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Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#71

Post by rmbyrro »

openknot wrote: post #5
jstx1 wrote: post #2

As a working adult: - don't take rigorous notes because it ends up replicating a lot of the material that I'm consuming anyway - still write some notes if something interesting stands out; it's usually related to some core idea/explanation, not to technical details - don't obsess over having "complete" notes or worry too much about organizing them - try to write some relevant code alongside whatever I'm learning - sp…

> - spaced repetition is for memorization; I'm not trying to memorize I strongly agree. In the learning blogs (e.g. SuperMemo wiki) and forums I’ve read (r/Anki), there is a bias to solve every learning problem with space repetition (very roughly, flashcards on a computer program scheduled in an optimized way). I’ve seen users try to make it work for math and physics, and though it may work for some users, the approa…

SRS pays off in the long run. If you didn't practice it with discipline for a bare minimum of 4-6 months, you won't see much effect.

I think memory plays a key role in learning and especially recognizing opportunity to use something I've learned.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#73

Post by jldugger »

> Do you take notes?

I used to. 90 percent of them were about tools or other things to look up later. Now, I add those to the backlog, and the other 10 percent become Anki cards. These days the only things I write down are meeting related: action items, questions I want to find an answer to, and maybe 1 piece of key information I want to refer to later.

> Do you compile/rewrite notes?

Nope! I may adjust Anki cards if the phrasing turns out awkward, or if there's a term collision. And if a card is tagged 'leech' thats a sign to rework it but generally I'm not trying to memorize things word for word where this might help.

In practice the hardest cards, the ones that get marked leech, are the bill of rights. Especially the middle ones that are basically a paragraph joined into a single sentence. Like, I know a warrant needs to be supported by evidence but its not always immediately front of mind that this is a 4th amendment right (instead of say 5th or 6th), or the exact phrasing. Fortunately this is a hobby topic rather than a professional need -- and hopefully if it were I'd be better at it =)

> 3) Does spaced repetition work for you?

I think so. For papers I generally extract a few key topics or points. Today's was three sentences about Cox proportional hazards, after hearing about his most famous contribution in an obit thread.

4) Do you have a methodology for extracting common themes/patterns across topics?

No? My general approach is to spend a few minutes thinking about how I might apply it in my work, and the go looking to find out who did / what they found. So for proportional hazards, I ended up googling and found a few places where this was applied, like analyzing churn rate (https://towardsdatascience.com/strategies-for-customer-reten...)

But note that I'm not trying to merge two topics of study in order to unlock some deeper truth, or better learn a general pattern. I'm trying to advance the state of the art in a field I consider myself pretty good at by learning how other fields work and stealing their best ideas. Kind of the inverse of the Hamming / Feynman jumping fields every five years.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#74

Post by tra3 »

mikewarot wrote: post #52
daenz wrote: post #36

This might sound kind of bizarre, but I don't really try to learn. I think I have a minor learning disability where I have a very hard time remembering things that I deem (consciously or not) as unimportant in the long term. Instead, I try to focus on extracting the nature and patterns of relationships, instead of the specific details. An example might be: learning the purpose of a wristwatch and its power source, ve…

>I try to focus on extracting the nature and patterns of relationships, instead of the specific details. You're a mapper , like me. The only reason I ever want to learn details is if they are important corner cases. >In tech this can be an obstacle when communicating because many engineers have an extremely fine-grained memory, seemingly all the time. Those folks are packers , they know all the corner cases, and worr…

I'm curious about this concept. Some quick googling yielded "The Programmer's Stone" [0], seemingly about how mapping related to programming. Any other sources?

[0]: http://programmersstone.com

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#75

Post by rkagerer »

daenz wrote: post #36

This might sound kind of bizarre, but I don't really try to learn. I think I have a minor learning disability where I have a very hard time remembering things that I deem (consciously or not) as unimportant in the long term. Instead, I try to focus on extracting the nature and patterns of relationships, instead of the specific details. An example might be: learning the purpose of a wristwatch and its power source, ve…

I find when I have a need for certain knowledge to solve an interesting real-world problem I'm working on, that drastically improves my ability to learn said knowledge.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#76

Post by brg »

Two responses, as the context differs dramatically.

For coursework, I would take notes. At the end of the day, I would reread the notes and complete them. Completing them means correcting errors, filling in details from examples, and using assignments and course material embellish the notes. Embellishment means adding notes of personal interest from other course material, and also adding examples from problem sets. My notes were my source of truth, and I kept them in good order. For exams and future coursework, I would only use my notes since they were complete.

In my professional life, I consume a lot of material but do not take notes. I find that there are two important aspects to learning. The first is high exposure to material. Being able to put a name or provenance to an idea is helpful in finding my way back there again. The second, which is similar to what nickjj mentions in a comment above, is to close the loop. To wit, my engagement with material is to find aspects for which I can test it outside of the scope presented or examine in in contrast to another idea. By engaging with the idea, I am able to come to an understanding of its verisimilitude and utility to me.

In the later, I do not take notes while attending lectures and reading. However I maintain complete lab notes for my work. Lab notes include random thoughts, references, uri:'s of data sets, links to papers and wikipedia articles. The lab notes are written for me, and are mostly in chronological order. By the contain as thorough an appendix as I have the patience to maintain.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#77

Post by shahinghasemi »

This is my learning strategy which originally posted on [1]:

I have created a learning framework for myself to learn literally anything. First of all It’s not going to be easy to get started learning something new because there are many holes in your mental model about the material and the aim of the learning is to fill those holes. We’re living in an information era. You can drawn yourself in surfing the web/docs/articles if you are some kind of perfectionism to convince yourself that you’re learning. But that’s the trap. You should spend about 30-40% of your time learning the material and 60-70% of your time applying it and then under the process you’ll find: “Oh I don’t know how or what is X” then you go to learn about X specifically. This works best. In other words as you will be applying what you have learned so far you start “learning on demand”. In other words filling the individual holes. This loop will force you to learn the topic.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29116026

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#78

Post by pavanto »

goopthink wrote: post #42

I recently wrote about my learning strategy under a post called “How Learning Works: Components, Loops, Systems”: https://romandesign.co/how-learning-works-components-systems... > It's like Charlie Munger once said about mental models: “All this stuff is really quite obvious and yet most people don’t really know it in a way where they can use it.” The long and short of it is that you go through a cycle of Knowing, Do…

Thanks for sharing. A lot of good info in the article

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#79

Post by aristofun »

The only reliable strategy i know is deep detailed understanding of why and what exactly i am learning.

Be it just passing stupid ielts test or getting a job - once I invested enough time to build a concrete picture of what outcomes do i need to get and why - everything else including motivation follows organically in the most efficient way I’m capable of.

I believe there is no single best strategy of learning for a single person. Since learning is as diverse as the subjects of learning might be.

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