in an undergraduate knowledge science class at Harvard, within the authorities dept. They’re all nonetheless very early of their quantitative careers, and so I needed to give attention to 5 issues:
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The rhetoric of quantitative social sciences.
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Good empirical workflow (e.g., hierarchical folders, writing good code, automation, model management, replicability)
The video is lengthy at 1 hour and 40 minutes, however it’s like watching me paint a scene as a result of I actually don’t take the place that the optimum technique to do something in Claude Code is simply make some demand on the duty after which watch for it to be accomplished. I’d say I’m simply as intimately concerned within the job as I’d be with out AI. You be the decide for a way nicely I do it.
However the factor I attempt to emphasize on this video is that Claude Code is not only writing the decks for me utilizing latex as a result of it “is aware of methods to code in latex”. I feel that’s really the superficial understanding. It’s not merely doing that. Reasonably, it has as I’ve stated earlier than absorbed the tacit data concerned in what nice audio system who use decks to speak know however have in all probability by no means written down wherever, and should not even know methods to clarify it.
Dictating the Manufacturing of Your Lecture Slides
The way in which that I make my lecture slides utilizing Claude Code is thru exhaustive dictation. Discuss, in different phrases; share your concepts, your aims, the specified method; clarify your private beliefs about pedagogy; elaborate on what your objectives are, who your viewers is; share the massive image define in addition to the tiniest trivialities, because it all seems.
I name this dictation, not vibe coding. You’re creating the lecture by speaking into existence however you’re additionally modifying it always as you learn by means of the looks of every slide, in addition to get a really feel for the rhythm of the speak. So you will note me transfer issues round, tweak issues, strive new issues out, scrap outdated concepts solely, or remark them out.
What’s a terrific about dictation method to developing decks is that you could additionally introduce ideas that you simply solely vaguely take note of. As an example, I throw out a request the Claude Code undertake an method to what I’m recommend whereby the deck follows a rhythm such that the “marginal profit to marginal value ratio” throughout every slide is identical — a sort of “optimum rhetoric”. As an thought for what I would like, that’s each fairly correct and fairly far fetched on the similar. However in my thoughts, I feel I see how the right deck does typically comply with that sort of smoothness. I simply can’t say I possess the talent to do it, or the persistence, however I believe Claude Code can. And unsurprisingly, he does perceive what I imply and may make an try at it in how every slide connects to the following.
Unique theme and .sty file
One of many issues you will note on this video is the best way I requested it mid deck manufacturing to create a special beamer aesthetic design, and so it did — by actually creating from scratch its personal .sty model file!
And so when you watch it, you’ll see the model change the place I went from what felt like fairly boring grays and crimson colours to what I felt like was extra coloration, and extra fascinating kinds all through.
The opposite factor that I ask for are formidable drawings utilizing tikz, the highly effective graphics package deal in latex. Typically what Claude code can do seems like sorcery. Just like the submitting cupboard that he creates. Which I described anecdotally however didn’t explicitly request. I used to be speechless once I noticed it, and particularly after we perfected it collectively, and I’ve been doing this now for 2 months straight, since Thanksgiving actually. And I used to be nonetheless flabbergasted once I noticed it.
So so long as you might be prepared to stay immersed within the inventive and technical course of of manufacturing the deck on your lecture, I feel you will see it extremely helpful — a really actual reworking of the productiveness of your time, at the very least anyway for the modal tutorial. I feel the modal tutorial finds deck creation very tedious and you understand what my proof for that’s?
The truth that all tutorial beamer decks look kind of an identical to 1 one other, and that also they are normally dangerous, particularly mine. Not everyone seems to be born the Michelangelo of creating decks.
A Life Lived in Decks
I feel possibly 40% to 60% of my week entails being in a deck in a roundabout way, form or type. Both I’m making one or I’m utilizing one, however whichever it’s, decks are a nontrivial portion of my life.
Which implies I’m doing one thing with decks commonly. And they’re due to this fact each necessary on the facet of manufacturing and consumption. Getting them proper is due to this fact necessary and in addition very time consuming. Put one other means — time spent on decks has doubtless diminishing marginal returns, and rising marginal prices, and due to this fact we spend an period of time on that the place these two traces cross for every of us, and the standard of what we make is set by that high quality adjusted time use.
Properly that’s nonetheless true. However, I feel what’s modified is that the curves have shifted. Particularly, the marginal value curve has shifted left, and the marginal profit curve has shifted proper. And when that occurs, the period of time you spend on producing your deck is ambiguous — and you’ll see that performed out within the video as I spend an hour forty minutes and I’m not but carried out — however I’d contend that the standard of what you make goes up.
I feel the output to this point has been implausible. The decks have been high-quality tuned to me and my objectives, tailor made to the expertise of those particular college students I take note of. And you may simply search for your self right here at my instructing tab at both Gov 2001 (the PhD likelihood class) or 51 (the undergraduate knowledge science class) to see as I add the lectures in. And as soon as I attain a accomplished deck, I’ll additionally add the .tex file for these of who wish to see that too. Right here as an illustration is the lecture I did on foundational ideas in likelihood for the PhD college students.
Is Claude Code a Stage Shift, a Slope Change, or Each?
Sounds ridiculous to say this, however Claude Code has in all probability modified my life. I used to be attempting to clarify to somebody who makes use of ChatGPT intensively what it’s like. I principally stated “you understand how you felt like pre-ChatGPT you had been doing issues at x=100 however then after ChatGPT got here out, you felt such as you had been doing issues at x=1,000? That is principally like going from x=1,000 to x=1,000^2.
I do know that it feels like hyperbole to say that, however for me it isn’t hyperbole. It’s all solely attributable to the truth that Claude Code is within the folder with entry to the command line interface and due to this fact all these shell instructions. And I additionally needed to go away you with a couple of anecdotes too. First, listed below are two tweets (I bought this from Ethan Mollick’s LinkedIn). The one on the left is by somebody at OpenAI. The one on the suitable is by Boris Cherny, who created Claude Code. Have a look at what they each say when requested about how a lot of their code is now being produced by AI Brokers. Each of them, pc scientists thoughts you, say that 100% of the coding is now carried out at OpenAI and Claude by AI brokers. Not AI — not the copy-paste technique of taking the output from ChatGPT and placing right into a script. Not the autocorrect technique from Github copilot. No — brokers. Heck, Claude Code wrote 90% of its personal code itself!
Then take a look at this tweet that Andrej Karpathy, founding father of OpenAI, former director of AI at Tesla, stated. Apparently, me and him each began utilizing Claude Code two months in the past. I began I feel the center of November. I vaguely bear in mind utilizing it to do one thing, every week or so earlier than Thanksgiving, which elevated so much over thanksgiving once I had a challenge I wanted carried out, after which extra after that, after which massively throughout the Christmas break, then an enormous enhance in January the place I used to be spending 8-10 hours a day working feverishly prepping courses and ending initiatives that had stalled, to now the place it’s so deeply built-in into my means of working that I can’t even think about a world the place I may do with out it.
Andrej Karpathy@karpathy
A number of random notes from claude coding fairly a bit previous couple of weeks.
Coding workflow. Given the most recent raise in LLM coding functionality, like many others I quickly went from about 80% guide+autocomplete coding and 20% brokers in November to 80% agent coding and 20% edits+touchups in
8:25 PM · Jan 26, 2026 · 6.06M Views
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The fact is the educational curve in utilizing an AI Agent that will help you along with your courses, significantly writing decks, just isn’t solely flatter than folks assume it’s — it’s simpler. The educational curve could frankly even be negatively sloped for all anybody is aware of. It’s not simply straightforward to be taught; it isn’t even clear to me what you might be needing to be taught. There isn’t any magic “immediate engineering” talent anymore. That day the place you wanted to have some particular capability to speak is lengthy gone, if it ever did exist within the first place — it was actually all the time in all probability exaggerated by a bunch of snake oil salesmen on-line attempting to make a dime out of a nickel as “AI Influencers”.
There’s nothing to be taught greatest I can inform. There’s solely wanted a willingness to try to experiment. However that’s the way it frankly has all the time been with LLMs sensible worth to researchers and academics. Claude Code isn’t any completely different. It’s akin to some sort of magical sandbox the place you may principally dream up castles fabricated from gold and rubies utilizing sand, all utilizing solely your phrases. And its capability to do it? You give it the shell, and also you give it your folders.
We Are Not All Naturals, or Absolute vs Comparative Benefit
My former colleague, Rebecca Thornton, is a genius at many issues. She is difficult to maintain up with in principally any of them, not to mention be higher than her at any one in every of them. She is the basic instance of somebody who has absolutely the benefit in nearly each single a part of the duties of being a contemporary professor at a analysis college — nice instructor, nice researcher, and all of the duties concerned in every therein. And I’ve listened to her describe the method and imaginative and prescient of her courses earlier than — how a lot time she spends fascinated with the underlying structure of a course, what the coaching builds on prime of itself, methods of eliciting scholar engagement, how each factor reinforces each different factor resulting in human capital accumulation for the scholars and even herself over a 13 week interval — the period of time a semester lasts. It was past spectacular to look at, and that isn’t even referring to her analysis acumen. She merely is aware of methods to design a curriculum.
I’m not Rebecca Thornton a am I shut. She has absolutely the benefit in, greatest I can inform, each single job that accumulates linearly and nonlinearly within the creation of college class. And that completely consists of her slides. That are themselves based mostly on a rhetoric of her personal that she simply is aware of and is aware of nicely.
I frankly want Claude Code to simply shorten the hole between me and the professors. I probably can’t surpass them, however I can prolong my very own manufacturing chance frontier such that the expertise for college students in all probability goes up dramatically. My talent as a professor is stymied by my very own wrestle with inattention, obsession with the flawed issues, and misallocation of time and a focus throughout the myriad duties concerned in producing a curriculum and sophistication which incorporates however just isn’t restricted to the creation of decks.
I doubtless won’t ever have absolutely the benefit when put in a contest with the world’s greatest rhetorician, however I’m not attempting to both. I’m attempting to be my greatest self and Claude Code’s assist in writing decks is simply one of many methods I’m attempting to do this.
Optimum Manufacturing of Decks
I awakened early this morning considering of the issues I did within the video above final evening, and particularly how I used to be attempting to articulate this concept that there’s an optimum deck, and that it’s the place the marginal advantage of the time spent making the deck (which is probably going high quality diminishing in time and effort use) equals the marginal value. It is a deck I’m engaged on which I’m going to share now. Right here is the pdf (unfinished in the mean time), right here is the .tex and right here is the .sty file which is identical because the one which Claude Code invented on the fly for me within the video above once I requested him to modify as a result of I didn’t just like the aesthetics of what we had been utilizing at that second.
However, my rivalry has been that each curves shift with Claude Code particularly. Not LLMs typically — an AI Agent on par with Claude Code, particularly. One which lives within the listing. The impact that Claude Code has on the marginal profit curve is that for each unit of time spent making decks, the standard of these decks rise and therefore why the marginal profit curve shifts up. My instance is issues like creating aesthetically pleasing themes (which you’ll see me do within the video), accessing skilled stage talent at producing prime quality graphics with TikZ (a strong but totally bewildering LaTeX package deal for most individuals who worth their time at principally any non-zero worth), and the power to check out experimental concepts.
However the marginal value of manufacturing decks additionally doubtless declines. Right here I characterize that shift with a big decline, but additionally a flattening out, of the marginal value curve. It’s pointless to state simply what the brand new form is, however my private hunch is that it’s like this. The purpose the place we begin to actually hit the pressure on the underlying value perform with AI might be a lot farther to the suitable of even the hours in a day and as such my hunch is that the brand new marginal value curve is flatter which implies that at increased ranges of time spent working, the financial savings hole between the outdated marginal value and the marginal value grows and should even develop considerably at excessive ranges of use.
In order that’s an fascinating thought when you think about it. And this wraps it right into a easy provide and demand framework that I personally assume is so apparent to anybody utilizing Claude Code to make decks that it’s not solely noncontroversial to assert it, it’s borderline apparent. It’s clearly true to anybody who’s utilizing Claude Code to make their lecture decks that the time-adjusted high quality of your lecture slides goes up.
Being a Professor is a Assortment of Folders and Recordsdata
Claude Code for my part is for anybody whose job entails being in a listing of folders with recordsdata. That’s who that is for. It’s not only for writing R and Stata code. It could not even be primarily for that. It’s laborious to clarify, however it’s such as you’re in a position to manifest your goals by means of sheer needs. That’s in all probability a extra correct description of what I’ve been in a position to be taught to do with Claude Code than if I used to be to even attempt to say extra.
So, try the video. It’s lengthy, you may skip round. Share it. It’ll be free and never gated for an additional 2-3 days I feel. Every thing finally goes behind the paywall, so I encourage you to look at it instantly when you’re not a paying subscriber. However I feel seeing me make a deck for my precise class is value it and that alone in all probability will trigger a few of you to develop into instantly a subscriber. And bear in mind, I’m paying the $200-250/month or no matter it’s however that’s as a result of I’m an influence consumer. I’m utilizing this so intensively on a regular basis, as I’ve so many dormant initiatives on the verge of being orphaned that I’m lastly getting again up and operating. After all, provide creates its personal demand so I’m additionally doing new issues. However that’s okay. I have to and this has helped me to.
Thanks once more on your help! Think about changing into a paying subscriber! It’s solely $5/month or $50/yr. You can too develop into a founding member which is $250 I feel and that’s principally simply you saying you wish to try this as I don’t have any add-ons. However no matter what you give, I may give you this.
